How This Beauty Writer-Turned-Entrepreneur Makes the Mediterranean Diet Accessible
Tatiana Boncompagni is taking inside-out beauty to the next level.
The veteran beauty writer, with bylines from Air Mail to The New York Times under her belt, is taking her food company Eat Sunny to new heights with a new partnership.
More from WWD
Boncompagni has inked a deal with Village Super Markets Inc. to distribute her organic, ready-made meals via Fairway and Gourmet Garage, starting next year.
For Boncompagni, the graduation from writer to founder happened organically. “As a young girl, I had always been interested in food,” she said. “Most kids grew up wanting to bake cookies, and I had always been interested in healthy food. I was an athlete growing up, my mom is Costa Rican, and she believed that health was beauty, and beauty is health.”
To that end, she develops her meals with nutrition in mind, likening the process to creating skin care formulations. “I almost think of myself as a cosmetic chemist building a formulation. What does a certain ingredient do for the skin or body?” she said. “That’s how I think about building a meal, both in terms of the macronutrients and the micronutrients we include. Then, we choose superfoods for each meal to maximize the nutrition.”
Among current menu options are banana kale waffles for breakfast, herb roasted wild salmon and vermicelli noodle salad with shrimp. “I love our poached chicken salad; it comes with this vegan sort of ranch dressing,” she said. “We do an amazing salad.”
Eat Sunny launched in early March 2020, just as the pandemic’s first wave hit New York, but it’s been quick to gain fans among the beauty and fashion crowds, from serial entrepreneur Bobbi Brown to Valentino’s corporate offices. “We’ve done activations for Neutrogena, Lancôme and Naturopathica,” Boncompagni added.
The meals incorporate Boncompagni’s nutritional know-how with familiar favorites. “We follow the principles of the Mediterranean diet, but we’re global in terms of our meals. There are Asian influences, there are American influences. It’s global cuisine,” she said. “We do a great cauliflower fried rice — things that you love to order for takeout, but we make them super healthy and we take out all the inflammatory foods that are usually incorporated in those meals.”
Customers can order meals à la carte, which start at $13.99, purchase in bulk one time or subscribe. The latter options start at $210 and $189 for three days’ worth of meals, respectively, and follow flexible meal plans from vegetarian options to signature picks.
Meals are available for delivery in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, and will be distributed in both Gourmet Garage and Fairway across the tri-state area. “I want to meet people where they are,” Boncompagni said. “Meal delivery, especially in the healthy food space, can feel really inaccessible to people, first because they don’t want to commit to a lot of food. It’s a lot easier for someone who’s walking through aisles, doing grocery shopping, to pick up one nice meal.”
For more from WWD.com, see:
Meet Hi Noona, The Juice Shop Marrying Beauty and Korean Culture
Irene Forte Skincare Comes to U.S.
Best of WWD
