Today we’d like to introduce you to Zach Elkins.
Hi Zach, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
There’s a particular kind of discipline you only learn in a locked inside of a cage to fight another human being for entertainment. For Zach Elkins, it started there and it’s the same discipline that built Lean Impact Nutrition from meal prepping for some friends out his house into one of Northeast Florida’s most trusted names in meal prep.
“It was never supposed to be a business,” Zach says. “I had a friend of mine from the gym ask me if he could pay me to make meals for him because he knew that’s what I did on the weekends.”
Before Lean Impact Nutrition existed, Zach was a highly decorated MMA cage fighter. He was a late bloomer by the sport’s standards and walked into his first gym at 33 with zero martial arts or training experience. To compete in his sport he successfully cut over 500 pounds across over his career and all of that was possible by meticulously planning and preparing his meals in advance.
So he taught himself everything from macros, performance fueling, recovery, body composition. and weight cutting. As an older athlete competing against much younger fighters nutrition became his edge to combat his age disadvantage..
That obsession with what food could do from a performance stand point paid off. Zach became the most decorated Amateur MMA fighter in Jacksonville’s history, a two-time State of Florida Champion, and was the #1 ranked Middleweight in the Southeast. When he hung up his gloves the passion and knowledge he obtained for nutrition didn’t retire with him. He knew firsthand what the right nutrition and timing could do for a person because it had already transformed his own life.
The business itself began almost by chance. A friend from the gym noticed how dialed-in Zach’s own meal prep was and asked to pay him to make meals for him. Zach said yes, reluctantly at first. He made one post on Facebook of the meals and tagged him then it took off. Another person asked him to make meals for him. Then another. What started as a favor for one friend quickly became something much bigger than he ever imagined.
Lean Impact Nutrition officially launched in 2017 built from grassroots of cooking in Zach’s home kitchen and fueled by nothing more than a mission to make healthy eating simple and accessible. There was no storefront, no marketing budget just intention. Nine months later after starting the business Zach walked away from his Corporate job of almost 20 years to pursue it full-time at age 39.
Today, Lean Impact Nutrition is a full home-delivery meal prep service that serves across Duval, St. Johns, and Clay County and has won numerous awards including being the only meal prep company in Jacksonville to win Best Local Meal Prep Company by News4Jax 3 times. What began with one customer in a home kitchen now delivers thousands of customers over the years with close to 10 years in operation.
“This journey has been anything but ordinary,” Zach says. “But we are proof the American Dream is real if you work for it.”
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Growth like that doesn’t come without scar tissue. In Lean Impact Nutrition’s second year the business nearly collapsed entirely.
At the time, the team was renting kitchen space from a catering company on the weekends. What they didn’t know was that the caterer who’s kitchen they were renting from hadn’t paid rent in six months. One morning they showed up to find their key no longer worked and the space had been repossessed overnight. Everything they owned from equipment, product, supplies was locked inside and lost in a single day. The arrangement had been built on a handshake instead of a sublease and there was no legal recourse for Zach to get obtain any of his equipment.
“That was a hard lesson to learn and one I’ll never forget,” Zach says. “Never build your foundation on someone else’s stability.”
Then came COVID. At the time, Lean Impact Nutrition’s entire distribution model ran exclusively through thirteen gym locations across Northeast Florida as pickup locations. When the state shut every gym down that whole network disappeared overnight. Zach and his team had 24 hours to decide whether how the business would survive because they had orders for that weekend to prepare.
They pivoted immediately rebuilding the company into a full home-delivery operation with no blueprint and no cushion. That pivot didn’t just save the company. It reshaped what Lean Impact Nutrition would become. No longer dependent on gym pickup locations, the business emerged stronger, more stable, and able to serve far more people than ever before outside of the physical pickup location model.
“Those challenges were brutal in the moment,” Zach reflects, “but they forced us to grow up fast as a business. They taught us resilience, accountability, and the importance of having systems that can survive anything even the unexpected. As a business owner no one was prepared for the shutdown and a lot of businesses didn’t survive.”
Even in the middle of that fight for survival Zach and his team found a way to give back. As the pandemic pushed Clay County’s first responders to their limits Lean Impact Nutrition spearheaded an initiative to feed the frontlines. They donated 3,500 meals to Clay County first responders over the course of several months. It was a defining moment for the brand and proof that even while fighting to keep the lights on they never lost sight of the community they were built to serve. That year they were awarded Small Business of the Year by the Clay Chamber for their work in the community.
As you know, we’re big fans of Lean Impact Nutrition. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
At its core, Lean Impact Nutrition is still exactly what it started as: a grassroots, husband-and-wife business. Nearly ten years ago, it began with nothing but drive in a small kitchen with a genuine desire to help people eat better without overcomplicating their lives.
Today it’s a home-delivery meal prep service serving Duval, St. Johns, and Clay County, and a staple of the North Florida health and fitness community. Its reputation is built on high-protein, macro-balanced meals that actually taste good — food that keeps people consistent and supports their goals without ever feeling like bland, boring “diet” food.
“No gimmicks, no trendy diet fads just real food built from a performance driven mindset like Zach. “What sets us apart is that we live this lifestyle ourselves in and out of the kitchen. We’re still hands-onto this day cooking along side of our teams, we care about our customers, and we never cut corners when it comes to our customers goals. This brand was built from the ground up and we’ve made it our goal to protect that integrity every step of the way.”
What are your plans for the future?
That same drive to help people the same instinct that made Zach say yes to cooking for one friend back in 2017 didn’t stop with meal prep. It’s what led him and his wife to launch The Collective Kitchen, a passion project built to give aspiring food entrepreneurs the same shot they once took on themselves.
The Collective Kitchen exists to give home cooks, chefs, and food-business dreamers a licensed, professional culinary platform to actually build something great without the enormous upfront cost and risk of opening a commercial kitchen alone. It’s the resource Zach wishes had existed when Lean Impact Nutrition was still cooking meals out of a house with nothing but a Facebook post and a hope.
To date, The Collective Kitchen has helped 25 individuals get fully licensed and launch their very first food businesses in the state of Florida — 25 dreams turned into real, operating businesses. For Zach, that number is more meaningful than any award on the wall they have won.
“It’s been extremely rewarding to help guide these people into their dreams of owning their own food business. Most of the people we have helped are all first time business owners and just being a small part of their journey to watch them grow has been very rewarding.
Pricing:
- Meals start at just $11
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.leanimpactnutrition.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leanimpactnutrition/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LeanImpactNutrition/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@leanimpactnutrition7873/videos
- Yelp: https://www.youtube.com/@leanimpactnutrition7873/videos
- Other: https://thecollectivekitchen.co/
