Gary and his family have sold their fresh vegetables at farmers’ markets, in grocery stores statewide, to restaurants, and to the local food distributor, Farmer Foodshare.  It’s through Farmer Foodshare that Good Bowls(Equiti Foods)  and Weaver Street Market get cases of Wise’s fresh produce every week that we include in our Good Bowls. Weaver Street Market uses the produce to make its healthy prepared foods and for the hot bar.

At the beginning of 2024 Equiti Foods was included on a Human Foundation grant awarded to UNC’s Department of Health Policy and Management (HPM).  The grant funded a program called “Food and Friends: Healthy Meals Delivered to You”, and worked to address the problem of social isolation and loneliness, as well as food insecurity among older adults in the Triangle region.

Over the last two years we have developed recipes that are customized for various health conditions; we have meals that are kidney friendly, carb controlled, heart healthy, and high-calorie/high protein.  We are one of only a few meal providers in the Cape Fear region of the Healthy Opportunities Pilot that provide medically tailored meals so they have become quite popular over the last two years.  

On Monday, December 9th the Good Bowls founders and managers gave a Grand Rounds  presentation to the First Year Medical Students at the UNC School of Medicine and also “practiced what they preached” by serving a lunch based on the Mediterranean diet.  Company founder and nutrition professor Dr. Alice Ammerman presented alongside her husband, Dr. Tom Keyserling, a professor of medicine at UNC, and Kristin Bulpitt, the program director at Good Bowls for the Healthy Opportunities Pilot.

Innovate Carolina specializes in helping UNC faculty and students take their research or idea and turn it into a successful and sustainable business. Innovate Carolina prides itself on helping people translate their research and ideas into companies that can shape society and the economy for the better. Good Bowls are a perfect example of this in action. Alice’s career of research into the Mediterranean diet and her experience working in the field of public health inspired the creation of the product Good Bowls and the company Equiti Foods.

Kristin Bulpitt and Melissa Hegarty now head our kitchen dedicated to producing Medically Tailored Meals. We’ve created a variety of meals that meet a number of cultural preferences and dietary requirements including carb-controlled meals, low sodium meals, kidney friendly, and heart healthy. Some of the new recipes are Country Captain, Sweet Potato Hash, Meatballs and Mash, Blueberry Crumble Oats (breakfast meal), and many more.

On Nov. 17, 2023, Good Bowls founder and Director of UNC’s Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Dr. Alice Ammerman, hosted  UNC’s Thorp Faculty Engaged Scholars program.  Good Bowls focuses on nutrition, the local food system, and food insecurity.  So, for the fall semester program Alice scheduled time at CORA, the local food pantry, to participate in a food distribution and later took the group to one of Good Bowls’ production kitchens, 39 West, where Good Bowls produces many of the meals used for the Medicaid Healthy Opportunities Pilot (HOP).

During the pandemic, Good Bowls and Pittsboro Eats worked together on the Pay-It-Forward program, which similarly raised money for the meals and cooked them at local restaurants - helping local families and restaurants at the same time. Now that the pandemic is behind us, we’ve joined with the newly formed non-profit Chatham Alliance and the Pay-It-Forward program has grown up into Community Harvest. We’re still soliciting donations and now with Chatham Alliance we’re connected to more organizations & community partners - enabling us to reach even more neighbors in need of a healthy meal.

Community Harvest is the next generation of Pay-It-Forward. In addition to Pittsboro Eats, we’ve added the newly formed non-profit Chatham Alliance to the team. Now all campaign contributions are tax deductible and we’re connected to even more community partners in the region, meaning Community Harvest is not only more sustainable in the long term, but we can also reach even more neighbors in need.

Good Bowls has been bringing on a steady stream of HOP enrollees for the past year and the program continues to grow - so much so that we needed to partner with a new kitchen just to keep up with the demand.  Last week we cooked our first batch of Bowls with 39 West Catering in Pittsboro, NC.  Owner Greg Lewis and his team at 39 West Catering have been cooking up delicious creations for the people of Chatham County and the surrounding area for years, and are excited to join the HOP program to help provide nutritious meals for Medicaid recipients in the Cape Fear NC region.