MEDFORD – Ed Mangione has pursued a healthy lifestyle for quite some time now.
Although he’s a chef by trade, he’s been into staying healthy with gym workouts and CrossFit exercising as part of his regime.
With that healthier thinking in mind, he launched Grubr Eats, an all gluten-free, clean and healthy food home-delivery business, nearly three years ago in Medford,
Two years ago, he opened a physical store where customers get take-out or delivery service.
Mangione said his business is called Grubr Kitchen – which is on the sign atop the store and on the delivery vans – with Grubr Eats basically referring to the online ordering area of the business.
“We started in the current location two years ago as a retail business, but for one year before that we were doing a delivery service so I was using a commissary kitchen, a shared kitchen, we started in,” said Mangione, a 1988 Shawnee High School graduate. “I had my slotted time where I would be cooking. We started off doing home deliveries twice a week.
“We’re centered around being gluten-free as well as clean. We cook our food with clean ingredients. No soy, no processed sugars, all of our seafood’s wild caught, all of our meats are antibiotic-free. Our main thing is being gluten-free along with being clean. All cold-pressed California olive oil, no processed oils, nothing.”
He said many of his fellow CrossFit folks, including his son and daughter, are into food prep and eating healthy.
“The gluten-free comes from my wife,” he said. “My wife is completely gluten-free so we went in that direction.”
Mangione has spent plenty of time in the kitchen over the years. He comes from an entrepreneurial family and he’d often help create dishes.
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The father of three was a restaurant owner for years in South Jersey. In the mid-1990s, he and his mother, who is now deceased, owned a restaurant called Mrs. London’s in Marlton. He also previously owned Izzie’s Eatery in Medford for about 15 years.
He then worked for five years as the East Coast representative for a family-owned olive oil and tomato cannery company based in California.
The Medford lifer decided to jump back into the food service industry and his hometown seemed like the natural place to do it.
“Our home-delivery service is fantastic,” he said. “The retail walk-in trade is fantastic. There’s a lot of people today that are changing the way they eat, whether it’s going gluten-free, whether it’s trying to eat clean. They just want to eat better.”
Recently a sampling of some of the items listed on the online menu were a power bowl, which included organic oats, chia seeds, coconut milk, cocoa nibs, organic yogurt and organic berries; vegan chili; wings; boneless chicken thighs; Cobb salad; pork tenderloin; eggplant Parmesan; ground turkey stuffed pepper; wild salmon; beef and broccoli; short rib risotto; cauliflower falafel; spaghetti squash; roasted potatoes; yam mash; sesame rice and more.
Prices ranged from $5 for a brownie, to $6.50 for vegan chili, to $14 for eggplant parmesan to $10 for the spaghetti squash to $22 for the bulk selection of turkey ragu, flank steak or chicken breast.
The store, located at 13 Jackson Road in Medford, is open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. Home delivery service is offered Wednesdays and Sundays. He said the store menu changes daily and the home delivery menu online changes on a weekly basis.
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The prepared meals come in containers that can be heated up at home in the microwave or taken out of the containers and heated in the oven.
He said all the meals are also weighed and portioned. They also do vegan and vegetarian meals as well.
“You get people that come in the door, they’ll buy one meal for the night and they’ll buy 10 meals for the week so it’s pretty interesting,” he said.
While they do a gluten-free pizza which does use cheese, he said they are pretty much dairy-free.
“We also have a full-time baker that bakes obviously completely gluten-free as well,” he said. “We’re pretty much a one-stop shop if you’re trying to eat gluten-free, if you’re trying to eat clean, if you’re trying to eat healthy.”
Asked if there has been thought to expanding so customers would be able to eat in at more of a sit-down restaurant, he said perhaps one day.
“The possibility is there,” he said. “We’ve been here two years. We have a ton of customers. It’s possible that we may expand to either another location or a little bit of a sit-down café.”
Celeste E. Whittaker is a metro reporter for the Courier Post. The South Jersey native has worked at the Courier Post since 1998 and has covered the Philadelphia 76ers, college sports and girls high school sports. She now covers human interest stories and other news throughout Burlington County. If you have a news tip, call her at 856.486.2437 or email at cwhittaker@gannettnj.com. Follow her on Twitter at @cp_CWhittaker.
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If you go
Grubr Kitchen
13 Jackson Road, Medford. The store hours are Monday through Friday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. You can also order online at grubeats.com, but that’s mainly for the delivery service. The minimum order for home delivery is $36. 609-714-7119
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