nothin Healthful Eating Gets Jarring | New Haven Independent

Healthful Eating Gets Jarring

Markeshia Ricks Photo

Mason Jar Exchange’s Marissa Vaspasiano at CitySeed Kitchen.

The Mason Jar Exchange

Marissa Vaspasiano wants to make it easier for you and your family to enjoy healthful fresh meals. Her secret weapon? A mason jar.

Vaspasiano owns a meal prep and delivery service called The Mason Jar Exchange. She started the business after her co-workers at Sensitive Care in Milford saw her bringing her lunch of yummy looking soups and salads in the classic containers best known for their use in canning and preservation.

I was doing mason jar meal prep for myself,” she said during a recent sit-down at the CitySeed Kitchen on New Haven’s Grand Avenue, where she preps food for her clients. The girls all started inquiring about it and wanting me to do it for them.”

She said the mason jars allow for food like salad greens and other fresh veggies, which can go soggy after a few hours or a day in a typical storage container, to stay crisp and snappy longer.

I put together a lot of salads and soups and an array of meals and they stay fresh for a good week,” she said. It really keeps it crisp and fresh, and it’s so convenient to grab and go.”

The Mason Jar Exchange grew out of Vaspasiano providing the service for her co-workers, who in turn started telling people outside the office about their meals and where they were getting them.

All of that started last September. Now, she fills about 60 orders a week. And she’s shopping for food, cooking and filling mason jars when she’s not at her day job, and after her son goes to bed.

How does she balance it all?

Very carefully,” she said with a chuckle.

The 34-year-old Vaspasiano lives with her husband and son in New Haven’s Annex neighborhood. Her husband helps her make deliveries. She’s also getting encouragement and business tips from the Collab and the Women’s Business Development Council. She credited a Level Up” class with Collab for connecting her with other side-hustlers” who are building small businesses while working full time. It’s also through those connections that she got hooked up with the CitySeed Kitchen.

Collab’s Margaret Lee said Vaspasiano came in for help at the point where there was huge demand for her meals among friends and coworkers” and her business was bursting at the seams of her kitchen.”

It was clear there was something to her idea and her drive was so evident,” Lee recalled in an email. We worked with her to outline some next steps and provided connections to organizations like the Women’s Business Development Council.”

Those connections are paying off, Vaspasiano said.

It’s been a challenge, but all the positivity helps me keep going,” she said. I was at the point of getting really tired, but it was uplifting to be in a room full of people on the same journey of working full time and pursuing their dream as well.”

With her business catching on so quickly, Vaspasiano needed space to cook her meals and pack her jars. She creates a menu of a couple of soups, a build-your-own salad option along with a chicken caesar salad, and one entree. People place their order for the coming week by Friday; their food is delivered in mason jars by Sunday. She’s hoping to offer delivery options that include deliveries on Monday and direct to offices too.

The prices range from $7 for personal sizes to $13 for larger jars. The ingredients are mostly organic and locally sourced. The food comes in a mason jar. When you finish your food and place another order, you hand over your empty jars, and Vaspasiano gives you a set with more food. That contributes to the environment-friendly nature of her business, she said.

Every week I design a new menu,” she said. It’s limited for now because I’m working full time and I have a limited amount of time. The menu changes … but a couple of things repeat because customers like it. I’d love to expand it to do more family-style meals and a bigger selection of options.”

The Old Lyme native, who moved to the Elm City in 2002, said she also would like to grow her business to the point where she has her own kitchen possibly even a food truck. But for right now, she’s happy to have access to a kitchen at CitySeed.

I’d like to have people work for me, maybe family and friends, anybody with a passion for cooking,” she said. I would love to grow to be something more.”

Vaspasiano has been able to grow her business on the strength of word of mouth. She’s already looking at how she might scale up as she launches a website and starts advertising her business at the city’s farmers markets. She said putting herself out there is a little scary but also exciting.

It’s been great just to get into a workspace more conducive to doing this,” she said. The space has been great.”

For more information on The Mason Jar Exchange, click on this Facebook page.

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