In an ideal world, every meal people eat would be made with locally-sourced food. Cooking a fresh, delicious meal is often a time-consuming process. Enter Indie Plate. Founders and University alumni Peru Sharma and Ben Bartage started the company as an online farmer’s market and have expanded it to be a ready-made meal delivery service.
The idea for the company formed when Sharma’s family had trouble fitting cooking into their busy schedule after the birth of Sharma’s daughter, Darryn, and saw a need for a prepped meal delivery service in Baton Rouge. Chef Elton Hyndman, owner of Nino’s Italian Restaurant, had the solution. Together, Sharma, Bartage and Hyndman developed the foundation for Indie Plate in 2014.
Indie Plate currently offers meal plans on a weekly or monthly basis, with food for six to 12 servings. Dishes include a wide array of cuisines such as seared yellowfin tuna with Cajun succotash, pulled pork tacos, arroz con pollo with cushaw soup and rose veal piccata with caprese quinoa salad. Currently, Indie Plate is only offered in Baton Rouge but plans to expand statewide by September.
The difference between Indie Plate and other meal subscription services is the elimination of preparation work. Because the service chops and packages all ingredients by hand before delivery, all subscribers have to do is heat up the meals.
Indie Plate has plans to expand statewide with the help of a Kickstarter campaign they launched on June 26. They are currently raising funds to acquire machinery needed to expand.
“The plan is to go nationwide,” Bartage said. “Initially, we’ll ship within state lines, then move up to regional and national from there.”
As part of the first phase of the expansion, Indie Plate will ship meal kits statewide and will see the construction of a new kitchen, set to be completed within the next month. Indie Plate currently uses Nino’s kitchen to prep its ingredients.
In the second phase, Indie Plate will use funds acquired from the Kickstarter campaign to mechanize its preparatory process, which makes up about 70 percent of the company’s workload. Indie Plate will continue to source its food from their current Louisiana farmer partnerships.
The Kickstarter campaign will end on July 26.

Gallery • 15 Photos

Haskell Whittington III

Indie Plate workers begin to assemble dinners at their office on Monday July 10, 2017, at Celtic Studios.