Show Notes
In this episode of The Localist, host Carrie Rollwagen chats with Paul Shunnarah, co-owner of Fit Five Meals and Gauntlet Fitness, about how a simple gym-based solution to healthy eating turned into a fast-growing meal prep business. Paul shares the origin story of Fit Five, which began with a handful of homemade meals for gym clients and quickly evolved into a fully-fledged brand known for its transparency, convenience and macro-friendly meals. The name “Fit Five” was born on Cinco de Mayo and reflects both the brand’s clean ingredient values and original five-meal, five-sauce model.
Throughout the conversation, Paul opens up about the business decisions that have helped Fit Five grow — such as avoiding subscriptions, testing meals at their worst shelf-life and being transparent with pricing. He also discusses the logistics of operating a meal delivery business, the challenges of scaling in a mostly uncharted industry and how building a reliable team has allowed him to balance multiple ventures while prioritizing his family. Whether you’re interested in entrepreneurship, food logistics or health-conscious living, this episode offers practical insights and a genuine behind-the-scenes look at how Fit Five became a trusted name in regional meal prep.
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Episode Transcript
Carrie
On this episode of the localist, I’m talking with Paul Shunnarah. So Paul is co owner of both fit five meals and gauntlet fitness, and we’ll talk a little bit about how those two things fit together. Fit five is a meal prep program that is really helpful for people who are looking for healthy meals, who are maybe very into fitness and have certain macro requirements and calorie requirements, and just for people who are very busy. I use fit five myself, my husband and I have been using them for a long time, maybe even years, and I’m a huge fan, as you will find out in this episode. So I fan girl about these meals a lot on this episode, but it really is genuine. I really do love the meals. I also love this conversation. Paul gets into so many things that are important for business owners. He talks about his journey all the way from starting gauntlet and really even before that, to how fit five started, how it grew, and where it is now, which is a subscription service. It is also just like a weekly ordering service. They also have Grab and Go meals. They have so much going on, and you’ll find out about all of it today. I really love this conversation, and I hope you do too. So welcome to the podcast. First of all, I guess just tell us a little bit about how fit five got started. And I’m sure you’ve told this story a million times.
Paul Shunnarah
Yeah, but I love telling it, so
Carrie
yeah, just for people who aren’t familiar,
Paul Shunnarah
okay,
Carrie
why? Why start a meal prep service? It frankly sounds really hard,
Paul Shunnarah
yeah, yeah. It’s a little bit easier than the restaurant business, which is what made me fall in love with it. Yeah. So back in 2017 I own a gym in town called gauntlet fitness. It’s in homewood. It’s a kickboxing boutique studio, and all my clients at the gym showing up to the workout was the easy part. It was the eating that I always saw people struggled with. So we all found this local chef that worked out of a restaurant downtown at five points that would make your meals for you, and she’d bring them to the gym. She’d put them in the cooler for you. They’re wrapped in a brown paper bag, literally look like lunch box food, and I noticed, after a couple months that less and less people were ordering the meals. So just being a trainer at the class, I’d asked them what was going on with why they weren’t ordering. I know what it was for me, and I just wanted to hear their feedback and price, variety, convenience. So she was about at the time, which you know this with inflation, saw change, but at the time, she was 15, $16 a meal, right? And then they were very
Carrie
Which now seems good.
Paul Shunnarah
which now would be incredible, right? They were chef curated, which is awesome, but misses the macro piece — carbs, fat, protein. It misses the substitutions of like, Greek yogurt over butter and so forth. So I noticed that my meals were very light in calorie, and I think other people’s did as well. And then she would bring you the meals every day, which was super tough,
Carrie
yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
So like, you had to come to Gauntlet every single day get your meals for every single day you’d have to, she would bring em like eight, nine o’clock, which means you miss breakfast,
Carrie
right,
Paul Shunnarah
right, and then, depending on your work schedule, it just wasn’t very convenient for you to pick them up. So I go back to work. I own a company called overtime grilling bar. I sold it in 2019 So overtime was a restaurant that I built when I was 25 years old. Don’t get into the bar business that early on unless you really know what you’re doing. So I own this restaurant, and one of my employees had always said to me, you know, I’d love to make more money. If there’s ever any other opportunity you as a small business owner, if you can think of anything, let me know, so
Carrie
I can love when people do that. Yeah, instead of just saying, pay me more for my same job.
Paul Shunnarah
Pay me more because I’m worth it.
Carrie
You can’t Always do. It’s so nice when somebody’s like, what else can I do because as a business owner, I’m way more likely to be able to find that than just find money
Paul Shunnarah
hanging in if it was there you’d already, yeah. And that my three best employees are exactly that. They’re the ones that have come and said, What can I do to make more money? Or how can I earn this position, versus the one that just says, I’m struggling, right? I need you to pay me more. Yeah. So, yeah. So he came to me. I said, well, listen, there’s this thing going on at gauntlet where we all are buying these meals. And here’s what I’ve seen that hasn’t worked for them and my clients. What if we got up here early in the morning, we started making meals for clients at gauntlet. That’s our easy end. So that’s what we started doing, very quickly. The My business partner at the gym, David cherub, calls me and says, Hey, Paul, you know, can you bring more meals down here? They’re gone.
Carrie
Yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
And I was like, but how we only made, like, 50, and you haven’t had 50 people in there? And he says, Well, no, the people are buying five to seven meals. They’re getting the whole week’s worth. So I picked up very quickly on the idea of meal prepping.
Carrie
Mm.
Paul Shunnarah
Okay, they want the full week’s worth of meals.
Carrie
Yeah,
Paul Shunnarah
so we saw already that there was, like, a need for it. I started posting it on Snapchat, like us cooking the meals and so forth. That’s how much time has changed with Snapchat at the time and and I was getting a lot of feedback. So as a small business owner, you know, if I post today about something, if I get one or two likes comments or something on my story, you know, I’m like, okay, but if I get multiples, I’m like, whatever I’m talking about in that was very interesting to a lot of people. And so when I brought up meal prep in my social media channels, I noticed that I was getting a lot of family and friends like, hey, yeah, I use big names like, hello fresh and others that make my food for me or prepare it and and so, like, I’m very interested, if you end up doing this, that’s what made me just go instantly. So we started cooking meals for the people at the gym, and then we decided to transition our restaurant to having them there as well. So we emptied one of the beer coolers, like the bottom half of it. So the beers that weren’t selling beer at the time, when I had overtime, people changed which beer they drank, by the way, there was no loyalty,
Carrie
yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
So when I was growing up, you know, a guy that drank Bud Light and smoked a cigarette, that’s what he did at the bar every single day,
Carrie
yeah?
Paul Shunnarah
And it got to where, like, I think Fat Tire got popular for two or three weeks, and then good people’s IPA came out, and that took over. So we just took this section of the cooler and said, We’re no longer doing the trends. We got rid of the beer that was in it. We minimized it. We started packaging the meals, leave them there. We printed on the table little black and white menu that was one through five. We called them overtimes healthy meals. Yeah. We announced it on Facebook, that you can now come there pick up your healthy meals for the week. And at 1055 we opened at 11. At 1055, the day after the first post, there was a lady sitting out front of overtime, and we, I walked out there, said, the girls already going, What can I get you? Yeah. And she was like, I’m actually here for the healthy meals. So we, like, three of us, like, at the counter, like, oh my god, you know, like, this is great. So we, like, all stood in front of her with the, you know, with the menu. Was like, which one you like, yeah, she got same thing. She grabs seven meals. She has a cooler bag with her, and she says, I’m taking these on the road. I’m trying to eat better, but I travel for work,
Carrie
yeah?
Paul Shunnarah
Like, oh my gosh. I’m going from fitness advocates at the gym to here. Was just a busy working woman who traveled for work, who was like, Yeah, I’m very interested in these meals. So I could, like, very quickly catch on that the need.
Carrie
I literally did that two weeks ago, by the way. I took a trip, and it was just like me, and I just got, like, I I knew it was coming, so I over ordered on fit five.
Carrie
Good for you,
Carrie
yeah? So anyway, yeah, that’s it.
Paul Shunnarah
That’s the key to is
Carrie
I keep interrupting. But I really am a big fan. I’m not just telling you that because you’re here,
Paul Shunnarah
I appreciate it, yeah. So, yeah, you’ll have to tell me how you found out about it, too. So So I so we had this lady, she buys meals. We’re like, wow, this is, this is just really a thing. So I started asking some friends, trainers from the gym, like, if they can come and help us. So we’d meet Sunday morning at 4am when the restaurant wasn’t open, obviously. And we’d start cooking. We’d move the tables together up front, and we literally created like a factory line, like, Okay, you are on one side. On the other, I’m rice, you’re chicken,
Carrie
yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
And I would go down the line and plate these meals, and we would weigh every single ingredient to guarantee that if we said it had 40 grams of protein, we did, in fact, put you this many ounces of chicken, yeah. And so that quickly became 10, 15% of our business was our regulars coming in, eating lunch, and then being like, grab me and my wife, the number three and the number four. So originally, there was only five items on the menu, part of what the name came from. So started growing. I decided to make it a thing. Make it a company. The name fit five comes from it was Cinco de Mayo when we decided that we were going to do this. It was five five. Me and my cousins are sitting around, and we were all jabbering about the name, and one of my cousins came up with fit five because it was fitness related. And we all landed on the idea of not just the fitness aspect of it, but fit five fits into your busy schedule. It fits into your life, it fits into your diet, it fits into your macros, it fits into your budget. So we all love the word fit in there. And then the five came from that we decided we were only gonna have five meals with five sauces.
Carrie
Yeah,
Paul Shunnarah
we’re over now but at the time, you know, that’s what we thought. So we ended up making it the five principles of fit five so like no subscriptions, no minimums, no added sugars, no added coloring and no added junk to anything. So we keep our recipes as clean as we can.
Carrie
Awesome
Paul Shunnarah
Yeah,
Carrie
nice way to pivot the name too like and as I mean, you know this, but it’s so smart to start with a limited number or a limited amount?
Paul Shunnarah
Yes,
Carrie
I feel like most people are just like, let’s add all this variety. And of course, when you open it up to customers, customers are full of ideas,
Paul Shunnarah
the best ones usually sitting on the other side.
Carrie
So just having it limited and making that work before you expand it, I think is so smart too.
Paul Shunnarah
Thank you. Yeah, and I would that would Be my like, ultimate tip of like, being able to pivot and pivot fast. And ultimately, when it comes to like, the idea, I think a lot of people take too long trying to perfect what they want to do, and years go by and they never get going. And I think you just, you got to work quick, yeah, and move with it. So, so that’s the name it was. It was Cinco de Mayo, five five we came up with the idea of the five menus and so forth, five sauces. So everything was going to be around the number five, under 500 calories, which is very common for a consumer to think of when they’re eating.
Carrie
Yeah,
Paul Shunnarah
we were doing this like prior to, I think the FDA announcing that, like any restaurant over 10 or 12 locations had to add calories in the website. You didn’t actually have to have your nutrition facts. So that was, like, a big deal that you could get that listed on the meal. So I get a phone call one day from a guy that went to Homewood, Brock Warren to Brock owned Elite Nutrition. Brock calls me up and says, Hey, I’m following what you’re doing on social media. I don’t think you realize, like, how big this can be,
Carrie
yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
And I’m like, Well, you know, it’s just kind of something that we’re doing out of my restaurant. And he’s like, listen, we need to sit down. We need to talk. Make me some meals. I’ll Come and try. Brock is awesome, because he loves to give real feedback. So he comes in, he tastes testism, and he says, This is what you need to do. This didn’t taste that great. This one needs more, this, whatever. So he and I started working together, making these, like better menus and so forth. And he asked if he could buy some meals to start having at his restaurant, excuse me, at his nutrition store. So he started getting two 250 meals a week for his three locations. That quickly became 1000 a week for each location,
Carrie
yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
So very quickly, we became a company. We partnered up. We moved into the Hoover Elite Nutrition. So Hoover Elite Nutrition, when you walk into the front of the store, we have smoothies, supplements fit five meals, has coolers all across the wall, and then there’s a little hallway door that leads to the back, which was at the time, he just had it for storage,
Carrie
yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
We turned that into a kitchen. Okay? Not easy. Not big enough, right? I didn’t think big. I just really didn’t think this was that grand. And so it was like 1000 square feet. Our walk-in cooler was at a five foot door and was probably six foot, yeah, wide. We now have like four walk-in coolers that are 20 feet, each. So we eventually, as it grew, we knocked down the walls that were in the back of the warehouse, and continued until now. We’re 9000 square feet based out of Hoover. We have trucks that deliver all across the state of Alabama. We just launched Atlanta, so we’ll be making our way we do Columbus, Georgia. So we’ll be making our way through Atlanta, coming back through Anniston, Oxford and back into Birmingham. We already do North Alabama, Tuscaloosa, south, down in montgomery. So our growth now is hoping to get into Nashville, Chattanooga and Atlanta. There still seems to be an area of opportunity for us there,
Carrie
yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
And then we, of course, ship regionally, you know, through states. Nothing like getting it fresh.
Carrie
Yeah, I think that shipping is cool, though. One of the things I like about the getting it because we get it delivered now, we used to pick up from wheel house,
Paul Shunnarah
yeah?
Carrie
And then it is right on the this is the level of convenience I’m looking for. At first we went to wheelhouse, and then that became inconvenient, yeah, it’s so close to infomedia, which is where we are, but it takes so many turns, and then it’s traffic. And I was, I was always just like, I just still don’t want to pick them up. So when
Paul Shunnarah
it’s a gym where people are working out, and you’re walking in and you’re dressed like,
Carrie
yeah, exactly. So the and I love that. It’s also just less packaging that way. I we’ve tried all the Hello Fresh, and all the all the things, but, and I mean, when you ship, you have to package, but I’d really like the truck, because it seems like you guys use pretty minimal packaging,
Paul Shunnarah
minimal packaging. And the issue with shipping that we’ve learned is the barriers that have to go in, so you’re relying on somebody else to get it to you. UPS being and there’s so many variables that come in, how hot their truck is, how long it stayed in a truck before it got moved. So they don’t refrigerate it, so you have to use dry ice or gel packs. Gel packs make everything sweaty in the box. Dry Ice keeps it cold, but sometimes could almost make it freezing,
Carrie
yeah,
Paul Shunnarah
you know? So then you get your meals. If they if they get in a truck tonight and they deliver tomorrow morning, They are frozen. and, but we guarantee fresh. So there’s so many variables to it, you know, if you love us and you and you want it shipped, that’s our option. Shipping food. If you’ve done it before, you’re familiar with how it comes, you know, the box, the packaging and everything, can’t be as nice as when you just get it handed,
Carrie
right? Yeah. So I do. That’s one of the things I really like about it. Another thing you mentioned, you know, the seasoning and things. Another thing, another service we’d tried. It was good, but it just was, like, it was like, meal prep, like, if we’d done it ourselves,
Paul Shunnarah
okay?
Carrie
And so then eventually, after three or four weeks, you’re like, I’m tired of eating this chicken that’s seasoned the same way. And the broccoli that’s seasoned the same way. And I do think you guys have a huge variety of different like, it’s still chicken, not always,
Paul Shunnarah
but it’s ways to do it.
Carrie
Yeah, yeah, I could eat chicken three or four times a week from you guys, and it doesn’t seem like I had the same meal.
Paul Shunnarah
Awesome. Good feedback, yeah.
Carrie
And I think that probably comes from you guys testing so much like knowing, okay, the chef is maybe a step too far,
Paul Shunnarah
yes,
Carrie
but let’s also have people actually test the restaurant, testing in the restaurant, testing with your business partner from elite, and also soliciting feedback and being open to it. It sounds like you are and
Paul Shunnarah
yeah, we send out polls every Yeah, probably every three, four months. Brock and I are super hands on, on, What did you like? What did you not like about it? That’s a great perspective. What you said about as far as it being not chicken every time. So one of our goals is to create meals that you already crave better for you healthy.
Carrie
Yeah,
Paul Shunnarah
right. So there’s a hamburger steak on the menu, yeah? When you think hamburger steak, you think meat in three butters, you know, cooked in bacon. We found a, like, leaner, cleaner way of doing a meal like that with mashed potatoes, yeah. And that’s, like, one of our number one sellers.
Carrie
Like, I almost always, this is basically an episode about what I think, but usually I’ll find some kind of pasta. And I always have that on Mondays, because Mondays are just a long day. And I always know, like, oh, I have this, but it’s still, like, you know, the macros or the calories that I’m looking for, or macaroni and cheese or something like that. Like, I guess that’s also pasta, but yeah, yeah, you guys have a huge variety of that, which I think people can see on the website. You don’t have to be logged in to see that, right?
Paul Shunnarah
Yeah, the website’s available to you. That’s another thing that we that we did, was a ton of meal prep companies make email, telephone number, zip code, before you can even see the menu and pricing.
Carrie
Yeah,
Paul Shunnarah
it’s just such a barrier of entry, just unnecessary. Like, I just want to know what you cook,
Carrie
yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
And so we tried to make it like, right there. This is, it is what it is,
Carrie
and your ordering doesn’t have a huge lead time. I don’t feel like, like, it’s like, maybe a week ish before,
Paul Shunnarah
yeah, so you can order as late as today’s Wednesday, so you can actually order by tonight at midnight. Yeah, for Monday, if you home delivery, we do Saturday, Sunday and Monday home deliver, so you can get it as early as Saturday. So, yeah, it’s we, we put a lot of pressure and stress on our team.
Carrie
Yeah, it seems like it. I mean, I get why people have, like, it’s, it’s nice for me as a client, because all my schedule will change for a couple weeks, and that’s easy to be like, Oh, I can still change. I mean, I can order my meals according to, am I going to be in town? Is Russell going to be in town, whatever?
Paul Shunnarah
Yeah.
Carrie
But when I’m ordering like, three and four weeks ahead of time, it’s hard to,
Paul Shunnarah
that’s tough
Carrie
predict,
Paul Shunnarah
yeah,
Carrie
but yeah, there’s a reason people do that, because it’s easier for you
Paul Shunnarah
Yeah, and you could cancel it as well. Where subscriptions, like, if you are subscribed, the cancelation still means you get the next order.
Carrie
Exactly. Well, also, I think a lot of the things, if I don’t go in and choose my meals, I just get random meals. And you guys don’t do that either.
Paul Shunnarah
No, no, yeah,
Carrie
which is, so if we’re out of town for a week, we just skip, and I don’t know, it’s very it’s very good, yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
Well, that’s awesome, yeah.
Carrie
But how, I mean, did you do all of that just because you were looking at it mostly from the consumer side, from the beginning, or did you try another way to do it, like, how did you come to we’re gonna do this the hard way, the good way for the customer. But
Paul Shunnarah
we saw it as an opportunity that it was. We taste tested every meal prep company. To this day. We still order every meal prep company and have them ship to fit five. And we go through and we’re like, oh, wow, this trend of carnitas is blowing up in the health scene. Let’s do something like this, right? But what we like? So we had a meal prep company that shipped us some meals, and then the packaging got there, and it was hot, right? And so we reached out, and they were like, no problem at all. You got a brand new box coming in the mail in the next few days, we get so it was all free of charge,
Carrie
yeah?
Paul Shunnarah
From a business owner…. from a consumer, Awesome,
Carrie
yeah,
Paul Shunnarah
Business owner doesn’t work, right? Like you’re refunding because of that. So we saw that, like their subscription model and their minimum model can kill you at times. I think the subscription world has its place, but so many people are tired of it,
Carrie
yeah?
Paul Shunnarah
And tired of these monthly charges that they don’t want to have to do that. And we saw that some of these meal prep companies that was like, your only option was to subscribe as far as the meals go. And like, why we do them the way we do them? Brock and I, we look over every meal so the team’s not allowed to put out anything unless we taste tested it. And they also have to sit for seven to 10 days before we try them. So we try them at its worst, yeah, to see if they can make it at its best. That’s awesome if something doesn’t taste good. So we do this every Tuesday. So the cook and the chefs work a week in advance, so they’ve made all the meals. We taste tested them yesterday, and then we say, Great, this one made it. This one’s now on the menu. And then we go towards the nutritionist of getting all the macros and Stuff for it.
Carrie
Yeah, if it doesn’t make it, did they have a chance? Are they? Did they change things and present it again?
Paul Shunnarah
So we have a cookie dough, protein cookie dough coming out that we’ve taste tested five times. too sweet the first time, too unsweet the last time. We’ve now nailed it in the middle.
Carrie
Yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
So there, there’s that, and then there’s the you got the logistics of things. Can you get the item or the ingredient that goes in this menu?
Carrie
Yeah, which that is hugely changing all the time,
Paul Shunnarah
yeah, and it’s gotten, yeah, yeah. It’s gotten really tough.
Carrie
So how do you approach that? Do you substitute it? Do you substitute it and call it something different? Or do you let people know like?
Paul Shunnarah
So we, yeah, so no option, we can immediately shut something off the menu, if there’s no like, if we if we say it’s chicken breast, and we can’t get chicken breast that week, it’s not on the menu. But what, I think, what works for us the best is, you know that when you get on that website, it’s something new every week. So you don’t know that we may have behind the scenes changed our mind, on a meal, right? So I don’t think the consumer ever really sees that part.
Carrie
Yeah, I think that’s true
Paul Shunnarah
as much as we do, but yeah, behind the scenes, our team is on the phone with vendors all day. Yeah, hey, how much lettuce do you have this week? Are we able to put this on the menu? But I think we’ve got a good working relationship with all of our vendors where we’re able to make it work.
Carrie
You’ve also changed the price. Like, we’ve gotten an alert that a meal is cheaper,
Paul Shunnarah
yeah, we did that two or three weeks ago
Carrie
Which is amazing. Like, I didn’t even notice because I’m, I mean, I noticed the total, but I don’t notice
Paul Shunnarah
the individuals, yeah,
Carrie
but I feel like that’s great as a company, especially right now, to be able to just say, like, Hey, we got a price break on this, so we’re passing it on to you.
Paul Shunnarah
Yes, transparency
Carrie
You Just never see that.
Paul Shunnarah
No, I think, I think I’ve seen the best results from just being transparent with people. People just want to know the truth.
Carrie
Yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
I think when people feel lied to is when they’re really bothered by it. So we, yeah, so we came down on some things. So chicken got crazy high in March and April, five, 550, a pound for the fresh chicken, all natural chicken that we get. And so that yields to a chicken meal, going from 1299 to 1499 Yeah, just like that.
Carrie
Yeah,
Paul Shunnarah
right now it’s steak. Beef set an all time high, if you’ve seen the news on that, steak is like 11 to $15 a pound wholesale.
Carrie
Yeah, wow.
Paul Shunnarah
So there’s, I think there’s one steak item on next week’s menu, because who’s gonna pay $20 for a steak meal? Yeah, when it’s refrigerated?
Carrie
Yeah?
Paul Shunnarah
You know, yeah. So go out to dinner. Different story.
Carrie
Yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
So, yeah, I think transparency was just the best thing that we can always do. So anytime, like, we’ve sent out a product that we weren’t thrilled with,
Carrie
yeah,
Paul Shunnarah
that we wanted to take back. We’ve just, we sit over and we all talking about it, and we’re like, let’s just be honest, if we tell this person, hey, listen, we sent out a meal that the we put the wrong sauce in it,
Carrie
right? Yeah,
Paul Shunnarah
we just sent you a gift card. That meal is completely free if you want it ,enjoy it. if it’s not what you expected, hand it off to somebody else, yeah, but we’re still paying you back for it.
Carrie
Well, I think also just having somebody you’re trusting with making your food, be transparent, uh, really helps, because it is kind of like, you know, you are putting a lot of faith in a company to say, I’m literally eating this. And also so many people are trusting you for the nutrition, yes, you know, like, I think big benefits of using it, yeah, and being transparent about those things, I think translates to like, Okay, I trust this company. So I trust that the calories are, the are what they say they are, the macros or what they say they are,
Paul Shunnarah
yeah, building a brand with trust, I think it has a lot of values.
Carrie
Yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
I think it’s why you see like Chipotle and a lot of these restaurants now are converting to like you see in the kitchen, yeah, you know they want you to know. Like, hey, that’s really what, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I love that you noticed that that’s that means a lot, and that I’ll definitely have our team know that. Yeah, everything you’re telling me today about what you’d like most about it, yeah.
Carrie
I also like, I mean, while, while we’re on the subject, I feel like there is a good variety of num of calories in the meals. So my husband and I have really different needs. As far as calories, I am mostly podcasting or sitting behind a desk, he’s mostly fighting people in a jiu jitsu gym. So your needs are different, and we have had a lot of issues in the past not being able to find something that’s low calorie enough to make sense for me, but also options that are high calorie enough that he because he was literally eating like two meals before, when we were having to get other services, or I would have to eat half of a meal. And that’s one thing I do. Think that the variety that you guys have created, like can lend. We can both. I can find things for both of us.
Paul Shunnarah
A household. Can see his needs, okay, that’s good to know. So we saw that just from the numbers of like, when we had lower caloric meals on the menu. So it was probably the most requested thing our company’s ever gotten, is lower calorie items. But then when we provided it, they were also were the least sales, I think,
Carrie
well, they’re not, like, ridiculously low calorie, but there are enough things that, if you’re like, I work out, but not like, heavy, you know? so I feel like, if you’re having just kind of a normal calorie need, you still have things that are like, it seems like 350 400 calories. And a lot of services don’t like they start at 500 there’s no Yeah, so you couldn’t, it would be hard to eat two of those a day and a big breakfast. And yeah. So I feel like there is always, there are always things that are. There’s this one that I even make. I make a joke of here because it looks so plain I never want to eat. It’s like, chicken, a sweet potato and carrots. And I don’t like carrots, so then I’m always like, but then every time I eat it, I’m like, because of the seasoning. This is really good,
Paul Shunnarah
yeah, yeah.
Carrie
So even the things that are, you know, lower calorie, kind of plain, like, once you eat it, you’re like, Oh, good.
Paul Shunnarah
That wasn’t that bad, yeah, yeah. Sauce, to me, is the kicker.
Carrie
Yeah, the sauces are really good, too. And now you guys are pretty transparent about, I mean, I think the sauce is not included in the meal, but all the sauces, there’s like a sauce glossary or something, yeah,
Paul Shunnarah
we get, we get that question a lot, why is the sauce not included? And the reason being is because everybody, the whole brand,
Carrie
not everybody eats the sauce.
Paul Shunnarah
fits into everybody’s diet, yeah? So, like you said, your husband eats one way you eat another. So we’re, we’re, we’re trying to reach everybody without, yeah, losing who we are.
Carrie
I think that’s exactly again, like, Russell doesn’t like creamy sauces, so the fact that you have them on the side and they’re not in there, I love them.
Paul Shunnarah
Yeah, he could take it in, right? Yeah.
Carrie
I just think it does seem like you’ve approached this. It seems like is this correct? Like your, your main groups are fitness and then busy people,
Paul Shunnarah
busy people, yeah,
Carrie
and I it seems to, like, actually speak to both. And I don’t think a lot of services do,
Paul Shunnarah
right? Yeah, yeah, one is one or the other,
Carrie
yeah,
Paul Shunnarah
yeah, yeah. And I think that comes from Brock and I’s background, and then I think it comes from what we’ve seen from the data, which is most people just want the convenience of it. the healthy side of it is more make what I love better for me.
Carrie
Yeah,
Paul Shunnarah
I got that from the restaurant that I owned over time, we had some killer pastas on the menu. So I knew we wanted to incorporate pastas at Fit Five but I saw the way we did it, I was like. So guy takes a skillet, takes liquid margarine, yeah, throws it on the skillet to make sure that it doesn’t burn. Yeah, right. Did he weigh it? No. Yeah, right. Did we buy grass fed butter? Absolutely not. It’s a bar, you know. So we threw all this down, yeah. And then he would literally go and take a bowl and scoop out the cold pasta, and he’d put it in the pan. Did you get five ounces? Or did you get eight? It varied by his hand that day,
Carrie
exactly. Yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
And then seasoning, butters, heavy cream and everything in our our Alfredo sauce, over time, it was just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, from a squirt bottle.
Carrie
Yeah?
Paul Shunnarah
We layer with a ladle, three to four ounces of whatever sauce it is on,
Carrie
okay, yeah, yeah,
Paul Shunnarah
okay. And then we toss it, yeah. So when we say this meal has 400 calories, it has 400 calories because, unlike at a restaurant, it’s they portion it, but it’s not they don’t have to care about it being exact, because they’re not serving it to you at the table and saying, by the way, honey, this is 400 calories.
Carrie
Yeah, exactly.
Paul Shunnarah
So, yeah. So I think that’s the difference maker. And then Brock and I are totally opposite sizes. Brock is six, seven. I’m five six,
Carrie
yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
I know you can’t tell from the chair. And so we, we he knows what fills him up, and I know what fills me up. So we have that like line in between. Like he can eat more than I can. And so that’s, I think, where we find a happy medium on the calories of where something what looks good in a container,
Carrie
yeah. Okay, so I kind of sidetracked us on my own preferences. But we, like we, we kind of mentioned I used to pick up at wheelhouse, yeah. And then you guys started delivering. How did you make the transition to deciding we’re going to deliver? Because, again, it seems easier to say, because you were, I think we, you were elite, and then you went to other gyms too, right?
Paul Shunnarah
Yeah. And so other gyms found out what we were doing, and that’s how it all scaled,
Carrie
yeah. So then you kind of went, did, is that how it went from elite to the gyms, and then from gyms to delivery?
Paul Shunnarah
Yep. So gauntlet, first, elite, overtime, the restaurant itself. Second, then it went to elite. And then other gym owners that go to elite were like, Hey, how can I do this here? Yeah. And then the home delivery option came because we saw during covid that people weren’t going to the gyms anymore. They were shut down. So we had to pivot to homes. Homes is becoming, I think week over week, home delivery is becoming more and more with the growth, because I think more people are not working from, or, excuse me, not working from an office, working from home. And then we have that Saturday, Sunday option, so you can start your week off with it, yeah. So I think there’s just a lot more benefit. It’s to getting it delivered to your house,
Carrie
yeah? Well, I agree, but it seems like that adds a ton of costs for you guys.
Paul Shunnarah
It does. Yeah, we’ve had to pass that on. We can’t do it free, like the partner, yeah, pick up locations. So there is a 1499 delivery fee. But we haven’t got much bad feedback about that. You know, you always see the memes and the jokes and stuff on social media that like, you’ll have $4,000 with the stuff in your cart. And then you’ll see a $7 charge for delivery. And they’re like, I don’t want that $4,000 items. We were worried about that, but we didn’t see that. I think it’s that I’m willing to pay $15 for somebody to handle it properly, deliver it to me. We delivered a tons of people’s offices, you know. So on Monday morning, you’re, you know, you’re here, you have a cooler in your refrigerator here at work, and you can actually have them come to the front door, you know, at this place, so much like the DoorDash kind of feature of, like, just getting it very quickly, directly, I think that option is super helpful.
Carrie
That’s good, yeah, well, and you, fo, you kind of focus on breakfast a lot too. Is that correct?
Paul Shunnarah
There’s breakfast items on there. Yeah, we haven’t seen breakfast. Breakfast is not considerable to be like, one of the bigger things for us, and I think it’s most breakfast is not becoming breakfast is not as popular as it once was for people. I don’t know if you read any of that.
Carrie
Well is it intermittent fasting or?
Paul Shunnarah
intermittent fasting? Everybody’s on the like, I don’t eat until noon, yeah. I think it’s we all think we’re so busy in time, so So sped up. Yeah, right, but yeah, like, I couldn’t tell you how many consumers we talked to, and I see this at gauntlet too, where they literally don’t eat till lunch. Yeah, if they do eat, it’s like a protein bar, protein shake or quick snack. Yeah, when I was growing up, I turned 40 on Monday, so when I was growing up, everybody you sat down as a family. You know, I watched my dad, eat breakfast and toast before he went to work. But, yeah, I don’t know. I think that part of it’s just dying off as a generation.
Carrie
yeah, we’re seeing fewer cereal commercials so we don’t have somebody out there telling us to eat breakfast all the time. Here’s my newsPaper,
Paul Shunnarah
Yeah, I’m good with Yeah.
Carrie
I think that’s true. I mean, a lot of people, and also your breakfast, I think is easy to meal prep, like I eat breakfast every morning, but that’s an easy thing for me to do. Yeah, my day hasn’t really gotten crazy yet, but lunch and dinner is we usually when
Paul Shunnarah
you’re getting busy. Yeah, that’s a good perspective. Yeah, I’m an overnight oats guy. And then I’m a bold egg, just Dave’s Killer Bread. Yeah, yes, I’m with you on that. I think it’s just so, like, I don’t, it’s just easy,
Carrie
yeah? But also it’s nice that you guys have those, and you have desserts and things like that,
Paul Shunnarah
yeah, we have tree treats and we have bulk so we have, like, you can buy chicken by the pound. Um, we use that the most at my house. So I don’t. I saw the most. I cherish the most about fit five once I had kids, that’s when I saw the value more than ever. So my wife and I used it prior to us having kids, yeah, now that we have a four year old and a two year old, we haven’t missed a week unless we’re out of town in probably two years.
Carrie
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I it’s kind of that way for well, my husband, I don’t have kids, but we both have a full time job and other jobs. So I think when we both took on the additional things, it became like there’s no time for this.
Paul Shunnarah
Yeah?
Carrie
So it is nice to have when life gets very busy. And I think for you guys and for other couples to probably that have kids, it’s kind of, I always hear about, like, you have to make something different for the kids. This way you don’t, you’re at least making one thing for the kids.
Paul Shunnarah
One thing for the kids. So one meal usually plates two to three times for the kids, so both of them can eat off of one and they’re still being leftovers the way we treat it. So they love the quesadilla, they love the burgers, and all we do is just, literally, we heat it up, and if the meal is not already diced, we cut it up a little bit more.
Carrie
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.
Paul Shunnarah
Yeah.
Carrie
Okay, so use transition to delivery, and then is that what it seems like you guys are focusing on? Let’s look at the southeast and focus on the delivery option. And yes, have shipping available, but that’s not really a big
Paul Shunnarah
Yeah, that’s not a big priority for us. A bigger priority now is using refrigerated trucks that we own now that deliver all across going into bigger metros, like Atlanta, Nashville, Chattanooga is blowing up.
Carrie
Well, even that is a little bit of a good ad like that. I had mine dropped off and opened the door and saw the truck driving by. And was like, that’s kind of nice that the whole neighborhood sees the
Paul Shunnarah
fit five, yeah, yeah. And I got that, so my last name Shunnarah, so I got that from Alex, yeah. That Billboard you see around, yeah. So I got that, like, free publicity idea, yeah,
Carrie
that’s smart, yeah. Well, what is I guess. What have you done that maybe you would have done differently, like we tried this and it didn’t work at all. Or I wish I would have known this. And when I was setting this up, either logistically for the meal side, or just like the business side.
Paul Shunnarah
So meal prep was super tough to get into. So the restaurant business, there’s so many people that do it, you can work for one and know the operations before you ever go in on your own. Yeah, that would have been my premature mistake with owning Overtime when I first started it was I probably should have went to go work for a restaurant before I built a bar and restaurant. Because, I mean, my bartenders were literally telling me, like, what went in drinks. For like, the first year, my cooks were like, no, no, no. That tender basket gets five pieces of chicken. This is how you lift up the fry roller, yeah? So that’s first, you know, like, I would definitely recommend in any business that you go into, you try to work it as much as you can before you enter. in the meal prep side, what’s been so tough for us is it’s a very unknown territory, and everybody in it, because they shipped, there’s only been a few that have been willing to talk to us.
Carrie
Yeah, yeah, right.
Paul Shunnarah
I think that when we’ve reached out to them, at times, they’re like, Oh, are you considering coming to Atlanta? Yeah, why is shipping to Florida? Yeah. Whereas we have a few, I’ve made a lot of connections through Instagram, just literally DMing, like other small meal prep companies. I mean, we’ve answered questions and we’ve coordinated back and forth conversations like, where do you get your stickers from? Yeah, you know how many cooks you have in a kitchen? Yeah, that’s what’s been the hardest part is, how do you grow this thing that’s not that’s being done, but it’s not being done as big as you think? You know, there’s restaurants all over, but treating this like a restaurant is totally different. Yeah, the customer is not there. So like me, hearing this feedback from you is awesome. When you own a restaurant. You can get that every day. You can walk to the table, take care. What do you like about that? Yeah, how was your service? At fit five,you know, when you deliver something, when somebody goes and picks it up from wheelhouse, yeah? And they get home that day, right? And they’re missing, they have the wrong meal included you should. Yeah, the way people give you that feedback is a little bit different, because they don’t see you yet. Yeah, the emails normally come off a little bit more tough. Yeah, hey, I’m missing this meal. I don’t know why you guys mess this up. I need my meal ASAP. You messed up my whole week. And then it’s on us to, you know, create and so because of that, I think that’s what’s made it so tough, is, you don’t have all that information in front of you, like restaurants do, to say, hey, this is, this is how we do things, yeah? So that would be the hardest part, is that the meal prep business is still kind of untouched.
Carrie
Yeah,
Paul Shunnarah
there’s like, a fine line of, like, if you’re too small, there’s not enough money in it, And you can’t hit all the legalities with the Health Department. And if you stay in the middle, there’s just not enough money to be made to go to the top, yeah? And that’s been really tough, too, finding, yeah, you’re a local business, Yeah, but you’re trying to gain regional growth.
Carrie
I also think that’s interesting. The your point that you can’t get, like, talk to other business owners, because that was huge. I felt like owning Church Street, like, as soon as we actually signed the lease, everybody was happy to talk to us, when it was just theories, and everybody is like, yeah, yeah. Everybody wants to own a coffee shop, yeah? Like, you know
Paul Shunnarah
me included,
Carrie
yeah, we can talk. But then everybody was pretty open with information. Especially it seems like a market like Birmingham, of course, you’re gonna have people who are like, no, but I don’t want to talk to you. But it seems like typically, people are fairly happy to talk to you if you’re even if you’re in a similar business, you have peer, you know, like, whatever. But yeah, that is everybody’s gonna be scared when they haven’t met you and they’re like, are you just trying to take come into my space? Yeah? And think about that, yeah, interesting, yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
And maybe it’s the shipping aspect of it, yeah. You know, as a coffee shop, maybe if you go speak to somebody in another city, they’re not another city, they’re not concerned. So maybe it’s that you know that they think that they’re coming into their territory. But yeah, you’d be surprised, like, you know, hey, what oven do you use? Yeah, what? Which, you know when you grew, which that changes,
Carrie
right, exactly.
Paul Shunnarah
And so yeah, we haven’t been able to get as much information. We’ve had to do a lot of like, trial and error in our own space. that’s been super tough.
Carrie
That makes sense. How do you fit this in with your other businesses? Because I know about gauntlet, but tell me about tell us about that, and then your other businesses. And how are you doing all of this?
Paul Shunnarah
Okay, yeah, no, sleep, caffeine, same thing everybody says, right. So it all started gauntlet itself. So I think I feel comfortable now saying like I’m in the wellness space, and this is where I want to be. Yeah, I have a couple events that I plan to put on in the next few. Ones coming on in October, where we’re doing a 24 hour men’s retreat. You have to be a leader, a business owner, and enjoy fitness. Yeah, because we’re going to run, we’re going to hike, we’re going to cold plunge sauna, we’re going to be doing all the nuances of wellness, yeah, and so that’s going to streamline the people that come to the event, yeah? And then I also
Carrie
I like that, it reminds me of this job I used to
Paul Shunnarah
Yea so you’re familiar with this. So the wellness movement is huge, yeah. I mean, estimate, trillion dollar industry. We’re all working on our longevity. We all want to live longer. This generation coming up, like, drinks less. I saw that the other day.
Carrie
yeah, we’ve talked to good people and, yeah, it’s really interesting.
Paul Shunnarah
NA beer is, like, officially a category.
Carrie
Yeah, I even read that younger people aren’t, like, opening tabs, because they’re just like, I’m just gonna get one. Why would I open a tab?
Paul Shunnarah
Why would I open a tab? interesting. Got him out of that business. So I officially see myself in the wellness space. I have I’ve been blessed enough to create an environment now I’ve got an awesome team. I don’t think I really understood that early on. I’m a Palestinian Christian, and my family is a very hard working family. I come from a long lineage of successful family members, and it was always taught to grind, right? No sleep, work all day.
Carrie
I mean, your family’s famous for that in Birmingham.
Paul Shunnarah
100% Yeah, yeah. You can name so many businesses here locally that we have, and I Brock came to me probably two or three years ago, and was like, you, you can’t cook the food. Yeah, played it, yeah. Run your gym, right, and take care of your son, yeah, right, and see your wife, yeah. And so he kind of like, egged it on, like, early on, like, Hey, man, just pull yourself back. Yes, a little bit. And so I kind of did it, like, week by week. And then I noticed, oh my god, the building’s not on fire.
Carrie
Yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
I actually had this conversation with a really good friend, Blake Parker, yesterday. He paints motorcycles, one of the best in town, and he went on a camping trip with his wife for the first time as a business owner. Yeah, in like, 10 years, yeah. And he was like, I’m going to do more of this, yeah. And he said to me in the text, he I was like, Did anything happen at work? And he’s like, no, like, so it can happen if you find the right people. So the easiest way for me to do it now is I’ve got an awesome staff. Lance at fit five is awesome. Michael and the team at gauntlet is incredible. We’ve Elliot at Elite is awesome, and then everything else is I’ve just invested in. So now that I’m 40, my next stage of my career, I hope to be in, just like on the consultant investment side of things, yeah, small business levels, you know, and down. So I’m not, I’m not getting anything too crazy. Yeah, I’ve been in rental business and now for 20 years. So I own my first rental property at 20 years old, and I continued to buy houses in the area of town I grew up in. So I grew up over here in south side, yeah, right down the road by UAB. That’s where my family when they first came to America, that’s where they established themselves, yeah. So it’s very means a lot to me to go in that area and keep supporting it. Yeah, the Glen, Iris community, if you’re familiar with that. So I have rental property. So between having the multiple streams of income and having the right team now, I’ve just fully committed myself to my kids, yeah, after one o’clock. So I get up at 330 in the morning. Yeah, Monday through Thursday, yeah. And I work till about one two o’clock. That’s it, yeah, every Monday through Thursday, yeah, I’m off Friday, Saturday, Sunday. When I say off, just like your business center. Yeah, cell phones still on, yeah, problems still happen. Things are still have to be managed, but I’m not physically required to be anywhere, right?
Carrie
Well, I think that’s, it’s, it’s when you’re doing that, but you also did the grinding and the doing the on, like every the fry basket and being in the gym and all of the things I think that really impacts how you lead. I mean, there are a lot of people who are trying to do what you’re doing now without doing the first part, and
Paul Shunnarah
more than ever, yeah, every coffee meeting I’ve had in the past year, yeah, has been I have this idea,
Carrie
yeah, yeah,
Paul Shunnarah
going here, yeah, no, no, no, I don’t want to do that. That,
Carrie
right? Exactly
Paul Shunnarah
that part in between,
Carrie
yeah. But the idea, I mean, I, I think the idea is not the part, like, we all have ideas, right? It’s, can you put the thing, put, can you put the
Paul Shunnarah
pen to paper?
Carrie
Yeah, and the pieces together and make this happen. And even when you do different things. Now, because you’ve built other businesses, it doesn’t have to be the same business, you know, like the things that you did building your restaurant, the things you did right, the things you did wrong, are still gonna impact what you’re doing. Now, you don’t just have to do gyms and meal prep services, you know. But I think doing the leg work makes a huge difference for the business and also for the team, to know that you’re willing to do that and not just like, well, you know, I’m special. I’m going to be over here. I’ll point out your I’ll come taste the food and point out the mistakes, but I won’t help you.
Paul Shunnarah
but I won’t help you do it. Yeah, I still teach classes at gauntlet. I think that’s a big part of it. I still go there a couple times a week and teach a class, yeah, yeah. I think if there’s any mistake that you can get figured out early on by working it, the better off you are in the long run.
Carrie
Yeah, yeah. Well, we could keep talking. I can say more good things about your food, but kind of tell people how to find you, how to get connected. If they’re like, Okay, I’m sold. I want to try this. What do they do?
Paul Shunnarah
So, fit five fitfivemeals.com. Spelling out the number, f, i, v, e, and we also have an app on the App Store that you can download. Makes it easy. You also get the push notifications if you do the app so you order, we drop a new menu at. Every Thursday morning at 9am and then you have until Wednesday at midnight to place the order. And then you have the option, once you select your meals, you have the option of, are you having this delivered to your house or office? Are you picking it up at a free pickup location, which is all of our partner, gyms or nutrition stores you’ve got to if you if it is your first time order, use the code WELCOME50 all caps. That’ll give you 50% off your first order. Try it out. DM me directly and say, Hey, Paul, these are great.
Carrie
So find you on Instagram?
Paul Shunnarah
You can find the companies. You can find all of my companies on Instagram. You can find me personally on Instagram. So my real name is boulos,
Carrie
okay.
Paul Shunnarah
I started going by Paul, probably 2021, years old. So when I got to college at UAB. Yeah, most teachers couldn’t say my name, yeah, as sad as that sounds, yeah. And when I had my first business was a stereo shop. Have you been on Green Springs lately?
Carrie
Not that lately. Yeah.
Paul Shunnarah
Have you seen Baba Java on Green Springs highway?
Carrie
Yeah, they were there. Yeah.
Carrie
He said they’re right at the edge in front of it. So yeah, Baba Java was my first business. first business called appearance, car audio, wheels, window tint, car stereo. That was how I first learned entrepreneurship. Yeah. And so that, that business, I’m forgetting where I was going there,
Carrie
my name, yeah, oh yeah, yeah. Sorry. I
Paul Shunnarah
was like, Oh, you’re good. I was like, What am I talking about? Okay, so when I had that first business and then being in college, neither my teacher or my clients at the store could call in and say my name. So they, they would say things like, is the little bearded kid there, you know? And, and so that eventually I have a cousin with the same name. Boulos were named after my grandfather, means strong horse. And they told he told me. He’s like, listen, dude, I on my business cards. I go by Paul now, yeah, my name’s in English, and it’s just easier, filling out pieces of information. I mean, every phone call would be like, 1015, minutes, yeah, explaining my first name.
Carrie
Well, My last name is Rollwagen, and people just say, like, er, like. They just make the beginning sound okay, and then I’m like, Oh, it’s fine. But I’m like, it’s two words you already know, so I can’t even imagine.
Carrie
You can’t understand why they’re missing it?
Carrie
Well, it’s fine with me, but like, how often you would get that if you have a name people aren’t familiar with? And I’m like, you are familiar with these two words, just not as a name,
Paul Shunnarah
just so, yeah, so this is my first name, if you want to find my Instagram is @Boulospshunnarah.
Paul Shunnarah
Cool. I will only tell this in the show notes. So if you’re listening and you’re like, doing the dishes or driving, it’s fine. You can find this.
Paul Shunnarah
Hey, if you’re doing the dishes, that’s why you really need fit five.
Carrie
Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, that’s a good that’s another thing we didn’t even talk
Paul Shunnarah
yeah, we can eliminate that.
Carrie
And do you still have a grab and go location?
Paul Shunnarah
Yeah? So lean nutrition is are Grab and Go stores. Hoover Vestavia in Huntsville, we have absolute nutrition. So go inside those stores any day of the week and we stock them up with fresh meals. That, to me, is the best way to get them. So the Vestavia ones on 31 right there across from Chick fil A, and then the Hoover one is right down past the Galleria. And so we tell people all the time, if you forgot to order, yeah, or you just right now you leave work you want something for dinner, just stop by and grab whatever you need. Or just want to try it out. If you’re like, yeah, if you want to just try a single meal and not say, you know, all the trouble online ordering, yeah, just go drive single meal and see what you think.
Carrie
We didn’t talk a lot about this, but there isn’t a bit. There isn’t really a commitment, like, that’s not a subscription where we, I guess we got into that,
Paul Shunnarah
yeah, no commitment, no minimums on how many order you can order. We have people that just order one meal a week because they only work at the office on Tuesday.
Carrie
Yeah. Awesome.
Paul Shunnarah
Yeah.
Carrie
Well, thank you so much.
Paul Shunnarah
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Carrie
Yeah. The localist podcast is written and produced by me Carrie Rollwagen. We record right here at infomedia studios. So if you’re interested in a podcast or recording just a podcast season, or even just some short social media videos for yourself or your business. We’d love to help to get that process started. Just head to infomedia.com and fill out the contact form. find show notes about this week’s topic at carrierollwagen.com and you can find me on social media pretty much everywhere @crollwagen, there’s a whole team that helps me put this podcast together. Our showrunner is Taylor Davis, Alana Harmond is our promotions manager, and Paul Bryant is our studio engineer. So until next time, here’s to thinking global by acting local and putting small shops before big box.