Lincoln couple launches meal service featuring clean ingredients


This coming week, Casey Jo and Zach Jansma will celebrate the 10th anniversary of their first date.

The one constant in their decade together has been a commitment to healthy living. Most notably, that includes eating clean, which isn’t always possible in Lincoln.

“It’s frustrating,” said Zach, a 32-year-old delivery driver for Culligan Water. “We’ve crossed off a lot of restaurants. Maybe we’re too picky.”



fresh plate

The Jansma family, left to right: Zach, Asher, 3, Casey Jo and Braxton, 2. Casey Jo and Zach Jansma have launched a meal service that features clean ingredients. 




Or maybe not. Maybe it just took Casey Jo, who’d spent the past 13 years at Legacy retirement communities, doing something about it.

In May, she quit her job to launch Fresh Plate, a clean-ingredient, organic meal-prep business that is slowly gaining traction in the Capital City.

“There’s a lack of this in our community,” Casey Jo Jansma, also 32, said. “I’ve always loved healthy eating, but I don’t want it to taste overly healthy because I really like food. I want there to be flavor.”

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Twice a week — Mondays and Thursdays — Fresh Plate caters to working families by creating ready-to-eat entrees that can be picked up or delivered and just need to be heated up.

That’s when Casey Jo, a mother of two young children, finds herself in the kitchen cooking a variety of dishes.



Fresh Plate

Fresh Plate’s take on shrimp and vegetable lo mein.




Last week, the menu options included steak and potatoes, two kinds of pizza — one vegetarian — and a chicken burrito bowl. This week, the choices are a breakfast casserole, spicy Indian butter chicken and Toscana soup for a price of about $7 to $15 per person.

“I think our price point is good,” she said. “If you were to go to get a burger somewhere, it’s really going to be more than that. And you have to physically go there and order it.

“It might be good, but it might not be as healthy.”



Fresh Plate

Vegetable enchiladas at Fresh Plate.




The meals show nutritional values, list ingredients and give calorie counts. Orders can be placed by logging onto Fresh Plate’s website.

At a time when food prices have soared, starting a meal service has its pitfalls. Casey Jo Jansma is deliberate in her grocery shopping, saying that the cost of ingredients each week dictates the menu.

Too many people are hung up on the wrong things regarding food. It’s become popular thinking that carbohydrates are bad, while low-calorie foods are good, she said.

Instead, she said, people should just look at the ingredients of what they’re eating. It’s what now guides the Jansma family.

“We kind of discovered that paying attention to ingredients versus the macro — not looking at just low-calorie foods, but low-ingredient foods mattered,” she said.

The demographic of the people using Fresh Plate skews a little bit older than she might have expected. There are a lot of women in their 40s and 50s on her list of clients.

These are women in the workforce who might not have the time or energy to cook for either themselves or their families after a day in the office.

Fresh Plate comes in single servings, a couple’s portion or in family-style portions that serve four.

“There are a lot of people who just don’t want to cook for themselves,” Casey Jo said.

Fresh Plate operates out of both Jansma’s kitchen and Creative Collab, 1600 Normandy Court, a collective that showcases 17 female entrepreneurs in their business endeavors.

“I’ve got food in a fridge so you can pick it up there,” she said.

In addition, New Day Coffee, with three Lincoln locations, will also have Fresh Plate entrees available for its customers at an as-yet-to-be-determined date.

“They’re gonna have some stuff behind the counter that people can order,” she said. “And then they’ll also have the grab-and-go meals, too.”

Eventually, the Jansmas’ goal is to have a brick-and-mortar store of their own where people can gather and get a cup of coffee, and, of course, a healthy meal.

“I’d love for us to be a well-known local establishment,” Zach Jansma said. “Not too big. Maybe two locations like 402 Creamery has done in this town. Everybody knows who they are because they have a great product.

“That’s what I want us to be.”

News 12’s Consumer Reporter Janice Lieberman tells you The Real Deal about why you should be shopping in the aisles now.


Reach the writer at 402-473-7391 or [email protected]

On Twitter @psangimino


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