Fitlife Foods, a Florida-based performance, lifestyle and weight loss brand known for its perfectly portioned, indulgent, made from scratch meals for performance-minded individuals announces today it has been selected as one of the 22 Co-Learning Partners of the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI). LEI is a not for profit research, publishing, and training organization that specializes in lean thinking and practices, which help businesses create more value while consuming the fewest possible resources. Fitlife Foods is the first company from the Tampa Bay region and Florida to be selected as part of the institute and will be joining a prestigious roster of other companies, which include GE Appliances, Herman Miller, TaylorMade, Legal Sea Foods, Kroger, Mount Sinai Health System, and Stryker Corporation among others.
“Becoming one of the 22 co-learning partners of the Lean Enterprise Institute is a tremendous opportunity for the entire Fitlife Foods team as well as a win for the Tampa Bay business community,” says David Osterweil, CEO and founder of Fitlife Foods. “As the smallest co-learning partner of LEI, we believe there is an opportunity to share the learnings with many others taking their companies from start-up to growth. Establishing certain disciplines has transformed us into the foremost expert in healthy prepared meals in the country and the top exclusive retailer of healthy prepared meals in the Southeast. The application of lean principles to businesses like Fitlife Foods is all about giving the power to the team members to face problems head on and creating conditions where problems improve the work.”
“Fitlife appealed to LEI for a partnership because of its innovative product and service of providing fresh, healthy food through a dedicated retail network,” says Mark Reich COO of LEI. “LEI’s training and education capabilities were well suited to Fitlife’s need to provide impeccable quality while shortening lead times and ramping up volume.”
Lean management, based originally on the Toyota Production System, is a complete business system that continuously develops people and improves processes to provide more value and prosperity while consuming the fewest possible resources. Lean principles help startups scale by increasing capacity, streamlining logistics, improving quality, shortening lead times, and improving cost per unit. To help support the LEI transformation journey, Fitlife Foods also announces the hiring of Operational Excellence Leader, Skyler Stice as Director of operational excellence. Stice and the Fitlife team continues to work directly with LEI’s Senior Coach David Errico in developing the lean operating system throughout the organization.
“Bringing the right talent to our state and organization is a priority for me as a fourth-generation Floridian and to help our team at Fitlife Foods grow,” says Osterweil. “Great companies grow with great talent and innovative ways of operating. We are doing both to lay a strong foundation. Fitlife Foods is committed to being just one of the many organizations in our community to add talent to our community and state. We also want to help share what is helping Fitlife operate differently not only in the prepared meals space, but as a growth company transitioning from a startup.”
Fitlife Foods is the second largest exclusive prepared meals retailer in the country and the largest in the Southeast with 15 locations throughout the Tampa Bay, Orlando and South Florida regions.
