For this week’s MVP, we’re chatting with Fresh Prep co-founder Husein Rahemtulla.

By Rosemary Counter

The last decade has seen food delivery services flood the dinner delivery market—and fill garbage cans with guilt-inducing single-use plastics. Vancouver-based Fresh Prep is tackling that problem next as it continually evolves from a (literal) kitchen-table startup to a multi-million-dollar company serving hungry customers from British Columbia to Quebec. 

At that kitchen table, back in 2015, were three childhood friends: Becky Brauer, Dhruv Sood and Husein Rahemtulla. Rahemtulla chats with The Get for this week’s MVP, and he tells us about the emotional roller coaster of starting a business at 25, how he’s like a modern-day milkman and the secret to staying friends after all these years.  

How did starting Fresh Prep with two childhood friends come about?

Dhruv and I have known each other since we were 10 years old. We met Becky in high school. So, we all go way back. We started Fresh Prep when we were 25, and it began the way a lot of startup stories do: out of frustration stemming from a problem. We were busy people who wanted to cook at home but despised how much planning, prep and food waste came with it.

We also shared a genuine love for food—not just eating it, but understanding it. We were curious about how to make high-quality meals more accessible to people who wanted convenience without compromising on flavour and nutrition. That shared passion helped shape our vision from the very beginning. Fresh Prep launched from a small kitchen in Vancouver. For the first few years, we bootstrapped everything: prepping meals, packing orders and delivering them ourselves, in our own cars.

Do you have a secret to staying friends while building a business?

It’s about mutual respect, clear lanes of responsibility, and knowing when to have hard conversations. The three of us have very different strengths, but we’re also aligned on values. We’ve never tried to outvote each other. If someone’s deeply opposed to something, we talk through it and reach a consensus. That kind of alignment has kept both the company and the friendship intact.

Your company is known for the Zero Waste Kit — what is it, and how did it come about?

Dhruv came up with the concept of a zero-waste meal kit, and then we hired a team of engineers to bring it to life, which took a few years.

Our Zero Waste Kit is our response to the packaging problem in most meal kits. Many meal kits generate a large amount of single-use plastics. So, we built a reusable packaging system with a closed-loop logistics model. That means customers receive their orders in reusable cooler bags and their meals in durable containers that we pick up, sanitize and reuse. It’s a modern-day milkman model.

It wasn’t easy to design or to build, but it’s a core differentiator for us now. And it has a real impact: we’ve diverted over 32,851 kilograms of single-use plastics from landfills this year alone. 

What are the best and worst parts of running your own business?

The worst is the emotional rollercoaster. One minute you’re scaling fast and building a great team, the next you’re navigating a supply chain issue that threatens to crush your margins. The stakes always feel high, you’re often feeling overwhelmed, especially when you care deeply about your team and customers.

But, the best part is the autonomy to solve real problems in creative ways. There’s nothing like building something from scratch and seeing it make a mark in the world. Knowing we’ve made someone’s day easier, or helped make their mealtime a little more joyful, never gets old. That kind of feedback is incredibly energizing.

Rosemary Counter is a Toronto-based writer and journalist whose reporting and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Guardian and others.

Read more from this issue of The Get:

1. The costs of not paying your minimum credit card payment
2. How much should 20-something Canadians have saved?
3. Santa’s shortlist: The buzziest toys in Canada this year
4. True or False: I need a university degree to become wealthy

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