Tasty as Fit
Emilie Blanchard grew up in a big Greek family whose love language was food. When she and her husband moved back to their hometown of Columbia from New York, she thought she’d open a fitness studio, but in the meantime, she cooked and posted her plant-based recipes and photos on Instagram, as a placeholder to document and keep track of her ideas.
It wasn’t long before a childhood friend, now a busy mother of four, called requesting some of Blanchard’s eye-catching food. That friend posted photos on Instagram and, the next morning, Blanchard had requests from five more new mothers desperate for help with meal prep.
Blanchard kept saying “yes” until the day everything went wrong, including a dropped container of mushroom Bolognese that went all over the kitchen floor.
“Look how much you’ve grown in only a few months,” her husband told her after helping clean up. “It’s time to move operations out of our kitchen.”
Plans for a fitness studio were replaced with plans to open a space that offered fresh, plant-based, healthy meals. Tasty as Fit was born in 2018 and quickly evolved into a grab-and-go model; a second store followed in Greenville in 2021. That model helped them thrive during covid when all they had to do was add an online ordering system and curbside pickup to take advantage of the demand for to-go healthy food.
The Tasty as Fit menu changes weekly and Blanchard says she personally tests every dish that makes it to the menu. There are always wraps on the menu, soups in the winter, and a salad like the popular Chickpea No Chick Salad, a take on chicken salad made with homemade cashew mayonnaise. The shop’s smoothie bar is “a huge part of the business,” Blanchard says.
The thing that flies off the shelves, however, mixes a bit of decadence with that healthy vibe. “The Snickers Bites are our take on a Snickers Bar, but these are homemade,” Blanchard says. “They have this nugget crust with things like almond flour and organic maple syrup and a date caramel for the middle and then we dip it in veganchocolate and it hardens in the refrigerator. It is quite possibly the best thing ever.”
Blanchard knows that not everyone is ready to embrace a plant-based life.
“I think people get a little scared because they feel like it has to be all or nothing,” she says. “But you don’t have to live your whole life plant-based to see the benefits. It’s all about getting more veggies and fruit into your life. Smoothies are a good way to start and then people come back to try the salads and wraps. And, if they grab a Snickers Bite, they are lifelong customers.”
