Our mission is to nourish women after giving birth
When mothers are nourished, they can recover faster, thrive postpartum, and enjoy early motherhood.
After giving birth, your body enters a crucial postpartum recovery period. These next several months to years are an opportunity to heal, replenish, and fortify what was spent during child birth. The body of a new mother or birthing person needs a postpartum-focused approach to food, nourishment, and care that adequately supports her during this stage of life.
Ritual Meals cooks and delivers postpartum meals nutritionally designed to support women during her most transformational wellness journey—her postpartum recovery. Our meals help women heal faster, restore hormonal balance and emotional health, and, if she is breastfeeding, boost her supply and milk quality. We make our meals focused on her health and wellness, her nutritional needs, and her joy, so that she can experience her best postpartum recovery and better enjoy early motherhood.
Meet the Women Behind Ritual Meals
Two mission-driven women set out to nourish women together
Helen Merlin
Co-founder & CEO
Helen’s lifelong passion for food and nutrition was planted at a young age in her family kitchen. There she shared nourishing, Chinese meals steeped in healing, food is medicine traditions. As her friends got pregnant, she saw that everyone wanted meal prep or meal delivery. Yet none of the convenience-focused solutions addressed the new mother’s needs for postpartum recovery.
She started cooking postpartum meals, incorporating postpartum practices from around the world that have supported new mothers for thousands of years, including Chinese medicine and Ayurveda. After seeing the powerful impact postpartum food had on her friends’ postpartum recoveries and breastfeeding journeys, her mission for Ritual Meals was born—to help women experience the healing power of food after giving birth, so they can recover faster and better enjoy early motherhood.
Jessica Phan
Co-founder
After giving birth, Jessica moved in with her in-laws, where she enjoyed long-simmer stews and body-warming teas prepared by her mother-in-law. The Chinese postpartum meals—rich with healing herbs and superfoods like ginger, ginseng, date, burdock, goji berry, longan, and lemongrass—helped her recover quickly and feel deeply supported. She produce what seemed like an endless supply of milk for her newborn and she felt her body quickly regain physical strength in a matter of weeks.
As her friends shared postpartum stories marked by challenges of low milk supply and postpartum depression, Jessica was called to find a way to support her friends through early motherhood. She knew food had the power to support all women through postpartum; she knew food is medicine.
Our Manifesto
These manifesto guides us to empower and nourish women through their most transformational wellness journey
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Prioritize our mothers"The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new." -Osho Rajneesh
This saying from an Indian mystic reminds us that after giving birth, a woman both takes on a new identity as a mother and emerges from birth in a delicate state in need of nourishment and replenishment. What a woman's body needs postpartum is different from what it needed pre-birth and pre-pregnancy. For a woman's body to give so much, so quickly to a newborn requires a patient healing process focused on her recovery, replenishment, and fortification.
At Ritual Meals, our meals are made with the mother in mind, prioritizing her nourishment and recovery. Our healing nutrition fortifies her body and supports her transition into motherhood. After the mother is cared for, she has more to give to others.
We cook and deliver straight to your doorstep, so you can rest assured your fridge is stocked. You'll have delicious meals and joyful snacks nutritionally designed to support your body through your postpartum recovery and early motherhood, so you never have to resort to ordering take out.
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Food is medicineThe food you eat is information you put into your body. It has the power to fight disease and help the organs in your body function as optimally as possible. Superfood ingredients on their own have nutritive properties, but a thoughtful pairing ingredients can unlock your body's ability to heal, rebalance, and fortify itself. It can replenish what was lost during birth. It has the power to heal and strengthen and to help your body and mind meet every challenge.
The most powerful way to support your body is to build health from the inside out, starting with your gut. Postpartum food is easier to digest so that your gut can absorb the nutrients it needs to repair and replenish you.
Food is medicine means our nourishing, healing food is supportive for postpartum women, new parents, and anyone experiencing hardship, from surgery to miscarriage.
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Hold integrity in ingredientsFood is more nutrient-rich and more flavorful when grown on small farms, without pesticides or antibiotics, and consumed as close as possible to when it was harvested. We believe you can taste and feel the difference.All of our food is organic, plant rich, and non-GMO. We make our soup stocks with pasture-raised chicken and grass-fed beef, because what they ate was information put into their bodies. We believe you can taste and feel the difference.
Our food is made in small batches with fresh, whole food ingredients for the highest quality and taste, then immediately frozen to preserve the optimal nutrition content of each meal.
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Preserve global ritualsFor thousands of years, global traditions have helped new mothers recover and thrive postpartum. Around the world, new mothers don't really experience postpartum depression, due to postpartum rituals that are deeply supportive of the mother. We believe new mothers in our communities should and can thrive postpartum. The collective wisdom of generations of grandmothers have taught us that these rituals are essential for a new mother's postpartum journey:
- Warmth - Keep the body warm inside and out after giving birth, so that you maintain good circulation which aids the body's healing process.
- Rest - Make your rest a priority, so that you build more energy, strength, and clarity to care for your newborn.
- Nutrition - Eat nourishing, easy to digest food designed for postpartum, so that you replenish what was lost during birth and strengthen your body to meet every challenge.
- Social Rituals - Welcome help in the other areas of your life, so that you can focus on resting and bonding with your baby. Receiving support in the areas you prefer not to focus on is the greatest way to honor yourself on your motherhood journey.
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Honor Mother Earth"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." —Native American Proverbs
A thriving mother Earth means future generations get to experience her beauty and bounty. For no stronger reason than preserving a brighter world for our children and our children's children, we commit to using environmentally responsible practices, including:
- Sustainable and eco-friendly packaging
- Minimizing food waste
- Sourcing from farmers who use sustainable and regenerative farming practices
Mamas & parents, we are here for you.
At Ritual Meals, we want to be a part of your journey into early motherhood and parenthood. As women and mothers ourselves, we know it's the hardest, yet most beautiful transformational journey you'll embark. We know you have one of the hardest jobs in the world; we see you and we're here for you. Let us help you eat well, thrive postpartum, and enjoy early motherhood through our Postpartum Program.
If there is anything else we can do to support you in your postpartum wellness journey, please let us know at info@ritualmeals.com. In the meantime, you can follow our journey on Instagram.
In love and light,
Helen Merlin & Jessica Phan, Co-founders of Ritual Meals