Columbia woman’s business journey began with healthy food. Sports also helped
Emilie Blanchard’s path to healthy eating started at home, around a family dinner table.
Raised in South Carolina, Blanchard said her mother cooked meals that were “very fresh” and home-prepared — an early foundation that later became a Columbia business called Tasty As Fit, which exclusively features plant-based menu options in a grab-and-go setting.
As a teen playing competitive soccer, Blanchard said she began noticing what she described as a strong “body-food connection,” realizing she couldn’t eat pizza, like some teammates, and still perform well. That curiosity pushed her into the kitchen, first in high school and then in college, where she improvised healthier meals from dining hall staples — enough that other students would ask her to make food for them, too.
“In college, I remember going and making crazy things in the dining hall, and people would come up and be like, ‘can you make that for me?,’“ Blanchard said. “But just creating food to help nourish your body has always been a huge passion of mine.”
Years later, after moving back to South Carolina from New York — where she said she had done some broadcast news work — Blanchard found herself in a transitional period, unsure whether her next step would be returning to media or opening a workout studio. Instead, she began cooking regularly and sharing her concoctions on an Instagram page that initially had little reach.
Then a message from a local mother changed everything and would become the seed of what would grow into Tasty As Fit.
A working mom of four reached out after finding the account and asked Blanchard to cook for her family. Blanchard agreed.
Before long, Blanchard would be preparing meals for nearly two dozen families, which, she says, stemmed from a desire to purely create good food.
“At the time, I only had a husband to feed,” Blanchard said. “My sister, who was in college at the time, would also periodically come over to eat and help me out.”
Blanchard began with meal prep out of her house, then expanded to a larger operation, learning along the way how to scale recipes, manage ordering and logistics, and handle the realities of running a small business without a business degree. Early on, she said she was cooking for roughly 10 to 20 families, often working from 5 a.m. until the evening.
In 2019, the concept expanded into a fuller “grab-and-go” operation, though Blanchard emphasized it looked far different than it does today.
Staffing and growth came in stages. At first, she leaned on unpaid interns from the University of South Carolina who needed 200 hours for school requirements, having them help with time-consuming prep work like chopping onions and carrots.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do it without that,” she said, describing the university’s intern program as a critical pillar during the early expansion. One intern eventually became her first employee, and Blanchard said another longtime team member joined shortly after college, who now manages the establishment.
As the business grew, so did the challenges — from learning accounting, to outsourcing operations, to renovating space to add new offerings such as smoothies.
Blanchard recalled blending early smoothies in a closet, then later dealing with a major equipment failure just before reopening after a renovation, when a refrigerator malfunctioned and “everything broke,” leaving her crying on the floor, she said.
Still, she said the experience reinforced a mindset that has guided her through Tasty As Fit’s evolution.
“Everything’s a big deal until it’s not,” Blanchard said. “You pivot and just figure it out.”
Now 35 and preparing to turn 36 next month, Blanchard traces the founding of Tasty As Fit not to a polished business plan, but to a lifelong relationship with food, a small Instagram page, and one customer who took a chance on her cooking.
