By Drew Dixon, Contributing Writer
Kathy Godwin saw a market and exercised her abilities to serve it.
Kathy’s Table specializes in home delivery of health-based prepared meals. She expanded from a small home startup about four years ago to a site along Beaver Street, ending up with a food operation along Philips Highway and an expansion to Jacksonville Beach.
She expects to reach $2 million in revenue for 2018.
Godwin is a former personal trainer, yoga instructor and general gym rat who realized protein-based foods were in high demand. She decided to offer gourmet prepared meals.
“When most people think of meal prep, they think of bland food and not much flavor and eating for these bodybuilder guys,” Godwin said.
“Our food is all gluten-free, dairy-free. There’s no soy and there’s no refined sugar,” she said.
While that selection is good for workout types, Godwin said she also caters to customers who might have food allergy concerns. Most meals range from $7 to $9.
Customers can order through Kathy’s Table website, kathystable.com.
The website allows customers to choose from about 20 gourmet menu items which change every two weeks, although the chicken breast option, salmon and other staples are the base.
Selections include Italian, Indian, Asian and American cuisine selections, among others. There’s a $6 charge for delivery on top of the cost of the food.
Kathy’s Table also offers its own protein bars, which are growing in popularity, Godwin said.
Walking through the Philips Highway location June 1, there was a small production line filling plastic containers with contents ranging from teriyaki salmon to barbecue pork to vegan masala meatballs.
Godwin’s husband, Dan Godwin, said most of the expansion is from word-of-mouth. For the first three years, Kathy’s Table engaged in limited marketing and advertising.
Dan Godwin said he has a surge of pride in the business’s recent agreement to sponsor the Jacksonville Jaguars Roar cheerleading squad.
He acknowledged that for a huge corporation, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. But for a small business, it’s prestigious to be associated with the Jaguars, considering Kathy’s Table has had a limited advertising budget and seeks to expand its customer base.
The primary target customer, he said, is “anyone who wants to eat healthy and is looking for convenience.”
That includes a spouse who is at home while the significant other is out of town; a workout enthusiast who doesn’t have time to prepare food; and a corporation or business that wants to order healthy food for employees.
Home delivery of food services is on the rise with companies such as Uber Eats and GrubHub.
Godwin said the custom choices and mixing of side dishes and main meals are what keeps Kathy’s Table viable.
“Other companies just give you the meal” with little custom selection, he said.
“Our menu changes all the time,” he said. “And if you really like a certain meal made a certain way, you can get it.”
Kathy’s Table at 7035 Philips Highway is expanding from its original 2,610 square feet to 5,710 square feet. The business added a second location April 28 in a 980-square-store at 1010B Third St. N. in Jacksonville Beach.
The two locations employ about 30 workers.
While the business offers delivery, it also has 15 refrigerated pickup locations in other stores around Jacksonville, north St. Johns County and one in St. Augustine.
