“Food is our love language,” says Kelly Nadler, co-owner of the Kingston-based meal delivery service Yes Foods. The new service aims to alleviate the mid-week cooking drudgery with weekly deliveries of creative dishes that come ready to be heated and shared.
Husband-and-wife co-founders Scott and Kelly Nadler put a local spin on the meal delivery concept, placing an emphasis on organic and sustainably sourced ingredients from the Hudson Valley. The Nadlers encourage customers to constantly try new things with a wide-ranging fusion menu that changes weekly. There are generally around a dozen main dishes and 20 sides, with dinners hovering in the $20 range and sides around $5. “I don’t have to charge [restaurant prices], so I’m not,” Kelly says. “I’m just trying to make it a little more approachable for people to try stuff.”
The food arrives in containers designed to be reheated to minimize hassle. Customers place weekly or biweekly orders, and can choose whatever they want from the menu. Kelly says orders range from those who use Yes Foods for multiple whole meals to those who buy only sides and cook their own protein.
Options in a given week might range from the British specialty bangers-and-mash to Cajun catfish served with spicy bacon-cheddar polenta and fried okra to lasagna rollatini. Fun sides, designed to be shared, include rosemary potatoes, maple mashed yams, walnut pesto tortellini, and Mexican street corn. Yes Foods always keeps a few staples available, like matzo ball soup and individual chicken pot pies. The menu also has a breakfast section, and a deli portion that sells favorites like curry chicken salad and German potato salad, harkening back to the beginning of the Nadlers’ career when they owned a deli in West Hurley.
The Nadlers, who have been married for 32 years, have both been in the culinary industry since their early teens. Scott, whose family has lived in the Hudson Valley for three generations, began as a fruit stand employee at age 12 and later went on to attend culinary school. Kelly, whose family has been here since the ‘ߴ70s, got her start bussing tables at the Reservoir Inn in West Hurley when she was 14. The pair became hooked on the biz immediately. “When you get sucked into the restaurant life, it’s like the mob, it’s really hard to get out,” Kelly jokes.
In 2001, they opened the Black Bear Gourmet Deli on Route 375 in West Hurley. Kelly says the idea of a deli case filled with creative ready-to-eat dishes was radical at the time. “It was an instant hit,” Kelly remembers. Patrons fell in love with their blue crab mac and cheese, curried tofu, and shrimp puttanesca. Unfortunately, due to lease issues, the Nadlers had to close the deli in 2005. They took over the Mexican restaurant Santa Fe and the Hotel Dylan, housed in a small complex on Route 28, and figured out along the way how to adjust their business and add hoteling to their resumes. “And then the economy collapsed,” Kelly remembers, grimly. After the 2008 recession, people were struggling financially, eating out less, and the Nadler’s $10,000 monthly lease on the space became cost prohibitive.
For a while, they left the restaurant industry entirely. They raised their kids. Scott went into property management. Kelly went back to school to get a vet tech degree, and opened a small business.
“We got totally away from food. And then the plague hit,” Kelly says. During the pandemic, people discovered en masse that online shopping and delivery are not just convenient but crucial, providing people with medical supplies, home essentials, and protection from the virus.
Scott approached Kelly one day and asked if she ever thought about getting back into food. By this time, the Nadlers had been out of the restaurant industry for nearly a decade, and Kelly was nervous about starting a new business since “it was not a happy ending last time.”
When she declined, Scott replied, “Hear me out.”
His pitch for Yes Foods was a meal box delivery service that wasn’t made of mass-produced ingredients but rather local and sustainably sourced products, was delivered ready to be heated and served, and could be something people looked forward to each week. The idea was partially inspired by a memory from their childhoods, of receiving a monthly school cafeteria menu, checking off their meals each day—Taco Tuesday, Pizza Friday—and going to school excited about their choices. Kelly saw the vision. “I want people to get this box and be like, ‘Yes!’” Kelly says. Hence the name.
The business is as local as it gets: the Nadlers prep and cook everything, and twice weekly Kelly drives their delivery radius herself. They run the business out of the old Zena Elementary School; the building now houses the Lineman’s Institute, a trade school, where the Nadlers rent kitchen space. They have the business down to a science: shop and prep on Sunday, cook and package on Monday, delivery on Tuesday. Then the cycle starts over for those who ordered Friday delivery.
The Nadlers have loved food for as long as they can remember, and Yes Foods gives them the opportunity to connect with and provide for their community in ways they’ve missed since their days at the deli. “In this, I can [share food] with so many more people,” Kelly explains. “I can share my husband’s incredible gift for cooking. I can share the love we put into it.”
