Meet The Halifax Family That Makes ‘Smooth’ Meals For Your Fitness Goals
HALIFAX – Nevell Provo knows the importance of maintaining a healthy diet to stay in shape.
For much of his life, the Halifax native played basketball at a high level, going so far as playing in the NCAA for Loyola University. When Nevell returned to Halifax in 2018, he returned to amazing cooking by his mother, Karen Provo, which gave him an idea.
“I came home around two years ago. My mom (Karen Provo), she was making meals for myself -healthy meals,” recalled Nevell. “She decided that she wanted to do that for some other people.”
It was only natural that Nevell wanted to get into business in his early 20s. He studied the subject in university and his older brother, Corvell Beals, was an entrepreneur himself. The future basketball star also tried his hands in the food market at age four, when he discovered a way to make money with no overhead cost.
“I went and got some potatoes from my uncle’s garden,” recalled Nevell with a laugh. “I didn’t really ask permission and took them to my mom’s work and was selling potatoes to her coworkers for a dollar.”
So, in late 2018 the two brothers and their mother created Smooth Meal Prep, a business that prepares ready-to-eat healthy meals and delivers them to your door. This way, you can meet your fitness goals, even if you have little time to cook. They even have different meal options depending on what your fitness needs are.
“We just try to be creative,” said Corvell. “We’ll take people’s favourite meals and just make them healthy. We’ll drop some sauce and find a real healthy replacement. Even myself, I’m not the healthiest eater in the world but I’ve learned that healthy food can actually taste good if you put the right flavours to it and you find the right replacements.”
If you order from Smooth Meal prep, you can expect delicious dishes like kale chicken salad, deconstructed taco, salmon with vegetables, and cabbage rolls to name a few. While Nevell and Corvell have the business acumen, it’s Karen’s lifetime experience in the kitchen that provides the flavour to the company.
“Food has always been a passion for me. It’s something that makes people happy,” said Karen.
“They always tend to think that eating healthy means having a bland choice of food. It was our mission to show that wasn’t necessarily the case.”
Karen recalls visiting her best friend’s house after school and spending lots of time with her friend’s mother in the kitchen, learning how to cook and bake. Karen’s skills came in handy when she had to feed a large family of her own.
“My Mom loves her family,” said Corvelle. “We’re big eaters and she was always trying to find that balance between what tastes good and what we would like. She’s been dealing with that challenge a long time.”
Smooth Meal Prep began small, but as word got around more and more people wanted to order from the company. But the business owners found out that trying to start up a new business, while being in the black community, can have a lot of challenges.
“This is my first business, I don’t have uncles that have run businesses before, I don’t have people around me who would know the places to go,” said Nevell. “Where, maybe, one of my white counterparts might have that education and knowledge because of his surroundings.”
“Those kinds of challenges, being black, we see those across the board. They’re more systemic issues, and we’re trying to fight those and… we have to do a lot of extra work and do a lot of extra steps.”
But Smooth Meal Prep overcame those systemic obstacles and survived the economic downturn caused by Covid-19. In fact, now that gyms are reopening, people are trying to get rid of their excess “Covid weight,” which means more business for the company.
“Coming out of Covid, we’re actually seeing ourselves growing at a more rapid rate than this time last year,” said Nevell.
“We’re kind of seeing a new wave of New Year’s resolution-ers. We really want to play on that and help people get back to where they want to be.”
The trio estimates that they cook for between 50-60 people a week and employ nine staff members. The great news is that 90 percent of their business comes from return customers, which means the future of the company looks bright. Best of all, every day at work the owners get to spend quality time with family.
“Every day I’m coming to work with my family and it’s hard to let each other down when we know that the other person’s depending on you,” said Corvell.