Couple opens 1st Clean Eatz franchise in metro area

Trace Crossings residents Steven and Katie Lee have brought a new healthy food option to Hoover.

The couple in mid-August opened a new meal planning service and café in The Village at Brock’s Gap called Clean Eatz.

A franchise of a Wilmington, North Carolina-based company, it offers healthy meals to go as well as a dine-in café.

It’s called Clean Eatz because it only uses “clean” ingredients, Steven Lee said. Meals don’t include salt or processed ingredients, and they aren’t cook with processed oils. Clean Eatz doesn’t offer soft drinks and has no fryer in the kitchen, he said.

The goal is to provide people the convenience of prepared meals that properly control food portions with a balance of proteins, carbs and fats. The business is also designed to eliminate people having to guess whether what they’re eating is healthy and help them avoid the temptation to choose less healthy options due to a busy lifestyle and lack of preparation.

“We want to help people live long, healthy lives,” Katie Lee said.

People can sign up to receive an email every Thursday that shows menu selections for the following week, with menu items changing weekly, the Lees said. There are five lunch or dinner options and one breakfast option each week. People choose which meals they want and how many, then pick up the meals on Sunday or Monday, the Lees said. There’s no subscription that requires people to order the same number of meals each week.

However, the meals are less expensive if bought in bulk. Prices range from $38 for five meals ($7.60 per meal) to $128 for 21 meals ($6.10 per meal). Most of the meals are portioned for individual servings, but Clean Eatz also offers grab-and-go frozen meals for families.

One of the key features of the café is that it allows customers to build their own bowls.

Customers choose a base (brown rice, quinoa kale blend, sweet potato chunks or protein noodles), a protein (chicken, salmon, shrimp, shredded beef, black bean burger or bison), up to three vegetables, a sauce and a spice.

“You can have a different combination every single day and not get tired of it,” Steven Lee said.

The café also offers salads, burgers, wraps, flatbread sandwiches, smoothies, apple slices with a peanut butter cup, veggie cups, sweet potato fries, “good for you” nachos, boneless wings, buffalo cauliflower, smoothies, fruit-infused water and unsweet tea.

“It’s a lifestyle — just eating clean,” Katie Lee said.

Steven Lee has been the head trainer for Burn Boot Camp just two doors down from Clean Eatz for 2½ years. He studied exercise science at Missouri State University and worked as a trainer in Atlanta for a year before moving to the Birmingham area to work with Burn Boot Camp in Hoover, where he met Katie.

Katie grew up in Oneonta and graduated from the University of North Alabama with a bachelor’s degree in business, with a concentration in hospitality, in 2014. She has been working in marketing for iHeartMedia for about six years.

The couple was introduced to Clean Eatz when Steven went to compete in an athletic competition in Charlotte at the end of 2019. There was a Clean Eatz across the street from the Burn Boot Camp, where he ordered healthy meals to eat in the hotel, and they fell in love with the concept.

They started exploring the concept of a franchise in April 2020 and made the decision to proceed.

One reason the concept hit home with them was because people in both of their families have dealt with serious health issues, Katie said. Her Dad had triple heart bypass surgery and almost died, and around the same time her grandmother was diagnosed with cancer with only a few weeks to live, she said.

She believes if her dad had had a long-term plan of eating healthy meals, he might have been able to avoid his heart issues, she said. And if their families need something like this, others do, too, she said.

To sign up for their weekly menu email, email lee@cleaneatz.com. To find out more about their business, go to cleaneatz.com.