When a Virginia college student’s grandmother was having complications from Alzheimer’s disease, he cooked for her.
He then realized there was a need for healthy food for seniors and decided to fill that void.
Zachary Suh, a 20-year-old rising junior at George Mason University, has always been interested in cooking and creating healthy meals.
“I’ve cooked at home since I was 6 or 7, and a lot of times cooking with my family, which was a lot of fun,” he said.
He worked in restaurants and was a line cook by the time he was a senior in high school.
After his grandmother was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disorder, he decided to use his passion not only to help his grandmother eat healthier, but find a way to help others navigate cooking for their specific dietary needs.
“I talk to them, get their needs, get their food preferences, and then I send that over to our dietitian. We curate a menu,” Suh said.
After that, the service sends a personal chef to create about a week’s worth of meals and a plan moving forward to help seniors eat healthier.
Suh created ElderlyEats and put the idea into the annual student startup competition held by GMU’s Costello College of Business. He was shocked when he won both the competition and the popular idea vote, winning $7,000.
Since then, he has worked over the last several months to create a website and launch the service. This year, ElderlyEats has created more than 100 meals for seniors in the D.C. area.
“I’m trying to create a better food care system for these elders. And so that’s what we’ve created here,” Suh said. “I’m pretty trained on cooking. And then we have a registered dietitian, and most importantly, we work really hard to make sure all those meals are catered toward the elderly needs.”
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