Every Great Meal Begins with an Even Greater Story

And that story starts with a broken hand. Founder and Head Chef John Pistacchio grew up an athlete, playing competitive volleyball and developing a life-long weightlifting routine as a teenager. Fast forward to 2015, and you’d find John in school at William Paterson University studying exercise physiology and sports nutrition. During this time, one quick misstep down the stairs fractured his scaphoid, putting him out of the gym indefinitely. Over the following year, he lost his routine, fell into a sedentary lifestyle, and gained over 65lbs. Then, one day, climbing the same set of stairs that took him out, he woke up, and realizing how out of breath he was motivated his shift back to an active lifestyle.

For the next two years, John worked hard in the gym, at school, and in the kitchen-he taught himself how to cook in order to lose the weight and keep it off, losing over 80lbs in the process. Seeing his progress, his friends joked “since you’re the Ab Whisperer now, can you cook for me too?” and one client lead to another, until John had a book of business too big to handle on his own. Partnering with a good friend, the two revamped the business, renaming it as “Portioned”, and expanded their ever-increasing customer base to include larger contracts such as Rutgers University sports teams and Atlantic Health Systems hospitals. Unfortunately, with the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 shutting down schools, hospitals and more, the business was forced to close.

Fast forward to April 2021, after John and his now wife, Elise, met and started dating, and found themselves face first with an opportunity. Elise had just received multiple certifications in personal training and nutrition consultation, and was applying to graduate programs in dietetics, while John was deciding his next move after Portioned closed. After toying with the idea for months, they decided to join forces and the original Ab Whisperer was reincarnated. They set off preparing and delivering meals for their customers, just the two of them in the kitchen, sometimes working 20+ hour days to get the job done. It was a tough start, as are most small businesses, but they made it through, and since then, they have fulfilled well over 10,000 orders and 150,000 meals.

Our Mission

Our mission is simple: to provide our community with protein forward, pre-portioned meals that taste really good, won’t break the bank and won’t make your ankles swell up from too much sodium. Meals that you can easily work into your personal nutrition plan, to help meet your personal goals on and off of the scale. That’s it, that’s the mission.

Our Products

As foodies, we are committed to putting out a high-quality product, and this begins with our ingredients. Head Chef and Founder John hand picks each and every ingredient used in our meals every week-we do not order from bulk purveyors or distributors to ensure peak freshness and availability. This also means that we are able to utilize higher quality ingredients such as Bell and Evans chicken breast, fresh from the fish market salmon, grass-fed flank steak, and organic products whenever possible. All of our meals are prepared from fresh, never frozen ingredients-you won’t find any premade meatballs or frozen mac and cheese here!

Speaking of meatballs, all of the bases for all ground chicken, bacon, and shrimp burgers and balls are ground in house for optimal freshness, and all meatballs and burgers are mixed, rolled, and formed by hand per John’s recipes. Aside from pasta, tortillas, and English muffins, we make everything in house, including all sauces and dressings.

Each component of every meal is weighed and measured at 4 different checkpoints throughout out the cooking/plating process: pre-prepped weight, prepped weight, cooked weight, and portioned weight. This allows us to have as much control as possible to ensure consistency across all meals.