Fresh, never frozen
We cook to the delivery run, not to a freezer. Meals are cooked, chilled and delivered within days, which is why they taste like something made in a kitchen rather than reheated from storage.
About us
More than twenty years of cooking real food, in one Melbourne kitchen
Hearty Health has been making fresh ready meals in Melbourne's north since 2000 — for families juggling too much, for older Australians who'd rather stay in their own home, and for the Meals on Wheels programs, aged care homes and hospitals that feed thousands of people a week.
2000
Cooking since
29
Meals on the current menu
6 weeks
Menu rotation cycle
0
Meals that see a freezer
Our story
Hearty Health started in 2000 with a frustration that hasn't changed much since: the ready meals you could buy were frozen months earlier, over-salted, and nothing like the food you would cook at home. Kate Chasteau thought people deserved better than that, particularly the people relying on someone else to feed them.
So we built a kitchen around the opposite idea. Cook in small batches to real recipes. Chill it, don't freeze it. Deliver it within days, while it still tastes like it was made by a person. That decision makes everything harder — the planning, the logistics, the shelf life — and it is the single reason our customers stay with us.
Word travelled through the community programs first. Meals on Wheels coordinators across Melbourne's north started ordering, then the aged care homes, then the hospitals. They brought requirements a home cook never thinks about: texture-modified meals for residents who struggle to swallow, low-salt options for cardiac patients, documented allergen control, a batch code on every tray. Meeting those standards made the food we send to households better too.
Today the kitchen at Campbellfield, VIC 3061 cooks the same meals for both. The tray of cottage pie that goes out on a Meals on Wheels run is the tray that arrives at a family's front door in Ringwood — same recipe, same batch, same standards. We think that's the honest way to do it.
The story so far
2000
The kitchen opens
Kate Chasteau starts Hearty Health with a simple idea: proper, home-style meals for people who can't cook for themselves, made fresh rather than frozen.
The early years
Community meals
Local Meals on Wheels programs across Melbourne's north become regular customers, and the kitchen learns to cook at volume without losing the home-cooked character.
Growing
Aged care & hospitals
Aged care groups and health services join the delivery runs, bringing dietary and texture-modified requirements that shape the menu we cook today.
Today
Campbellfield
A HACCP-controlled commercial kitchen supplying households, care providers, hospitals and cafés — from a single box of meals to container loads.
What we hold to
Six things we have not been willing to trade away, no matter how much easier it would make the week.
Chefs and nutritionists, together
Our chefs make the food taste like your grandmother's cooking. Our nutritionists make sure the salt, protein and portion sizes stack up. Neither gets to overrule the other.
A menu that keeps moving
A 6-week rotating cycle covering beef, chicken, lamb, fish, vegetarian, pasta, soup — traditional Australian favourites alongside international dishes, so nobody is eating the same fortnight on repeat.
Food safety, without excuses
Every batch is cooked under a documented HACCP program, with temperatures recorded, allergens controlled and a batch code on every tray that traces back to its ingredients and suppliers.
Dietary needs are normal here
Gluten free, dairy free, vegetarian, low salt and diabetic friendly run right through the menu — not tucked away in a token section at the end of it.
Local, and staying that way
We buy from Australian growers, butchers and fishers where we can, we employ locally, and we cook everything in one Melbourne kitchen rather than shipping it in.
Feeding the community, not just the fridge
A large share of what leaves our kitchen each week never reaches a supermarket shelf. It goes to the volunteer drivers of Whitehorse, Manningham and Knox Meals on Wheels, to residents at Mercy Place, Arcare and Bupa aged care homes, and to patients at Doncaster Private Hospital and Eastern Health services.
Those programs keep people eating well in their own homes for longer, and they run on tight budgets and tighter schedules. Getting the meals right — on the day, at the right temperature, with the right dietary codes on the label — matters more than anything else we do.
Also on the menu
The same kitchen supplies cafés and resellers who want proper meals without a brigade of chefs, participants living independently.
For business & care →Come and taste the difference
Have a look at what our chefs are cooking this cycle. No contract, no minimum order, and free delivery across Melbourne's north on orders over $60.