The brainchild of two Cape Town locals, JarBar is a nifty little service whereby you hop on over to the website, choose from one of the two menu choices of the day, pay via your method of choice and on the day of delivery your healthy, wholesome and fresh jar will be dropped of between 08h00 and 12h00 just in time for lunch. Making good choices couldn’t be easier and we can vouch for these creations – they really are delicious. We chatted to Tanya and Ella, who told us more about the business.

Where did you get the inspiration to start up Jar Bar?
JarBar was born of our daily struggle to find healthy, convenient and affordable food. Both coming from busy agency backgrounds and being very health conscious, this often meant that lunch time was filled with frustration as most business areas don’t offer free-range meat options, the healthy options tend to be pricey, and the vegetarian options are often very limited. 

It was this frustration that prompted us to start our own business that not only makes healthy and delicious food, but also offers daily deliveries. In addition to being healthy and convenient, JarBar also focuses on sustainability by serving all food in reusable jars and only using meat that is ethically sourced. JarBar caters for everyone – meat lovers, vegetarians, vegans and health nuts. 

Why is it important to you to use free-range and organic produce?
The animals! The ethical treatment of animals is of huge importance to us. Being a huge animal lover, I strongly believe that every living creature has the right to a good life and a humane slaughter.

Where are you getting your meat and veggies from?
We use a combination of suppliers for our meat, free-range meat is not always easy to come by and it often depends on who has availability of what. Some of the suppliers we use are: Carol from Exceptional Foods and Selwyn from Sonofabutcher. For our fresh produce, a lot of our herbs and salad leaves come straight from our garden. For everything else, we use The Green Scene.

What’s your favourite jar combination so far?
Hmmm…now this is a tricky question as I have so many. At the moment I’d have to say the Butternut Betty is my favourite. Roasted butternut, macadamia nuts and Roma tomatoes, feta, lentils and rocket with classic dressing. The combination of these flavours just works for me – it’s really simple but also delicious and wholesome! I also really love the Honey Joy: Cajun-spiced honey-glazed free-range chicken, red apple slices, cucumber ribbons, fresh coriander, mixed seeds, rocket & avo with a honey-mustard dressing. This is the complete opposite of the Butternut Betty in that it’s complex and has a large variety of ingredients but it’s absolutely delicious!

What are your plans for the future?
Growth! We’ve had so many requests from people in various parts of Cape Town and even South Africa asking for JarBar, and that is ultimately where we want to go. We want to take our healthy food and sustainable concept to as many places as we possibly can. We’d also love to start our own organic farm where we can not only create jobs within our community, but also use the produce in our soups and salads. It would be amazing to be able to say that almost everything used in our jars comes straight from our very own farm directly to your door!

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