Vale Food Company is the latest healthy fast casual food craze to hit the First Coast. The restaurant is known throughout the Sunshine State for its made-to-order protein bowls.
Owner Sunny Ilyas is a former medical student turned entrepreneur. While juggling three jobs at Florida State University, he struggled with finding healthy food options, so he decided to do something about it.
“I really wanted to solve a problem of making healthy food not only delicious, affordable, convenient but really try and showcase that it had variety too. A lot of people didn't really have that in the market.”
Ilyas started out with meal prepping his healthy food creations for friends and faculty on campus. That was back in 2016. He now has four restaurants across Florida including Gainesville, Tallahassee and Tampa.
"The best way for me to describe Vale is to imagine if Whole Foods and Chipotle had a baby and that’s a pretty funny way to describe it you know," he said. "You can come in go down our line, build your bases, veggies and proteins."
Sunny added that the ancho-pulled chicken and the turkey spinach feta meatballs are a popular favorite.
Aside from the bowls, there’s also avocado toast options and açaí bowls.
"It’s loaded with antioxidants, it’s non-dairy organic the product that we use, we top with granola and three toppings of your choice," he said.