If you’ve tried to place an order for our salmon meals or sample pack, you will notice they are backordered and will not ship until May! We have officially sold out of the salmon cases and sample packs; inventory levels are VERY low on the quinoa and chicken meals. If you want them in the next 10-12 weeks, I encourage you to buy now.

Our community has spoken loud and clear that people with feeding tubes deserve real food.  I’m so excited to see how our feeding tube community, medical professionals and nutritionists have embraced Real Food Blends. We are heading back into production in April and will be producing a much larger amount of meals, now that we know you all want them!

As the CEO of Real Food Blends, selling out makes me happy for the business. As a mom of a tube-fed kid, I know how disheartening it can be to not have easy access to real food. Please know we’re doing everything we can to get these meals out quickly. In the meantime, we will be working on making the insurance process easier for our customers, having our meals available at hospitals, and adding new meals / products to make life with a feeding tube a little easier.

You will be able to reserve cases of Real Food Blends meals now for shipment in May with the same promotional $8 flat rate shipping. This will guarantee that you will get the meals as soon as possible.

Thank you again for your support and patience.

Julie

We are pleased to announce that Real Food Blends™ products have been approved by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) for code B4149.  The code B4149 applies to enteral formula, manufactured blenderized natural foods with intact nutrients, includes proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, may include fiber, administered through an enteral feeding tube, 100 calories = 1 unit.

So what does this mean to you? 

Having a HCPCS code does not imply automatic reimbursement but it does indicate recognition of the product as appropriate for consideration for reimbursement in the tube feeding category. This is a first step toward gaining other insurance coverage for our meals, which we know is so important to many tube-fed people.    This  HCPCS code is used by hospitals,  long term care institutions, and home care businesses for medical reimbursement requests. Other payer sources may look to the HCPCS coding as a “stamp of approval.” While the code itself does not guarantee payment, it hopefully makes it easier to gain consideration  We are continuing to seek additional agency approvals to help facilitate other providers consideration for reimbursement coverage. Stay tuned here for more updates on insurance coverage & reimbursement.

When seeking reimbursement be sure to work with your provider representative to understand your eligibility and required documentation. See our reimbursement page for hints and tips regarding insurance and reimbursement.

And reminding us all that Real Food Blends is not just for kids:

Thank you to everyone that has shared their pictures, stories and smiles with us. Please share yours as well either on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or plain ol’ fashioned email to julie@realfoodblends.com.

Thank you all for your patience and words of encouragement to help us bring Real Food Blends to this point. I am so happy to announce that the store is now open and accepting orders at RealFoodBlends.com.   And as a mom of a tube-fed kiddo, I can’t tell you how happy I am to be able to provide these meals to all of you.

A few important tidbits for you to know:

–       Shipping: Orders will ship in 3-4 days, we can only ship in the United States for now and your entire order will ship for just $8.

–       Order Limits: We have limited each order to 2 cases of each variety (so 4 total cases now).  I wish we could send everyone as much as they want right away, but as a new company, this is our first  production run and we want to make sure as many people as possible can start enjoying our meals. As we gather feedback from each of you, we will move forward on to full scale production. (Remember, the meals are shelf-stable for 3 years!)

–       About the Chicken meal: UPDATE 2/5/14 You can now reserve 2 cases of the chicken meals. These will be sent to you by March 15th – still a flat rate of $8 for shipping on your entire order! [The chicken meal will not be available for purchase for a couple more weeks. (Long story short: USDA approval on the packaging took a long time!  Everything is approved now and printing of the cartons will happen next week.)]

–       More coming! We have already scheduled our next production run, but it will take us at least 10-12 weeks before we can start shipping more meals.  We are working as hard as possible to estimate demand, but we do expect to sell out of our meals quickly and there will be a delay before more meals are available.  Thanks in advance for your continued patience and support as we move toward full-scale production.

A few people have asked about the delay from when we had the meals made to actually being able to open the store.  Our meals were made at an FDA & USDA regulated facility and we felt it safest to then ship the meals to food-grade fulfillment centers to be packed and shipped to customers.  Believe me, I would have turned the store on, piled them in my garage and packed the boxes myself if I could have!!

Again, thank again for your support.   After we deliver these first meals, we’ll be moving quickly to full-scale production and we’re excited to be able to have these readily available to all of you. We look forward to getting your feedback.  Please stay tuned to email and social media, where we’ll keep you in the loop every step of the way.

Thanks and enjoy!

Julie Bombacino

PS – If you want to see our meals in action, this video shows me feeding my son AJ, our Chief Inspiration Officer,  the quinoa, kale & hemp meal: