Bite Club: Santa Barbara’s New Gourmet Food Service

Rooted in sustainability, community, and seasonality, Santa Barbara has a new gourmet food service that brings chef-crafted, locally sourced meals straight to your door. Local chefs Isa Bourbon and Rachel Hunter’s Bite Club brings a fresh approach to dining, where high-quality meals made with local ingredients meet ecofriendly practices. 

Bite Club came into fruition when Bourbon and Hunter joined forces. Having both been private chefs for years — Bourbon also used to run Wishbone Wellbeing, a bone broth business — they were doing a lot of private sector work. “We wanted to turn outward toward our community,” Bourbon said. “We were both very excited about supporting a larger number of people versus just one or two families or individuals. That was really exciting to us, and it’s been really fun.”

There are two meal plans offered: an individual plan (“The Me Plan”) bringing one serving in the form of three dinners, three lunches, and a snack for $225 a week, or the family plan (“The We Plan”), which brings four servings per meal for three dinners and a snack for $450 per week. 

Every Wednesday, members receive a cooler bag with freshly made meals packed in heat-safe glassware along with reheating instructions. The following week, they leave the containers outside for pickup, and Bite Club switches them out for new meals. This system emphasizes no single-use plastic, keeping sustainability at the forefront of the service.

Menus change weekly and always reflect what’s in season at the local farmers’ markets in Santa Barbara. According to Bourbon and Hunter, one meal looks like a farmers’ market butter squash and spinach lasagna with a side of market salad, and another could look like balsamic basil chicken thighs that are crisped and served with a side of farmers’ market zucchini, red onions, and some end-of-season cherry tomatoes.

“We’re incredibly seasonal,” Hunter said. “What we see and experience in both the weather and a local farmers’ market is where we pull inspiration for our menus…. It’s less about one single dish but more about the ingredients that go into it.”

One of the values of Bite Club is a distaste for restrictive diet culture that drives the wellness world. “[Hunter] and I are both deeply passionate about eating without the dogma and pressure of diet culture,” Bourbon said. “We have gluten-free options and dairy-free options. We’ll have some vegetarian options, some pescatarian options, but we’re not any specific diet. We want you to feel well-fed and to trust that the food is high-quality and local but also that you’re not going to feel hungry at the end. It’s not about restriction; it’s about feeling abundant.”

“What we’re encouraging is for people to find balance,” Hunter added. “And through balance find sustainability, not only environmentally by accessing what’s local and available, but also sustainability in how you nourish yourself.”

Beyond flavor, Bite Club is about connection. Hunter talked about the history of sitting around a table and sharing a meal. “In a world with an epidemic in loneliness” she said, “mealtime is really becoming a lost art, and so, for me, food has always been at the heart of every community and at the heart of most instances of connection and sharing stories.” For example, she went on, with the family plan, knowing that you already have three meals cooked for you gives the opportunity to create a space for connection. The same goes for individuals and the connection with yourself of feeding and nourishing yourself as well as prioritizing the food that you are putting in your body.

Looking ahead, Hunter and Bourbon hope to grow meaningfully without losing the intimacy of their club. “Restaurants and the food industry can be very militaristic and male-dominated,” Bourbon said. “We want it to feel intuitive, peaceful, and nurturing… We’re not looking to become a huge business. We’re looking to have a high-touch, concierge level of service for a select number of people that are really brought into what we’re providing.”

Hunter added that outside of that, the chefs hope to venture into new additions: newsletters, recipes, and even dinner parties a couple of times a year to bring the club together.

For more information or to sign up for one of the available plans, visit biteclubsb.com. Bite Club is offering Indy readers a special $50 discount off of their first order with the code INDE50.