Mikhal Alster

From Snowboarding to Personalized Nutrition

My name is Mikhal Alster. I am the founder of kikfit™, a personalized healthy-meal service that helps people use food as a tool to achieve specific goals in health, sports, and work.

When I was younger, I was a snowboarder and traveled extensively. Sport shaped my attitude toward nutrition: I always paid close attention to what I ate and how it affected my body.

I earned my first money at the age of 21 or 22 as a writer for a skiing and snowboarding magazine.

Before starting my own business, I spent six or seven years living abroad, including in the United States. When I returned to Poland, I did not know what I wanted to do. Two close friends of mine worked in the restaurant and nightclub industry and offered me a job handling purchasing for their restaurants. That was how I gained my first substantial experience in the restaurant business.

At 26, I decided to open my own restaurant. I wanted to create a sports-oriented venue specializing in healthy food. We started with a small restaurant, which became successful fairly quickly, so we opened a second location.

Over time, I realized that the restaurant model did not align with what I wanted to build. I was trying to offer high quality while remaining accessible to a broad audience. As a result, the product ended up somewhere between a restaurant experience and takeaway food. In 2019, I decided to close the restaurants.

At the same time, the meal-delivery market was beginning to grow. Poland had a distinctive delivery model: customers received a varied menu at their door every day. We entered this market at an early stage and began developing kikfit™ in that direction.

To me, healthy eating today is not a one-size-fits-all formula. It should be tailored to the individual and their goals. Some people need nutrition to support athletic performance, others need it for their health, while some simply want to reduce the number of daily decisions they make and stay focused at work.

Respect for People as the Foundation of a Team

What key skills helped you launch the business?

I believe one of the most important skills is respecting people.

If you want people to work with you and help achieve shared goals, they need to feel respected. It does not matter whether they are an entrepreneur, a manager, or the person washing dishes in the kitchen. They need to feel that, to you, they are more than an employee performing a particular function.

COVID Forced Us to Move Online

What crises has your business faced, and how did you overcome them?

COVID was the biggest crisis we faced. Before the pandemic, many of our sales were made over the phone. But when lockdown began, it became clear that without a strong online presence, the business could become outdated and disappear.

I was extremely worried during the first three months because sales fell sharply and the future was uncertain. We needed to build a better online store quickly and make the customer journey to purchase much simpler.

I managed to find a partner—an IT company that helped us set up online sales—and one of its representatives later joined our business. This experience did more than help us survive the crisis: it enabled us to reach an entirely new level.

A Premium Product Should Not Compete on Price

Which decisions proved most effective in driving the company’s growth?

One of our most important decisions was not to reduce the price of our product at a time when the entire industry was trying to attract customers with promotional codes and discounts.

If you are building a premium brand, you cannot constantly compete on price. We maintained a high price point and focused on making sure customers could see that it was justified.

Our prices are roughly twice those of our competitors. But we offer something that is difficult to replicate: a personalized nutrition plan, ongoing feedback, and the ability to adjust a client’s diet in line with their goals.

That is why our product is not just for wealthy people. It is for those who take their nutrition seriously and are prepared to invest in results.

The Costliest Mistake Is Hiring the Wrong Person

Which mistake do you now consider your most valuable learning experience?

I have made many mistakes, but one of the most important involved hiring.

I rushed the decision when hiring a head chef. The candidate had won a popular television show, had ten years of experience, and knew a great deal about healthy cooking. I was convinced she was a perfect fit for kikfit™.

My father, who has 30 more years of entrepreneurial experience than I do, met her once and said she would not last a month. I did not understand why. A month later, it became clear that her expectations of the role were completely different. She did not want to work ten hours a day, six days a week.

I had already restructured part of the company around her, only to have to rebuild everything again a month later. After that, I promised myself I would never again hire someone based solely on a first impression. You need to thoroughly check the person, their experience, and their employment history.

From Magazine Writing to the First $100,000 Through Catering

How did you earn your first $100?

I earned my first $100 at the age of 21 or 22 as a writer for a skiing and snowboarding magazine.

How did you earn your first $1,000?

I began earning my first substantial income after starting my own company. At 26, we opened a healthy-food restaurant.

How did you earn your first $10,000?

I earned my first $10,000 in the restaurant business. I was around 26 or 27, and we were already expanding our restaurants.

How did you earn your first $100,000?

I earned my first $100,000 by growing kikfit™ and moving from the restaurant model into catering.

How I Can Help: Experience I Can Share

Premium Food Businesses, Polish Business Culture, and Building a Brand Without Discounts

I can share my experience in building and scaling a premium food business, personalized nutrition, sales automation, and the digital transformation of a traditional business.

I can also help entrepreneurs who work—or plan to work—in Warsaw better understand Polish business culture and the nuances of building professional relationships.

Another area I can advise on is building a premium brand without discounts or price dumping.

Personalization and Digitalization as the Foundation of the Business

From your experience, how can a business be systematized?

In our business, a systematic approach is built around product personalization, technology, and processes. It is important not merely to deliver prepared meals, but to understand each client’s specific goal and tailor their nutrition accordingly.

Sales automation and the digitalization of a traditional business are equally important. Moving from an offline model to online sales was one of the key stages in kikfit™’s development.

From a Premium Product to Fivefold Growth

From your experience, how can a business double in one year?

Our business doubled every year for four consecutive years, from 2020 through 2024. One of the main drivers was establishing a strong online presence and developing our online store and digital sales.

I also believe it is important not to cut prices simply to acquire customers quickly. A premium brand must create value that justifies its price.

kikfit™’s next goal is to grow fivefold, expand production capacity, and allow customers to order individual dishes rather than only complete meal plans.