Plated

Company Background

‍

Plated is on a mission to make it easier for Americans to eat and live better. By delivering fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and easy-to-follow recipes, they offer a seamless, enjoyable cooking experience. After raising multiple rounds of venture capital and gaining national visibility on Shark Tank, Plated committed to building its software platform aggressively as a core competitive advantage.

With a fast-growing team of 175—including over 20 digital product team members—Plated is scaling rapidly and is deeply invested in maintaining strong Agile engineering practices as the business grows.

‍

The Challenge

‍

As Plated's product took off, the engineering team was hiring quickly and shipping new features at a rapid pace. But with fast success came the accumulation of tech debt and the natural growing pains of a scaling team. Much of the development team was junior or mid-level, and many members were new to both the company and each other—leading to challenges in technical decision-making and collaboration.

Plated needed experienced technical mentorship to help the team evolve beyond internal debate, establish structure, and make confident architectural decisions.

‍

“We had a team that was largely junior and mid-level developers, and most of our team was new to Plated... We lacked authority and someone who could actively participate in technical debate... Then Stride came in and stopped the endless debate.”
— Josh Hix, CEO, Plated

‍

The Solution

‍

Stride embedded a pair of seasoned senior Agile developers directly into the Plated team. These engineers didn’t just bring best practices—they became part of the culture, working side-by-side with internal teams to guide decision-making, improve collaboration, and build trust.

‍

Stride's focus was to strengthen Plated's underlying processes while supporting its growth. We worked with the team to:

• Implement scalable engineering practices and workflows
  
  
• Improve clarity and prioritization across the product roadmap
  
  
• Support continuous deployment
  
  
• Provide real-time mentorship during technical debates
  
  
• Increase visibility and transparency across the development process
  
  

By balancing technical leadership with cultural integration, Stride became a trusted partner—helping Plated stay focused, aligned, and productive through a high-growth phase.

‍

The Business Outcomes

‍

Stride helped Plated bring structure and clarity to a rapidly scaling engineering organization. By embedding Agile expertise at a pivotal time, we ensured:

• Faster, more confident technical decisions
  
  
• Well-tested, refactored code that supported scale
  
  
• Greater team alignment and less internal friction
  
  
• Improved visibility into ongoing work and priorities
  
  

Most importantly, Plated’s development team was empowered to succeed—both inside the codebase and in how they worked together. With Stride's guidance, the team gained momentum, clarity, and a process that could scale with their ambition.

‍