The Bayou City has its own Blue Apron-style startup with locally sourced produce. Courtesy of The Blonde Pantry

Marla Murphy, a local entrepreneur and nutritionist, has helped Houstonians make healthy decisions with her food blog and consulting company for years, but she wasn't sure she was doing enough.

"I didn't feel like I was making as big of an impact as I could have," Murphy says.

Murphy took this feeling and ran with it. She decided to relaunch her company, The Blonde Pantry, in March of last year she says to create the only local meal delivery service for the greater Houston area.

"This is a passion project to me," she says.

Growing a health foods company
While The Blonde Pantry has had meal services for a few years, Murphy says that last spring the company relaunched with a new brand and expanded product offerings.

"We are a healthy meal delivery service that offers clients vacuum sealed that meals that are prepped, weighted, marinated, and chopped," says Murphy.

The Blonde Pantry gained momentum initially from Murphy's local connections.

"I had only $3,000 in my bank account," says Murphy. "The right people came into my life at the right time."

Murphy says she was able to trade meals and barter down prices for her website, photography, and marketing to launch her company. She rented a kitchen by the hour and had little wiggle room for her profits. She credits part of the company's success to their popular Instagram page and her involvement in the Houston community.

"You can really tell we love what we do," Murphy says. "We are deep rooted in this community. I was born and raised here. My family lives here. We are growing our family here."

How it works
Murphy writes on the company's website notes that her mission is "to bring nutritious meals to busy Houston foodies who love tasty food as much as I do, but also want to be mindful of living a wholesome lifestyle."

The meal kits are ready in 10 minutes or less, Murphy says, and customers order by Thursday evenings and can either opt to have their meals delivered to their doorstep or pick up their package at The Village Gym, located off the Katy Freeway.

"We deliver everywhere within Highway 99," says Murphy, including Friendswood, Clear Lake, Dickinson, and League City."

Meals on The Blonde Pantry website include shrimp, chicken, pork, and beef skillet dishes paired with cauliflower, carrots, squash, and other fresh vegetables; fully cooked casseroles; pre-packaged salads, soups, and smoothies; hummus; breakfast muffins; and a variety of desserts including black bean brownies and flourless chocolate almond cookies.

"Our average is meal is about $10.25 a serving," says Murphy. "We try to make it something everyone can afford, whether you're a young college girl or a 60 year-old-couple."

Murphy tells InnovationMap that her team kicks into gear first thing Friday morning once all the orders are placed, then they prepare and prep on Saturday and Sunday for a Monday delivery.

"We like to source as locally as possible," says Murphy when describing her vendors. The Blonde Pantry has two full time employees, and seven part-time kitchen workers, and three contract workers for delivery.

In addition to The Blonde Pantry meal service, their website notes offerings in nutrition consulting for corporations, groups, and individuals.

"It's not about selling meals and moving on, I want this to be a lifestyle company that is really founded and has deep roots in Houston," says Murphy.

Murphy tells InnovationMap that in the next year she hopes to expand into the retail space and find a bigger commercial kitchen to function as their own. She also hopes to partner with companies outside of food and continue to nourish lives in someway.

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Oxy's $1.3B Texas carbon capture facility on track to​ launch this year

gearing up

Houston-based Occidental Petroleum is gearing up to start removing CO2 from the atmosphere at its $1.3 billion direct air capture (DAC) project in the Midland-Odessa area.

Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental, said during the company’s recent second-quarter earnings call that the Stratos project — being developed by carbon capture and sequestration subsidiary 1PointFive — is on track to begin capturing CO2 later this year.

“We are immensely proud of the achievements to date and the exceptional record of safety performance as we advance towards commercial startup,” Hollub said of Stratos.

Carbon dioxide captured by Stratos will be stored underground or be used for enhanced oil recovery.

Oxy says Stratos is the world’s largest DAC facility. It’s designed to pull 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air and either store it underground or use it for enhanced oil recovery. Enhanced oil recovery extracts oil from unproductive reservoirs.

Most of the carbon credits that’ll be generated by Stratos through 2030 have already been sold to organizations such as Airbus, AT&T, All Nippon Airways, Amazon, the Houston Astros, the Houston Texans, JPMorgan, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks and TD Bank.

The infrastructure business of investment manager BlackRock has pumped $550 million into Stratos through a joint venture with 1PointFive.

As it gears up to kick off operations at Stratos, Occidental is also in talks with XRG, the energy investment arm of the United Arab Emirates-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., to form a joint venture for the development of a DAC facility in South Texas. Occidental has been awarded up to $650 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to build the South Texas DAC hub.

The South Texas project, to be located on the storied King Ranch, will be close to industrial facilities and energy infrastructure along the Gulf Coast. Initially, the roughly 165-square-mile site is expected to capture 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, with the potential to store up to 3 billion metric tons of CO2 per year.

“We believe that carbon capture and DAC, in particular, will be instrumental in shaping the future energy landscape,” Hollub said.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

New app by Sports Illustrated grants access to 700 sports courts in Houston

Goal!

A new sports center booking app CatchCorner, powered by Sports Illustrated, enables sports enthusiasts in Houston to seamlessly secure a spot for a quick game without membership fees.

It soft-launched in Houston this spring and, according to co-founder and chief operating officer Maya Azouri, has been a huge success.

"The Houston expansion has been jaw-dropping," she said. "Up until now, CatchCorner’s launch in New York City had been our most successful market, but Houston has launched on par with it."

Within a 30-day period this summer, over 30,000 users join the app, Azouri noted, adding that the app would include 700 unique recreational spaces users can choose from in the city.

"There’s a real sports culture here, with athletes of all levels from casual weekend players to competitive amateurs and even pros. The diversity of the sports community, combined with the number of high-quality facilities across the city, makes it a perfect fit for CatchCorner," she said.

CatchCorner in Houston offers bookings for basketball, volleyball, soccer, pickleball, padel, baseball, badminton, and tennis, with plans to include golf simulators and ice rink sports soon. The Zone Sports, Toros HTX, PAC Gym, and Houston Pickleball Center are among the most popular venues.

Using the app is a snap. Once you pick your sport, venues with available slots are listed including distance from you with the booking schedules in the results so there are no surprises. The slots can go fast, so occasional error messages pop up when trying to book, but it's otherwise a three-click process. CatchCorner also helpfully includes a picture of the facilities while booking.

CatchCorner announced Google integration in June that lets users book through the app directly from searches when they look up specific venues. This is slightly less intuitive to use than the app, but it does ultimately work in both mobile and desktops versions. Either way, it greatly streamlines the booking process for people who just want to schedule a quick pickup game somewhere.

"It’s especially useful for casual players or people who want to organize something on short notice," said Azouri. "Whether it’s a weekend basketball run, a weekday futsal match, or a spontaneous pickleball game with friends, CatchCorner makes it easy to coordinate without the usual logistical headaches.

"Some feedback here has been that we’re like 'Expedia for sports.' It’s because booking a flight online is that easy, booking your next game or workout should be just as simple."

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.