Mile High Meal Prep: Strength in the Kitchen and Beyond

Mile High Meal Prep: Strength in the Kitchen and Beyond

Kristin Denehy was 52 and living a full life in Parker in February 2024 when her life took a very unexpected turn. She had gone to visit her doctor after noticing issues with the breast implants that she had had for many years. During that visit, her doctor discovered a lump and identified Stage 1 breast cancer. She had missed just one mammogram the year before – one small delay that Kristin never thought would lead to news no one is ever ready to hear.

With a strong family history of breast cancer, her mother having battled the disease and her aunt undergoing treatment at the time of her diagnosis, Kristin made the proactive decision to undergo a double mastectomy.

But when she woke up from the surgery, everything changed.

Her surgeon sat beside her and said that she was so sorry: What they thought was Stage 1 was actually Stage 4 cancer. That scans, even the best ones, don’t always tell the whole story. The cancer had spread to her lymph nodes and to her ovaries. Soon after her mastectomy, Kristin began an exhausting course of treatment including a hysterectomy, followed by many grueling rounds of chemotherapy that today has numbered over 56.

Through it all, she found strength in her family, her incredible husband, Rob, and three children, including a newly married daughter. But Kristin also learned the quiet truth of cancer: some days, the hardest part wasn’t the medicine. It was the exhaustion from being strong and the mental drain from trying to remain positive.

Before the Diagnosis: The Birth of a Business

Long before cancer entered the picture, Kristin had built something meaningful in her community. In 2019, while working a demanding corporate job with a long commute, she began meal prepping on Sundays – simple, healthy meals for her family while she served as a YMCA director in Arvada.

She posted her prep sessions on social media and found that people were curious. They wanted what she was making. With a great deal of support, Kristin talked to Rob about turning the idea into a business, and he gave her one year – until he retired from the Air Force – to make it real.

She didn’t waste any time. Kristin quit her job and went to work for a competitor for eight months, learning the business inside and out: what worked, what didn’t, why some shops closed, what mattered to customers, and what she wanted her approach to be. She decided she didn’t want a storefront, but to lower overhead expenses and work out of a licensed commercial kitchen.

And so Mile High Meal Prep was born: macro-balanced, chef-driven meals that tasted good and helped people feel good. A menu that is fresh, never frozen, with at least ten menu items each week. Menus are released on Thursdays with Sunday and Monday deliveries, so families can start their week with meals ready to go.

With this model, Kristin built the company one meal at a time. Mile High Meal Prep benefitted from the COVID lockdown, when suddenly families who couldn’t go out to eat wanted fresh, convenient meals delivered to their homes. The business expanded from Parker and Aurora to Lone Tree and Highlands Ranch.

Partnerships blossomed, like a collaboration with Orangetheory Fitness, which helped get their name out in the community, and Parker Pour House, who continues to provide a location for customers to pick up their meals on Sundays and Mondays.

By 2021, Kristin’s meals were fueling Denver Broncos players including Justin Strnad, Nik Bonitto, and Delarrin Turner-Yell among them. Momentum was growing and business was booming.

And then came the cancer diagnosis.

A New Kind of Purpose

When cancer upended her life, Kristin didn’t walk away from the business she built. Instead, she refined it. She scaled back where she needed to and refocused her market to only Douglas County. She also leaned on her small but mighty team of five employees, many of them family. And as she fought for her health, her purpose only deepened.

Nutrition wasn’t just her business anymore. It became her advocacy. Her food philosophy reflected her journey – strong, balanced, and real. Meals based around high amounts of protein, whole ingredients, colorful vegetables, fun flavors, no gimmicks, no fad diets. Just clean, structured meals built for families, athletes, and anyone who needed fuel to get through their week.

Kristin still fights every day. But she also builds every day. Because Mile High Meal Prep isn’t just a company she created – it’s a testament to resilience, family, community, and the belief that caring for others still matters, even while fighting for yourself.

Today, Kristin is on a clinical trial of a medication for advanced metastatic breast cancer. She has become a fierce advocate for self‑checks, in addition to regularly scheduled screenings because she thinks that one missed mammogram could have made a huge difference to her. As Kristin wakes up every day ready to battle, she proves that strength comes not from perfection but from showing up, again and again, with heart.