How CI Lifestyle Meals Acquires New Customers at $25 CPA with a 4.5x ROAS
A Portland-based meal prep company driving efficient new customer acquisition through targeted paid social campaigns that exclude all previous purchasers.
Growing a Smaller Brand in a Competitive Market
CI Lifestyle Meals, founded by Chris Ideson, has been serving the Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington area for over eight years with fresh, scratch-made meals delivered twice a week. The company operates on a mission-driven model: for every 10 meals sold, one meal is donated to families in need. While the brand had built a solid local reputation, it faced the challenge every growing meal prep company encounters: how to efficiently acquire new customers at a cost that makes economic sense, without simply re-marketing to people who have already purchased.
As a smaller operation compared to some of the larger players in the meal prep space, CI Lifestyle Meals needed a paid media strategy that was both capital-efficient and focused exclusively on net-new customer growth.
Pure New Customer Acquisition
We designed a Meta Ads campaign structure with a singular focus: acquire customers who have never purchased from CI Lifestyle Meals before. This was achieved by building exclusion audiences that filtered out all previous purchasers from the targeting, ensuring that every conversion attributed to the campaign represented a genuinely new customer relationship.
This distinction is critical. Many meal prep companies report inflated ROAS numbers that include repeat purchases from existing customers. By excluding all previous purchasers, the metrics we report for CI Lifestyle Meals reflect the true cost and return of growing their customer base, which is the most valuable metric for a business focused on long-term expansion.
Efficient Growth at Scale
The campaigns delivered exceptional results across every key metric. The overall account achieved approximately 14x ROAS, while the dedicated new customer acquisition campaign, the true measure of growth, delivered a 4.52x return on ad spend.
New Customer ROAS
This is the number that matters most. A 4.52x return on ad spend, achieved exclusively on new customers who have never purchased before, means CI Lifestyle Meals is generating $4.52 in revenue for every $1 spent on acquisition. At a $25 cost per new customer, the lifetime value math is overwhelmingly positive. These customers will continue to reorder week after week, making the initial acquisition cost a fraction of their total value to the business.
The Lifetime Value Equation
Meal prep is a subscription-style business. Customers who order once tend to reorder weekly, creating a compounding return on the initial acquisition investment. When CI Lifestyle Meals acquires a new customer at $25, that customer's lifetime value will typically be many multiples of that initial cost, especially given the brand's strong retention driven by quality, convenience, and their community-focused mission.
The 4.52x ROAS on new customer campaigns represents only the first-purchase return. The true ROI, factored over months of repeat orders, is significantly higher. This is what makes the $25 CPA not just acceptable, but exceptional, it is the entry point to a long-term customer relationship that compounds in value over time.
What This Campaign Proves
| Metric | Value | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Overall ROAS | ~14x | Total account performance across all campaigns |
| New Customer ROAS | 4.52x | Pure acquisition, excludes all previous purchasers |
| Customer Acquisition Cost | ~$25 | Extremely efficient for a meal prep business |
| Monthly Impressions | 10,000+ | Consistent brand visibility in the Portland market |