Plated co-founder is cooking up expansion plans

Eat your heart out, Lloyd.

Nick Taranto — a 30-year former Marine who quit his cushy job at Goldman Sachs because he loathed Wall Street — now runs one of the city’s fast-growing start-ups: meal delivery service Plated.

The company, which delivers pre-proportioned ingredients to time-crunched customers for making gourmet meals in 30 minutes, boasts 200 employees, up from 75 at the end of last year.

Some 60 of those new jobs are at the firm’s new fulfillment center in the Bronx, which also employs homeless veterans through the Jericho Project.

The main office has grown to 80 staffers from 25 at the end of 2013, prompting Taranto and co-founder Josh Hix to rent a new 12,000 square-foot office space in Manhattan’s Flatiron district. They will move to the new space in December.

There’s even more expansion to come. Plated is branching into other products to take advantage of its food distribution network, including four fulfillment centers and a network of third-party delivery partners.

Among the potential new offerings is dessert in addition to entrees, Taranto said.

His path from Goldman to gourmand was neither safe nor easy. After graduating from Harvard Business School in 2010, Taranto joined the Marines.

“I had always wanted to serve, and it was a now or never proposition,” the Westchester native told The Post.

As a military reservist in 2011, he landed a coveted job at the gold-plated investment bank run by Lloyd Blankfein.

But Taranto, who was tasked with recruiting high-net worth clients, said he missed the camaraderie and sense of purpose he felt as a Marine.

“I’ve always been very mission-driven” said Taranto, who lives in Hell’s Kitchen with his wife and newborn. “At Goldman, the day-to-day existence was devoid of mission. It was all about getting the dollars in. And there were very sharp elbows.”

That’s when he sought out Hix, a software engineer and fellow Harvard Business alum who already had two start-ups under his belt. Taranto said he was hoping Hix would give him some advice on starting his own company.

Instead, the two served up Plated in October 2012, which has more than doubled its staff in the past 10 months.

“It’s been a hard slog, but there’s nowhere else where you’ll learn as much as quickly, while pressure-testing how good you are physically, mentally and emotionally,” Taranto said. “That can be said for both the military and leading a start-up.”