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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

convenience

With DashMart, DoorDash is Creating its own Ghost Convenience Stores

DoorDash announced the launch of its new DashMart service today in a move that essentially has the delivery company creating its own ghost convenience store.

From a DoorDash blog post announcing the DashMart (emphasis theirs):

DashMart is a new type of convenience store, offering both household essentials and local restaurant favorites to our customers’ doorsteps. On DashMart, you’ll find thousands of convenience, grocery, and restaurant items, from ice cream and chips, to cough medicine and dog food, to spice rubs and packaged desserts from the local restaurants you love on DoorDash. DashMart stores are owned, operated, and curated by DoorDash.

DashMart is currently available in eight cities: Chicago, Minneapolis, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dallas, Salt Lake City, the greater Phoenix area, and Redwood City, CA. In the coming months, DashMarts will be coming to San Diego, Baltimore, Denver, Sacramento and Concord, CA.

I spoke with a DoorDash rep by phone today, who filled in a few more details. DashMarts are delivery-only, physical fulfillment centers that are stocked with big brand names (think: Snickers bars) as well as items from local restaurants (think: frozen slices of Cheesecake Factory cheesecake, or spices from local BBQ joints).

DoorDash has built out nine fulfillment centers, placed in locations where people don’t have easy access to a convenience store. Customers browsing the DoorDash app can select the DashMart and shop as they normally would.

That DoorDash is getting deeper into the convenience category isn’t a huge surprise. The company launched convenience store delivery in April of this year with WaWa, 7-Eleven, Circle K and more. In July, it expanded that program with a partnership with Walgreens.

Part of the reason for the expansion is pretty straightforward. The COVID pandemic shut down most of the restaurants across the country, accelerating the need for DoorDash to get into new markets. Convenience stores are a good fit for the DoorDash, which is all about fast delivery of smaller and/or last-minute items.

Today’s announcement brings more vertical integration into DoorDash’s convenience ambitions. DoorDash owns and operates these DashMarts, deciding which products gets stocked and controlling the whole endeavor from top to bottom. In addition to keeping all the revenue from sales through DashMart, DoorDash also gets more data around customers and purchases and can better optimize its own inventories.

Of course this isn’t the first ghost operation for DoorDash. In October of last year, the company opened up its first ghost kitchen facility in Redwood City, CA, which went on to house restaurant brands like Chick-Fil-A.

With the pandemic still running its course through the U.S., DoorDash’s delivery services will be in demand for the foreseeable future. So its not hard to imagine the company has plenty of time to build up a robust network of DashMarts in the coming year.

Enrichables Powdered Protein and Kale Packets Let You Make Any Meal “Healthier”

If I had my druthers, I would eat mac & cheese for dinner several times a week. However, since I’m adult and know that’s not exactly a healthy dietary choice, I usually opt for a more balanced meal.

But what if I could health-ify my mac & cheese? That’s the promise that offered by Pampered Chef, a kitchen equipment and dry goods company owned by Berkshire Hathaway, with its new Enrichables line. Enrichables are packets of nutrient-dense powders meat to be added to your normal meals, from smoothies to soups to dips, to make them healthier.

The line’s first two flavors, Pea Protein and Kale & Fiber, launched in October of this year. According to Sandy Wolner, Pampered Chef’s in-house food and trend innovator, the company decided to start with these two products because they’re universally appealing. “Right now, everyone is trying to get more protein into their diet,” she told me over the phone last week. “And everyone knows that kale is a very nutritious vegetable.” 

The pea protein packet contains 10 g of pea protein, and the Kale & Fiber pack has 2 cups of kale, which contains vitamins A, C, and K, as well as 8 grams of chicory root fiber. And that’s it. I like that the packets are made of super-simple, transparent ingredients, unlike lots of other meal supplements and protein powders. The Enrichables packets are also vegan and free from soy, gluten, and nuts.

Left: Enrichables Pea Protein. Right: Enrichables Kale & Fiber. (Photo: Catherine Lamb)

Pampered Chef sent me some Enrichables so I could try them for myself. The first thing I noticed after opening up the box was the size of the packets themselves. I imagined they would be a little bigger than a sugar packet, maybe the size of a tea bag. However, the Enrichables packs are about 5-inches by 4-inches — significantly larger than I’d expected. In fact, they were a little too large to fit into my pocket or slip into my outer backpack pocket, which made keeping them with me on-the-go slightly inconvenient.

Reading the back of the packets, I realized that Enrichables aren’t single-serve. Each one is meant to be incorporated into a recipe that feeds four. That might work well if you’re a parent trying to sneak some fiber and protein into your family dinner, but as someone who mainly cooks just for herself, it was slighly awkward to keep these partially-used packets around my kitchen or office kitchen.

So how did it taste? On the whole, not bad. In fact, both powders chiefly tasted like nothing — and that’s a good thing.

I tried them stirred into a plain lentil soup — one-fourth of a packet in each serving. The Kale & Fiber pack turned my soup vaguely green but didn’t really affect the flavor, which was nice. Similarly the Pea Protein didn’t taste like much and didn’t have the bitterness that sometimes goes along with pea protein. However, it did thicken my soup so much that it became a paste, which was slightly unappetizing. That could be an issue if I was adding the Pea Protein powder to smoothies or other liquids.

Left: Enrichables Kale & Fiber. Right: Enrichalbes Pea Protein (Photo: Catherine Lamb)

That hiccup aside, my lunch tasted good. I’m not sure how much of a difference 2.5 grams of protein powder and a half-cup of kale, the equivalent of one-fourth of each packet, will really make in my overall health. It could’ve just been in my head, but I did finish my lunch feeling uncharacteristically virtuous and full.

Placebo or no, I think Enrichables concept is an interesting way to tap into a few food trends we’ve been seeing here at the Spoon. First, it fits into the move towards so-called “clean label” products with shorter, more transparent ingredient lists. Enrichables is also taking advantage of growing consumer demand for protein, specifically plant-based protein. Finally, Enrichables plays into the overarching trend for mealtime convenience. Want more fiber in your meal? Just sprinkle on this powder and you’re set in an instant.

As for me, I think I’ll use the rest of my Enrichables packet on some mac & cheese for dinner tonight. Hey, it’s healthy!

Buttermilk Co’s Microwaveable Indian Meals Merge Authenticity and Convenience

Founder Mitra Raman got the idea for Buttermilk Co. because of a craving for rasan: a tomato-y South Indian stew and her favorite food. Raman’s mother gave her the ingredients in a bag — all Raman had to do was add water and boil. The results were so good that Raman, who was working as a software engineer at Amazon at the time, decided to launch a company which sold ready-to-eat South Indian meals that tasted good and cooked in a flash.

In March 2017, she did just that. Buttermilk’s vegetarian packaged meals are made with fresh ingredients in a shared kitchen space in Seattle’s International District and shipped nationwide in refrigerated boxes. (As of now, their food is only available online.) Once delivered, the meals can be stored in the fridge for 5-7 days or frozen for up to 3 months. When you’re ready to eat, just add water and microwave for 5 minutes, and you’ve got a piping hot bowl of rasan or chana masala. 

Buttermilk just might have come along at the right time. Buttermilk’s single-serving pouches, which average around $5 each, are perfect for young-ish folks who live alone and spend too much time in the office to worry about grocery shopping or — God forbid — cooking, but who don’t like the idea of ordering delivery every night. It’s also smack-dab in the middle of two large trends in millennial dining: “authentic” ethnic food, and convenience/instant gratification.

Though the dishes are derived from actual South Indian recipes, Rasan said that she works hard to make sure all of Buttermilk’s dishes are approachable to all consumers — not just those who grew up eating them.

To increase their appeal to an audience who might just be dipping their toe into South Indian cuisine, Buttermilk has a few themed starter packs as easy entry points. For example, the 5-pack “I Can’t Do Spicy” combo ($23.50) is meant to dispel the myths that all Indian food is searingly hot. There are also packs geared towards travelers constantly greeted with an empty fridge, and those who want to expand their Indian food experience beyond curry.

On the other side, there’s also the homesickness angle: which is what prompted Raman to start Buttermilk in the first place. Indian food is pretty complex to prepare, requiring a good bit of time and a well-stocked spice drawer. Not everyone has the time/desire/know-how to make a giant pot of sambar, even with the guidance of a meal kit. And for South Indians who have grown up eating homemade khichdi and daal, the offerings from the local Indian joint might not sate their cravings for food like their mom used to make.

Buttermilk solves all of these issues with a speedy cook time and low price point, making them faster and cheaper than ordering delivery (until UberEats comes out with those drones, at least). All of the meals are also vegetarian, which capitalizes off of the recent boom in demand for plant-based foods.

I had a chance to sample some of Buttermilk’s upma (a wheat-based porridge) at a Seattle Made’s Food and Beverage event this June and thought it was delicious: lightly spiced, fluffy, and different than anything I’d ever tasted. I did not grow up eating South Indian food, but I found myself passing by their sample table another time to snag one more taste. It was delicious and something I would never make myself, but I found myself thinking about the dish for days afterwards. I could totally see myself stocking my office fridge with a few packets for lunch, or keeping them in the freezer to replace my typical emergency meal of a frozen burrito.

As of now, Raman is Buttermilk’s only full-time employee. She work with recipe curators and has a few part-time employees to help with cooking, packaging, and shipping. Over the next few weeks, they’re looking to hire a food scientist to work on making their dishes healthier (another trend!) while preserving their taste. Her company was also accepted into the Y Combinator Spring 2018 cohort and pitched at Demo Day earlier this week, after which they started fundraising.

“We know this isn’t something you’re eating everyday,” said Raman. Our research shows that, for the most part, millennials are cooking or ordering delivery instead of reheating meals. But the high quality of Buttermilk’s offerings — as well as their reasonable price point and badge of “authenticity” could make them an exception to the rule.