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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

frozen food

J-Lo and A-Rod Get Behind Tiller & Hatch’s Pressure Cooker Meal Kits

Don’t be fooled by that box that you got, it’s just food from (food from) Jenny on the block. Kinda. Tiller & Hatch Supply Co., which is “backed” by Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez, announced today the launch of its new line of frozen meals, which will be available nationwide online and in-stores at Walmart.

While the bling-y nature of its celebrity backers may be attention-grabbing, what caught our eye how Tiller & Hatch’s meals actually work. The company offers a number of different menus including Farfalle with Marinara and Ground Turkey, Coconut Chicken Stew with Vegetables and Rice, and Santa Fe Style Pasta with Chicken Breast. All are shipped frozen and meant to be re-heated in an electric pressure cooker.

While they don’t mention the brand specifically, it seems like an obvious play to reach Instant Pot’s massive installed base. Given that device’s rabid audience, Tiller & Hatch’s approach isn’t a dumb idea. Whether or not it’s enough to sustain an entire business though, is another matter altogether.

Tiller & Hatch isn’t the only meal service targeting pressure cookers. Up in Canada, Presto has been selling frozen meals for pressure cookers over the past year, though they sell their food for $10 a serving. Tiller & Hatch says its meals are roughly $4 a serving.

In addition to the pressure cooker angle, Tiller & Hatch’s go-to market also highlights how frozen food continues to experience its renaissance. No longer just aluminum trays of Salisbury steak and peas, frozen food sales are up two percent over the past decade thanks to millennials’ love of convenience and companies like AquaStar, Buttermilk and Daily Harvest re-thinking what goes into frozen fare.

Then there is the celebrity angle of J-Lo and A-Rod, though we don’t know how involved they even are with Tiller & Hatch. A press announcement sent to The Spoon only says that they have “backed” the service, but we don’t know what that means exactly, and neither celebrity name appears on the Tiller & Hatch website. We reached out to Tiller & Hatch for clarification, and will update accordingly. UPDATE: A spokesperson for Tiller & Hatch emailed to tell us that Lopez and Rodriguez are Co-Founders of Tiller & Hatch. Even so, celebrity endorsement doesn’t always equal success in the packaged meal game. Blue Apron launched a line of Chrissy Tiegen meal kits, and that wasn’t enough to stop the company’s steady decline.

Is J-Lo just a, err, hustler with Tiller & Hatch? Probably not, but it’s worth keeping an eye on the company to see if its pressure cooker approach is enough to win over customers.

Tovala’s Scan-to-Cook Now Works with Breakfast Items From Pop-Tart, Eggo, Kashi and More

Tovala, creator of the eponymous smart oven, announced today that it has expanded the capabilities of its scan-to-cook feature to include packaged breakfast items from brands including Amy’s Kitchen, Eggo, Special K and more.

The update is being automatically sent out by Tovala and works with both gen-1 and gen-2 ovens. Tovala owners can go to https://www.tovala.com/scantocookgroceries to see the full list of nearly 400 compatible products. To cook, users simply scan the barcode of the item and the Tovala will run through a pre-programmed cooking sequence developed by the company’s chefs.

The move builds on earlier efforts by Tovala to broaden the usefulness of its device. Initially, the Tovala oven was primarily good for cooking Tovala meals, but the company has improved the flexibility of its product over the past year by releasing its second-gen oven, launching its scan-to-cook feature for Trader Joe’s frozen food, and releasing automatic cook programs for Beyond Meat products.

All of these moves help make the Tovala more versatile in the smart oven space, which is packed with the likes of June, Brava, Whirlpool and Suvie. By expanding beyond its vertically integrated beginnings, it can attract customers who want a smart oven, and want the flexibility to use it for more than Tovala meals.

Tovala has always been the least expensive smart oven option, and in addition to the breakfast products, Tovala also this week changed up its pricing structure. You can now pick up a Tovala for $49 up-front and pay the remainder in $3.99/week installments, with the option to return the oven at any time. Or you can pay $299 upfront to own the oven outright.

Of equal interest for Tovala with its scan-to-cook feature is the data that it can provide CPG companies. Tovala will know what brands and products people are cooking, when and how often. This data would provide insight for brands looking to develop new products or sell more in different regions. I spoke with Tovala Founder and CEO David Rabie yesterday about the prospect of prospecting its newfound data, but he said Tovala is not looking at sharing or monetizing it right now. “The goal is for us to make the Tovala more useful,” Rabie said, “and to make our partner’s products easier to consume in the way they intend.”

As Tovala continues to expand its scan-to-cook functionality, I asked Rabie whether at some point the company would give up on its own meal delivery service in favor of just automating the cooking of other people’s products. “We’re not going to get rid of meal delivery,” Rabie said, “It’s the core reason people are buying the oven.”

That may have been true when cooking its own meals was mostly what a Tovala oven did. But now there are nearly 400 more (scan-to-cook) reasons for people to check the Tovala out.

ICON Meals Delivers Convenience to Your Door

You know that thing, where if someone sees you have something like a decorative Santa statue, people start giving you decorative Santa statues, and suddenly all your shelves are jammed full of creepy decorative Santa statues?

That’s basically what happened to me when I reviewed Kettlebell Kitchen’s meals. After that article posted, direct to consumer meal companies started to reach out, asking if I’d like to try their particular meal solution and suddenly my fridge became full of fully cooked, fully assembled, pre-packaged meals**.

ICON Meals CEO Todd Abrams was one of the first to reach out to me. ICON had flown under our radar here at The Spoon, probably because they are based in Texas, don’t do much marketing outside of social media, and have only taken $5 million funding (a small sum compared with other meal delivery services).

Though the company bills itself as a healthy meal service, it’s really, quite literally, a very meat and potatoes offering. ICON prepares full meals like cheeseburgers and sweet potatoes, chicken fajitas, and even breakfasts like pancakes. These are then shrink-wrapped and arrive frozen at your door where you can keep them in your freezer and pop them in the microwave when you’re ready to eat.

Meals are between $8 and $12, and you can choose between weekly menu items like those listed above, or customize your meal to include certain ingredients, or add larger portions. The company also offers its own line of pre-packaged snacks like high protein popcorn, cookies and snack crisps.

It’s important to emphasize that ICON isn’t a meal kit company. All the meals are fully cooked and plated. Once you receive your shipment, you pick the one you want, blast it in the microwave for three minutes and voilá! Lunch, dinner or breakfast is served.

There are two things about ICON that might be a turnoff for some readers. First is the packaging. Meals arrive in a styrofoam-lined box and come in plastic containers covered in thick plastic shrink wrap. I spoke with Abrams about this and he reassured me that the styrofoam is just a temporary stopgap measure as they test out a new fully recyclable box liner. Additionally, the food trays are recyclable and if you’re skeeved out at the idea of cooking your food in plastic shrink-wrap, it’s actually a special film that is food safe.

The other thing that might give some people pause about ICON is that it doesn’t place an emphasis on sourcing its food. It’s not organic, ethically sourced or local. Abrams said that ICON is putting out 50,000 meals a week, and buying local just isn’t tenable at that scale. Instead, ICON works with Sysco for all its food buying not only to meet its high demand, but also because that makes all of its ingredients traceable should there be a particular food recall.

While that may not satisfy conscientious consumers, they might feel reassured to know that ICON has a full-time FDA inspector at its food production facility, so its meal prep environment is constantly being monitored. Abrams also said that the shrink-wrapping actually helps protect the food from freezer burn and prevents oxygen and other pathogens from getting into your food.

All that is well and good, but how do ICON Meals taste?

Pretty good, actually! They were balanced with a protein, a vegetable and a carb, and the options were varied enough that eating them didn’t feel repetitive. It’s not high-cuisine, they were a little bland with some meals feeling like cafeteria food (especially the rice dishes), but what you are really buying with ICON is time.

It’s pretty great to open up your freezer and be able to choose from a week’s worth of meals. Microwaving them makes ICON meals fast to prepare (though take out the bread before you start cooking them otherwise it gets stiff), so you can eat a full, well-portioned meal on a busy schedule.

The ICON snacks weren’t as appealing to me. I liked the cookies, which actually had more of a consistency of an energy bar, but the protein popcorn was too sweet even for my taste.

ICON is sitting at the intersection of a couple of trends we follow at The Spoon. It’s a meal delivery service and it’s part of the frozen food boom. The frozen aspect in particular makes ICON Meals super convenient because you can store them for a long time, unlike Kettlebell’s meals which have a pretty limited shelf life in your fridge.

Kettlebell’s menu is a little more complex and fancy, but you also pay for it. Kettlebell’s meals cost around $12 a pop whereas ICON Meals start around $8. But Kettlebell is also going for the go-get ’em gym demographic and offers special meal plans for things like fat burning or building muscle.

I’m tempted to keep going with ICON because of the low price and the frozen convenience factor. The hard part for me to get over is the food sourcing. I don’t need all my food to be from an organic farm two blocks from my house, and I understand that at scale, partnering with a company like Sysco makes sense. It just makes the food feel industrial.

However, if those things aren’t super important to you, I can easily recommend ICON for its affordability and the ease with which it can vary up your dining routine either at lunch or dinner. If those are appealing, maybe you can ask Santa for some ICON this year.

**ICON sent a lot of meals. Because they didn’t charge me, and I can’t really return them, I made a cash donation to the Milwaukee Rescue Mission (I had heard a story about them on NPR).

NPD: Frozen Food Sales are Up (Thanks, Millennials!)

Just about this time last year we asked the question “Are We Entering a Frozen Food Renaissance?” because a wave of startups were transforming frozen foods from just bags of peas and TV dinners into something more high-end and healthy.

Looks like people are paying attention to this renaissance and ponying up for frozen food. According to a recent study from NPD, frozen foods were a part of “9.8 billion eating occasions in home, up 2 percent from a decade ago.” Two percent may not sound like much over ten years, but as NPD points out, that translates into billions of meals, and we would like to point out that can mean billions of dollars.

And in a welcome turn of events, frozen foods appear to be something millennials are not killing off, but rather, reviving. From the NPD press release:

“Demographic shifts, like Millennials moving into the busiest times of their lives juggling spouses, kids, and a career, are fueling a greater need for the convenience that frozen foods offer,” says David Portalatin, NPD Food Industry Advisor and author of Eating Patterns in America. “Manufacturers are also doing their part in increasing interest in frozen foods by innovating around contemporary food values and emerging flavor trends to provide convenience.”

We’ve seen that innovation in frozen food firsthand from companies like Mealhero, which ships pre-packaged frozen food and connected steam cooker to automatically prepare them. Buttermilk sends pre-made Indian food that can be frozen and reheated in the microwave. Daily Harvest goes after millennials directly with its delivery of frozen smoothies and bowls. And companies like Stouffers are creating entire frozen meal kits.

As NPD also points out, more than 80 percent of meals and eating happens in the home, and U.S. consumers are turning to things like frozen vegetables and chicken for cooking convenience at dinnertime. Breakfast is another growing category, thanks to things like frozen waffles and breakfast sandwiches.

With this growth, it looks like frozen food might be moving from a renaissance into a golden age.

Food Tech News: GE’s Latest Kitchen Hub, New Vegan IKEA Meatballs, and Meal Delivery Galore

Happy Saturday! This week was a big one for us at The Spoon — we kicked off our shiny new Future Food newsletter covering all things alternative protein, from plant-based meat to insects to cellular agriculture. Make sure to subscribe here.

But for now, let’s turn to this week’s food tech news. We have stories about IKEA’s new plant-based meatballs, GE’s latest smart kitchen hub, and a new frozen meal delivery service. Enjoy!

Mosaic, a new frozen meal delivery company, launches on East Coast
There’s a new D2C meal delivery service on the scene. This week Mosaic, a company which ships frozen, pre-cooked vegetarian bowls to consumers’ doorsteps within one day, began operations on the East Coast. The bowls range in price from $8.99 to $12.49 which is pretty pricey compared to what you’d find in the freezer section of the grocery store, but on par with traditional meal kits. Mosaic raised a seed round of funding in 2018 and is planning to launch in new cities soon.

Photo: GE

GE’s starts selling new kitchen hub, amps up SideChef partnership
The latest version of GE’s kitchen hub, which made its first appearance at CES this January, is now hitting store shelves (h/t CNET). Priced around $1,199, the hub has a built-in smart touchscreen which includes guided cooking capabilities from SideChef.

In fact, SideChef and GE have been ramping up their partnership lately. Sidechef’s app is now connected to a sizeable 74 GE ovens and ranges, allowing home cooks to set cook times, monitor temperature, and change up the cooking mode on their connected appliances.

Photo: IKEA

IKEA’s making a meatier version of their plant-based meatballs
Vegetarians who love Swedish meatballs, rejoice. The Daily Mail reports that IKEA is developing a new plant-based version of their famous meatballs which will look and taste more like the “real thing.” The Swedish furniture giant launched a vegan meatball made of chickpeas and vegetables back in 2015, but this new version will apparently be more in line with the more realistic offerings from Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. IKEA plans to trial their new meatballs in early 2020.

Photo: Wegmans

Wegmans teams up with DoorDash
This week East Coast supermarket chain Wegmans announced that it will partner DoorDash to launch its Wegmans Meals 2GO food delivery service. Hungry people can use the Wegmans Meals 2GO app to order from the Wegmans’ prepared food section, which includes pizza, salads, and sushi. Customers can opt for carry-out or curbside pickup, or can get delivery for orders of $20 or more if they live within a 5 mile radius. So far the service is available in two locations in Rochester, New York and one spot in Virginia, and Wegmans plans to roll out the service to 40 stores by the end of this year.

Did we miss anything? Tweet us @TheSpoonTech!

Presto Eats May Be the Most On-Trend Meal Kit Company Yet. But Will It Succeed?

Whenever I get word about a new meal kit company, it’s hard not to be immediately skeptical.

It’s no secret that meal kits are struggling: Chef’d surprised everyone when it shut down abruptly earlier this year. Boston hyper-local meal kit Just Add Cooking ceased operations this fall. And Blue Apron’s stock continues to underwhelm. And with complicated supply chain logistics and the challenge of customer loyalty, and its no wonder why. To fight back, meal kit companies are turning towards new sales channels (i.e. drug stores), targeting specific audiences (i.e. kids) and are experimenting with customizeable and frozen ingredients.

But one Canadian company seems undeterred by the bleak, overcrowded meal kit landscape. Based in Vancouver and Calgary, soon-to-launch Presto Eats makes meal kits that can be cooked in a pressure cooker or slow cooker.

“I started Presto Eats because I fell in love with the new wave of kitchen appliances,” CEO Connie Chong told me in a phone conversation. She found that she could get a flavorful meal out of her pressure cooker in 30 minutes, but it still took her over an hour to shop for and prep ingredients. So she decided to create a meal kit specifically targeted at the Instant Pot crowd: millennials and busy professionals who like to cook at home and aren’t afraid of new kitchen technology.

Earlier this year Campbell’s tried a slow cooker meal partnership with Chef’d. The meal kit company shuttered only four months later so it’s hard to get a sense of how successful the partnership was. But it also only offered slow cooker meals, which took 6-ish hours; it didn’t capitalize on the wild popularity of the quick-cooking Instant Pot.

Presto Eats is smart to take advantage of the pressure cooker’s cult-like status. While many meal kit companies advertise ready-to-eat meals in 30 minutes, you still usually have to actually do the whole cooking thing. Presto Eats takes the same amount of time but it’s all hands-off. “The convenience factor is huge,” said Chong. Plus it’s all done in one (Instant)pot, which means fewer dishes.

Since Presto Eats’ meals are destined for a pressure cooker, they can be sold frozen. Which means that consumers can buy them in bulk and cook them on their own time. Frozen meal kits make a lot of sense, from both a business and consumer perspective, and Presto Eats is one of several companies taking advantage of the frozen food renaissance. It could also mean more packaging waste (ice, cold packs, etc.), which is something Presto Eats should be conscious of.

While it’s a smart move to capitalize off of Instant Pot’s widespread and loyal fan base, there are a few potential drawbacks to Presto Eats’ offering. Firstly, some people get meal kits because they actually like cooking — just not the minutiae of, say, shopping for, peeling and grating a ginger root. To them, meal kits are a way to experiment with new meals that they might not otherwise be bold enough to try and cook. Dumping a bunch of ingredients into an Instant Pot and pressing a button means there’s significantly lower chance of failure, but there’s also not much of a cooking “experience.” And at $10 per serving, some people may want to shell out a few bucks more and order in delivery.

Secondly, the fact that all of Presto Eats’ meals are cooked in a pressure cooker limits their variety. Chong listed menu choices like salmon risotto with vegetables, lentil bolognese pasta, and Thai curry, all of which sound delicious but reside in the same sort of warm, soupy comfort meal category. You can’t make seared steak or crunch roasted cauliflower in an Instant Pot, after all.

Presto Eats is cashing in on yet another dining trend: local food. It will partner with local farmers and suppliers to source ingredients for their meal kits. Which may attract eco-conscious consumers, but also means they will no doubt have to pay more to stock their kits. In an industry where margins are razor-thin, this is a risk. Just Add Cooking also sourced local ingredients for their meal kits, and ended up folding because they couldn’t make the economics work. Chong told me that they will create rotating menus featuring farmers’ surplus food, which could help keep costs down — but it’s still probably more expensive than buying from a mega produce supplier.

As of now, Presto Eats has a team of three and is bootstrapped. They will partner with food delivery companies to get their meal kits to consumers, and Chong said that down the road they hope to partner with grocery chains to get on retail shelves. They plan to launch their meal kits at the end of January in Calgary, and soon after that in Vancouver.

There they’ll have to duke it out with several local competitors. Earlier this week Chris wrote about Fresh Prep, a Vancouver, Canada-based direct-to-consumer meal kit company which raised $3.3 million. And in October Hello Fresh, the biggest meal kit company in the U.S., acquired meal kit company Chefs Plate, which also has a fulfillment center in Vancouver.

By combining three consumer dining trends — frozen food, Instant Pot, and local ingredients — Presto Eats has developed a very appealing product. The question is whether those value-adds will help it attract enough customers to carve out a spot in the crowded meal kit space. I’m optimistic that they have a shot, mostly because of how much people love their Instant Pots. But first, they’ll have to nail down a supply chain and scale up: two things that plague even the biggest meal kit companies.

Are We Entering a Frozen Food Renaissance?

Let’s be honest: frozen food does not have the best reputation. From French bread pizzas to bland microwaveable TV meals, the freezer section is usually full of meal options that are unhealthy, mass-produced, and overall subpar.

But lately a few companies are trying to reverse the frozen food stigma — and keep the convenience — with high-quality, healthy meal offerings.

It’s a good time to be in the frozen food market. According to RBC Capital markets, frozen food volume growth recently turned positive for the first time in 5 years. While the slump was blamed on millennials who tend to opt for whole, fresh foods, the rebound is most likely due to the exact same demographic.

“A lot of consumers, especially millennials and students, are looking for an easier [dining] option that they can stick in the microwave,” Zoe Lloyd, founder and CEO of Zoni Foods, told me over the phone. Her frozen meal kit company that offers three healthy, plant-based frozen meals.

Lloyd came up with the idea for Zoni Foods while a student herself at Yale business school. She wanted to find natural, easy to prepare food in the frozen aisle of the grocery store, and was struck by the whopping lack of innovation. So she developed a line of healthy, plant-based frozen meals with ingredients sourced from local farms.

This hits the sweet spot for busy millennials: the frozen meals are convenient, healthy, and offer nearly instant gratification. “People want to feel like they’re preparing a healthy dinner for themselves, but doing it in a way with no prep and very little cleanup,” explained Lloyd. They’re also capitalizing on rising demand for locally sourced ingredients. And at an average price of $6.99 for a single-serving meal, they’re cheaper than takeout or a shopping trip at most organic grocery stores.

Belgian Mealhero also makes frozen meal kits, but they’ve taken the operation a few steps further with a recipe app and connected countertop steamer. In our interview with their CEO Jeroen Spitaels for the Smart Kitchen Summit Europe blog (where they’ll be competing in the Startup Showcase), he emphasized the convenience of frozen food. “Because they’re starting with frozen food (with a long shelf life), our community is able to plug and play Mealhero food into their schedule whenever they need it the most,” he told me.

There are a few other companies edging into the high-end frozen meal market. Daily Harvest, a startup that delivers flash-frozen soups, smoothies, and meals, is putting a millennial-friendly face on frozen food. Eat Local stores provide gourmet, fresh-made frozen meals to Washingtonians. And just this week, Earth Fare announced that it will carry Seal the Seasons products, which sells frozen local produce from family farmers in North and South Carolina, all year round.

In addition to convenience and ease, frozen meals (or at least frozen produce) might be straight-up healthier for you. Studies have shown that it has the same amount or more nutrients than fresh food, especially if it’s flash-frozen. And while fresh food is often picked before it’s ripe to account for its shipping journey, frozen food can be harvested when it’s at its ripest.

As we start getting more and more of our groceries delivered, however, frozen foods can make things tricky. After all, you don’t want Amazon to leave your weekly shop in the car or on your kitchen table if it contains frozen meal kits or — god forbid — ice cream. This is where packaging insulation could come in handy, especially if it’s sustainable.

By capitalizing on the millennial-driven trend for convenient, home-cooked meals and adding new, local, and healthier options, frozen foods could be on the cusp of a Renaissance. No matter what, though, I’ll always have a soft spot for DiGiorno pizza.