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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Kettlebell Kitchen

Kettlebell Kitchen Shuts Down Its Prepared Meal Delivery Service

Kettlebell Kitchen said today that it is no longer serving prepared meals. In an email sent out to customers this morning, the company wrote:

Kettlebell friends and family,

We’re sad to say we’re closing our kitchens today and will no longer be serving meals.

We’re grateful for the past 7 years and the opportunity to fuel you along the way, thank you for giving us the chance to do so! As we close our doors, we want to introduce you to Territory. Like us, they believe in the power of delicious, clean food, and have been serving healthy eaters like yourself since 2011.

While Territory doesn’t yet serve your area, they’re quickly expanding. Sign up for updates, and they’ll send you a note once they’re live in your neighborhood.

At this point, we don’t know if Kettlebell is just closing down its kitchens to pivot to something else or shutting the company down entirely, or why it is recommending Territory (which Kettlebell says it has no affiliation with). We reached out to Kettlebell and will update this post as we learn more.

Based in New York, Kettlebell Kitchen had raised more than $30 million in funding. The company specialized in delivering prepared meals tailored to specific fitness and nutrition goals like weight loss or burning fat as well as dietary lifestyles like keto.

I actually tried Kettlebell’s meals earlier this summer and liked them quite a bit. While they were delicious and convenient, they were more expensive than other prepared meal services such as Icon, and ultimately the cost was too high for me to continue using the service.

The prepared meal delivery business is tough to scale, given all the supply chain, safety requirements and logistics. Now we have to see if Kettlebell Kitchen is a canary in the prepared meal delivery coalmine.

The email from Kettlebell Kitchen announcing kitchen closures.

Review: Kettlebell Kitchen’s Prepared Meal Delivery Actually Delivers

You would think that working from home would translate into my eating more healthy lunches. There is a pantry and fridge full of fresh ingredients mere steps away from my home office. Despite all these options, I wind up making the same thing almost every day: avocado and scrambled eggs wrapped in a tortilla.

Healthy? Mostly. Monotonous? Definitely.

This same ‘ole, same ‘ole was one of the reasons I got excited when Kettlebell Kitchen offered to let me try out their meal delivery service. Kettlebell specializes in healthy meal plans that help you achieve your fitness or lifestyle goals such as burning fat, building muscle, going keto and more. Meals are fully prepared and delivered to your home, office or even your gym. All you have to do is re-heat them.

When you sign up for Kettlebell Kitchen, the first thing you do is provide some personal information like height, weight, whether you are counting calories and what your goal weight is. Next, you pick your menu plan from options like Perform, Slim, Vegetarian, and Keto. As I’m trying to lose some weight, I picked the Burn plan.

All of Kettlebell’s meals are soy and dairy-free, and according to the FAQ are also naturally gluten-free, though they aren’t certified as such. You can choose the number of meals per week you want, 6 (lunches), 12 (lunches and dinner), or 18 (breakfast, lunch and dinner). Based on all the criteria you’ve set, Kettlebell then shows you the meals you’ll receive, which you can then further customize by swapping out different dishes.

OK, this is great and all, but a meal delivery service is only as good as the meals it delivers. So how was it? In a word, delicious.

The meals arrived in a nice tote box
The downside of compostable containers: no tight seal to prevent sauce spills
Portable utensils for eating on the go
Kettlebell meals come in compostable containers.
The pork loin meal with sweet potato and apple
Chicken Milanese with cauliflower mash.

Three meals arrived earlier this week: Apple-braised pork loin with sweet potatoes, Chicken Milanese with paleo focaccia, and BBQ chicken with roasted zucchini. They all arrived in an ice-packed box and came in compostable containers and even included a plastic set of portable utensils (and inexplicably, Kettlebell branded sunglasses). The compostable containers were both great and not-so great. Great in that the packaging will turn into soil in 90 days yet is still microwaveable and oven-safe. Not so great in that there isn’t a tight seal around the lid, so the red sauce in the BBQ chicken kind of leaked out of its container in transit.

I tried the Chicken Milanese first, reheating in the microwave. And while the focaccia was a little gummy (from the microwave, I’m guessing), the meal was excellent. The chicken was tender and flavorful, and the fennel and other greens packed in there were still crisp.

I liked it so much that I started looking forward to my next Kettlebell meal the next morning. I was excited to try meals I wouldn’t otherwise make for myself, and reheating was super convenient. Every meal I had felt different from the other and was a delight to eat. Though I was essentially re-heating leftovers, it didn’t taste like it at all, and I didn’t feel bloated or gross after gobbling one down.

All this convenience and delight doesn’t come cheap, however. The lunch-only six meal per week plan costs $71 dollars or almost $12 per meal, and the 12 meal plan will set you back $136 per week (there is no long term commitment). While they aren’t as fancy, you can get Icon Meals for less than $10 a pop.

Beyond the cost, however, there is a certain amount of guilt with all that packaging and transit to basically deliver me three lunches, something I could make on my own with a little more forethought and planning. Having said that, I’m seriously considering keeping at least the lunch plan for a little while longer. The variety is really appealing and the food was consistently delicious. And it’s a consistency, thankfully without monotony.

Kettlebell Kitchen Bulks up with $26.7M, its Fitness Meal Plans Feature Gym Distribution

Kettlebell Kitchen, a startup that delivers meals with a focus on fitness, announced yesterday that it has raised a $26.7 million Series B round of funding led by North Castle (h/t Food Bev media). This brings the total amount raised by Kettlebell to $30.4 million.

While there are plenty of meal kit companies who promise to help you eat more healthily, Kettlebell’s value proposition is that it customizes your meals based on your goals such as losing weight, gaining muscle or completing a marathon. Meal plans include Keto, Paleo and vegetarian options with dishes like “Bison Beef Sliders” and “Athlete Greek Chicken Meatball Bowl.”

What’s also interesting about Kettlebell is its distribution channel. In addition to sending meals directly to your home, Kettlebell also lets consumers pick up meals at participating gyms in the Northeast, Mid-West and Mid-Atlantic regions (for now). Kettlebell also recently took over meal delivery for Munchery’s East Coast customers.

As we’ve written about before, meal kits have been migrating away from mail order and into retail outlets. Kroger bought Home Chef. Albertsons bought Plated. Blue Apron started selling in Costco. Chef’d was leading the innovative charge when it comes to interesting distribution channels with deals with Byte Foods for sales in offices and drug stores like Duane Reade. And while its first incarnation shut down abruptly, the resurrected assets will focus on retail outlets.

Kettlebell’s gym distribution is a smart play. First, people who work out a lot are often goal-oriented, which fits in with Kettlebell’s core meal offerings. Most gyms already have retail sections and many gym goers are also big believers in getting their protein right after a workout. Since the meals are grab-and-go and only require a microwave for reheating, they offer a fast way for people to protein up.

Presumably, Kettlebell will use this influx of cash to scale out nationally. Now the question will be if sales will bulk up as well.