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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

meal kit delivery

Will Jet.com Help Blue Apron Meal Kits Take Off?

Blue Apron announced today that its meal kits will be made available for delivery in the New York area through a new partnership with Walmart-owned Jet.com. For Blue Apron, which has seen its stock price tumble since it went public last year, the Jet partnership marks another way the company is looking to revitalize its business through new and different retail avenues.

According to the press announcement, starting today, households across “most of” New York City, Jersey City and Hoboken can get Blue Apron meal kits delivered same or next day. The inclusion of Blue Apron’s meal kits is part of Jet.com’s recent site revamp and enhanced shopping experience for New Yorkers.

Blue Apron pretty much kicked off the mail order meal kit craze a few years back, but that particular business model is tough to sustain — for consumers, it’s not particularly convenient, it’s still a lot of work to prepare, and for companies, it’s logistically expensive. Blue Apron’s competition has pretty much all moved into grocery store aisles. Home Chef was acquired by Kroger. Plated was acquired by Albertsons. And while HelloFresh had it’s own IPO, it too is now selling through grocery stores.

For its part, Blue Apron began selling its kits in Costco earlier this year. Earlier this month, Blue Apron also started offering meal kits through food delivery service GrubHub (also only in New York). Now on Jet, Blue Apron will feature a rotating menu of two-serving recipes that range in price from $16.99 to $22.99.

With its stock price hovering at little more than a dollar, Blue Apron is able (or perhaps forced) to experiment more wildly with different approaches to moving more of its meal kits. Blue Apron’s recent moves are reminiscent of Chef’d, which we lauded here at The Spoon for its uninhibited approach to retail. Chef’d struck deals to put its meal kits in drug stores and office fridges… before it shut down. But its assets were picked up and Chef’d was re-born without the mail business to focus on retail outlets.

Along those lines, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Blue Apron announce even more partnerships across even more retail outlets before the end of the year.

HelloFresh Acquires Green Chef to Bolster Meal Kit Menus

Meal kit delivery company, HelloFresh, announced today that it has acquired Green Chef, which offers certified organic meal kits. The move will help diversify HelloFresh’s meal catalog with organic, vegan and gluten-free menus. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition comes at an interesting time for the entire meal kit by mail space. Just last week Blue Apron, which has had a rough year after pioneering meal kit subscriptions, said they will start selling meal kits in stores in a bid to move beyond just mail order.

But the health of Blue Apron almost doesn’t matter anymore. HelloFresh may well be able to offer specialized meals like Paleo and Keto with this acquisition, but there are a lot of companies providing specialized meal services: Purple Carrot is vegetarian, First Chop only sends meat, Little Spoon does baby food, to name a few.

In addition to variety, customers also want convenience. The hard part with mail order meal kits is that you still have to do a lot of work to actually make the meal, and you’re locked into a meal choice that you might not still want in between the time you clicked send and the time it arrives.

HelloFresh faces convenience competition on two big fronts. First, there are the up-and-coming smart appliance makers like Mealhero, Tovala and Suvie. They offer meal kits plus a way to automatically cook everything all at once, in one device, drastically reducing the amount of work required.

Then HelloFresh has to contend with the growing wave of prepared meal kits provided directly in stores. Amazon, Walmart, and even Weight Watchers offer their own lines of meal kits that you can pick up at a store or that you can have delivered same day. These kits do a lot of the prep work for you, and allow you more freedom to choose the meal you’re in the mood for at that moment.

Meeting consumers where they are at is a smart move, and that’s what HelloFresh is doing with Green Chef. The trick for the company will be to increase the convenience as it expands its variety.

Suvie Blows Past Kickstarter Goal, Sells out of First Tier Offering

It took less than half a day for Suvie, the multi-zone, connected cooking appliance, to zoom past its initial goal of raising $100,000 on Kickstarter. As of 5:00 p.m. Pacific time, Suvie had raised $323,943 and sold out of its first tier rewards which offered a discounted machine for $429.

As Mike wrote last week, Suvie is part of a new wave of startups that aim to take almost all of the work out of cooking by connecting a smart appliance with a pre-packaged meal service.

The Suvie device itself crams four different cooking methods into one box, including a broiler, steamer, rice maker and sous vide. It will even keep your food cold in the device until your ready to cook.

In addition to the device itself, Suvie will offer a meal kit service that will automatically know how to cook each ingredient at the right temperature and for the right amount of time, so everything is done at the same time.

Elsewhere today, Tovala, a different connected oven-plus-meal service already available, announced that it received an undisclosed investment from food giant Tyson. (Insert your own “this space is heating up” joke here.)

Those interested in Suvie can still pick one up for a reduced rate of $479 with an estimated delivery of December 2018. Once Suvie hits the retail shelves, it will sell for $599.

Six Trends We Might See In Food Tech In 2018

News publications making predictions for the coming year is as much a holiday tradition as eggnog, mistletoe and avoiding awkward political fights at the dinner table. As we put 2017 to bed, let’s take a look at trends that we might see in food tech in 2018. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it is filled with topics we returned to time and time again throughout the year.

1. Alterna-Products Will Get More Mainstream. With growing concerns over how meat and dairy impact our planet, there are a ton of alternative products coming to mass market:pea-based burger patties that “bleed,” plant-based shrimp, and coconut milk ice cream, to name just a few. And with investment from accelerators, the whole alterna-space is just going to get better and cheaper.

2. Virtual Restaurants Will Pop Up Everywhere (and Nowhere). Data driven food delivery services such as UberEATS have convinced some real world restaurants to open up virtual ones. These delivery only offshoots can experiment with new cuisines and menu items without the cost of adding additional square footage.

3. Meal Kit Shakeup. The prepared meal kit delivery market is going through an evolution as one of its pioneers, Blue Apron, had a rough year, and more focused services are blossoming around specific markets such as kids, or just sending proteins. Then there are hardware players like Nomiku and Tovala looking to bring their full stack food solutions that can be paired with sous vide machines or smart ovens into more houses. Oh, and then there is Amazon, which may make same day customizable meal kits a thing this year.

4. The Further Instagrammification of Food. The meals you eat can no longer just be tasty, they also have to pop off the plate to impress all your Instagram followers. As Restaurant Business points out, look for “rainbow colors, vertical deserts, smoking cocktails” to be on the menu next year.

5. Artificial Intelligence and Robots Rise Up for Real. Robots are already flipping burgers and now even your face can help you order (both at CaliBurger in Pasadena, FWIW). But robots and artificial intelligence will become more mainstream throughout the food stack next year. From agriculture to reducing food waste, and from food aisles to food delivery, the immediate future is about to get way more high-tech.

6. Amazon, Amazon, Amazon. No company had a bigger impact on the food space this year than Amazon. It bought Whole Foods, giving the e-commerce giant an instant, nationwide, physical presence to better facilitate grocery delivery. It partnered with AllRecipes for shoppable grocery lists and launched an in-home delivery service. And, oh by the way, it just sold tens of millions of Alexa devices this past holiday to make ordering that much easier. But the interesting thing won’t be what existing markets Jeff Bezos and company will exert its influence over, but entirely new categories Amazon will create (visual recognition in your garden!).

What do you think will be the big stories in 2018? Leave us a comment and share your thoughts below.

FirstChop Flips the Script on Sous-Vide Meal Delivery

We are firmly in the second wave of prepared meal kit delivery. Companies are specializing, doing more of the work for you, and are even built around specific devices. Which is what makes FirstChop intriguing, as it combines all of these new wave trends in its forthcoming service.

Launching in December, FirstChop is looking to stand out in the competitive meal shipping space in few ways. First, it only does meal proteins: chicken, beef, lamb, etc.; no vegetables, no starches. Second, all those proteins are cooked, and then frozen and vacuum sealed, so you can eat them on your own schedule. And third, the Bay Area-based company is basically giving away a sous-vide wand so all customers have to do is put the frozen bag of meat in hot water to prepare it.

For $109 (during pre-order, then it goes up to $139), customers can order the Starter Kit, which includes a sous vide wand and 9 servings of protein. There’s also the Family Box for $119 ($129 post pre-order), for 24 servings, and Co-Founder and CEO Ajay Narain told me that a third option with 14 servings will sell for $79. There is no monthly commitment.

The sous-vide wand is a third party device from a “reputable” manufacturer that FirstChop is just putting its name on. When asked about the sous-vide prepared meal delivery players already available like Nomiku and ChefSteps, Narain told me, “We’re the reverse. We’re starting with food and giving away the sous vide machine.”

Narain, along with Co-Founder and Chef Marc Rasic are looking to avoid the pitfalls that have befallen some of the first gen meal delivery companies. Rasic worked as a chef for the royal family of Luxembourg, ran the kitchens at Google as the search giant went from 2,700 to 65,000 employees, and worked at Munchery as that company went to market.

What they learned from their own personal experiences with meal kits, as well as scaling up kitchen production is that FirstChop doesn’t need or want to ship items like broccoli. Fresh food spoils if you don’t cook it soon after it’s received. Plus, adding fresh food complicates the logistics of packaging and shipping, and most people already have easy access to broccoli.

What people don’t have access to, is braised short rib, cooked for 16 hours, or Black Garlic Pork Loin, Petite Beef Medallions, or Peruvian Grilled Chicken. Cooking such protein, Narain says, is the hardest part of making a meal. Additionally, Rasic learned from his time at Munchery that “A lot of people hate touching [uncooked] proteins.”

By pre-cooking and freezing the meats, FirstChop believes it can simplify the shipping process, while giving the user more flexibility as the ingredients last longer. Additionally, they can serve the whole continental United States at launch to introduce people across the country to new meals they normally wouldn’t get (and no touching raw chicken!).

FirstChop is privately funded and its service be available in early December of this year. We’re excited to try it, and see how this focused approach helps shape the next phase of meal kit delivery.

Nomsly Looks to Kickstart its Kids Lunch Delivery Expansion

Nomsly is out to get your lunch money… in the healthiest way possible. The Boston-based startup offers delivery of healthy kids lunches to your door, and has now launched a Kickstarter campaign to help it expand into new geographic locations on the East Coast.

The company is looking to take the hassle out of preparing kids lunches every day without sacrificing quality for convenience (i.e. no prepackaged, processed junk). For $35 a week, Nomsly will send you five prepared, healthy lunches. All meals are cold, so they can be stored in the fridge for a week and packed into lunchboxes with no further preparation needed.

Keeping things cold is actually important for Nomsly. According to Co-Founder Christopher Buck, Nomsly lunches stay fresher longer because the entire process is refrigerated. Food arrives cold, is prepared cold and shipped cold. This way, when your package arrives on Saturday, all the lunches will stay fresh throughout the week. The company even uses a Vitamin C and Calcium wash on the fruits and veggies to keep them from turning brown.

Nomsly is currently bootstrapped with funding from friends and family. Just Buck and Co-Founder Andrew Macauly are full-time with the company, with six other contractors providing additional help. The company currently only serves the Boston area, and wouldn’t reveal any customer numbers.

Nomsly just launched a Kickstarter campaign to try and raise $30,000, the proceeds of which will go towards equipment and materials that would allow the company to expand into New York and Philadelphia.

Which is a bummer for this blogger as it’s another kid meal kit that doesn’t service my area. And I really like the idea of Nomsly. Like Yumble, Nomsly is differentiating itself in the meal delivery space by focusing only on kids. What I really think is smart on Nomsly’s part is to focus even further by providing only lunches, and even further, only cold lunches.

First, grabbing a prepared, balanced meal out of the fridge and throwing it in my son’s backpack would save me lots of time in the morning. At $7 a meal, that’s roughly twice what I pay for a school lunch, but it’s for menu items like grilled chicken and rice with peas and plums, turkey wraps and other fare that seem better than cafeteria tater tots. Plus, it beats the repetition of me slapping together a PB&J everyday.

Buck said the company had looked at going the VC route, but wanted to go with Kickstarter because it was interested in fostering more of an engaged community that was actively participating in their mission. This is admirable, but it leaves open the opportunity for other, better funded companies to come in and replicate what Nomsly is doing on a larger scale.

And if that’s the case, there’s a chance I’ll never get to hand Nomsly my lunch money.

Coca-Cola Jumps On Meal Kit Bandwagon With Chef’d Beverage Pairing

Amazon entered the meal kit delivery game and Blue Apron’s stock doesn’t look great, but that hasn’t stopped other competitors from continuing to diversify their offerings and partner with big names. The newest brand to jump into the fray is Coca-Cola, partnering with self-described “online gourmet meal kit provider” Chef’d to send consumers meal kits that include pairings of Coke or another Coca-Cola owned product with the meal.

According to an interview with Beverage Daily, Coca-Cola has dipped its toes into the dinner space before but the partnership with Chef’d is the first official commercial activity. The meal kits, called “Daily Meal Inspirations” include meals like Beef Short Ribs paired with a bottle of Coke to roasted chicken with Dasani sparkling water. The meals range from $27-$42 for two people (not the cheapest meal kit offering out there) and can be ordered on the Chef’d site.

Given a number of meal kit companies trying to capture consumer mindshare, it’s not surprising to see brands like Coca-Cola try to capitalize. But this partnership isn’t the most robust in terms of delivering something truly unique – and do consumers want a can of soda sent with their meal for a premium price? Maybe. It seems like Coke and Chef’d are trying to recreate the convenience of a restaurant experience – a meal and a drink – but instead of being delivered, fully prepared and cooked, by a waiter, it’s being shipped in a box in ingredient form to your front door.

Chef’d’s big claim to meal kit fame is their lack of a subscription model, allowing consumers to choose from over 300 online recipes and have them shipped to their doorstep as soon as the next day. The meals come portioned for two or four people and the company has offerings from gluten-free to vegan.

They do offer a meal plan – aka a subscription service – for customers who want a regular box delivered, but the on-demand style gives people who don’t want the commitment but do like the convenience or variety a meal kit service offers. So the new Coke meals will be available to consumers without a subscription attached, which may be one of the reasons the brand chose Chef’d as its first meal kit partner.

Chef’d has attracted other name brands in Big Food, including receiving a recent Series B investment round from Campbell’s for $10 million. Their total funding raised to date is just over $27 million.

Tovala Pairs Smart Appliance Innovation With Meal Kit Convenience

Last year at the Smart Kitchen Summit’s Startup Showcase, David Rabie stood next to a black box, one that resembled a microwave of the future or maybe even a toaster oven. Rabie’s company Tovala was making a smart steam oven that was connected to an app and able to perfectly cook certain meals with a catalog of food data and recipes. But the even bigger story behind Tovala wasn’t in the room at all; the company planned to launch an accompanying service designed to take on the meal kit delivery giants.

After a successful Kickstarter, Tovala is shipping to early backers and launching its flagship product offering to the masses this week. Tovala’s a smart steam oven comes with a ready-to-cook meal kit delivery subscription – focusing on drastically cutting down the time from food pickup to cooking to table. Using convection technology, a water chamber circulates heat to more evenly cook food and the oven is capable of steam, convection and broiling.

But the real innovation here is in the meal kit delivery service; unlike traditional meal kit delivery companies, Tovala sends customers their meals completely prepped and ready to stick in the accompanying smart oven. The customer scans the barcode using the connected app and tells the oven what you’re about to put inside, pulling the recipe down from the cloud to ensure your meal is cooked perfectly.

The meals might look a little like frozen dinners or airplane meals, but the results from early writeups like this one from Washington Post food writer Maura Judkis say otherwise.

Judkis writes, “I tried the Thai turkey meatballs with a hoisin glaze, served on cilantro brown rice with roasted asparagus, and was pleasantly surprised: The meatballs, studded with water chestnut, were crunchy and moist, the asparagus wasn’t overcooked, and a sambal sauce finish added a lot of kick. Another meal, miso salmon with roasted broccoli, delivered a velvety-soft piece of perfectly-done salmon”

Rabie spoke at last year’s Smart Kitchen Summit and described the target customer they are trying to lure – the ones who want even more convenience from a Blue Apron-style meal service. Perhaps the ones who stop using the service after just a few months – which according to the company’s S1 filings right before their IPO seemed to be a large majority.

“We’re trying to solve a common pain point – no time, want a delicious, healthy meal without the work. This seems to resonate across demographics.” – David Rabie, CEO, Tovala

Judkis also experimented with non-Tovala food, reporting that in general, the machine did well but (unsurprisingly) the ideal use for it was with the subscription service meals.

The Tovala Oven comes at a premium – $399 – but in theory could replace your wall oven if you subscribed to the meal service. It too has a higher sticker price than competitive meal kit delivery services, but not by much – charging $36 for 3 meals a week meals for a single person and $72 for the same amount for two people.

So far, Tovala is the only company combining a connected appliance with a prepared delivery service and is tapping into something core to our changing world. People have less time than ever but are more aware of the needs to eat healthy. For those willing to pay for convenience, the startup may be the answer.

Can Blue Apron Succeed? Five Questions With A Data Scientist Ahead of The IPO

In some ways, the meal delivery kit craze was one of the ways people started to notice major disruption happening in our food system. Technology and connectivity are finally starting to penetrate the ways we grow, cook, manage, order and think about our food – so it is fitting that one of the major IPOs of 2017 will also be the first meal kit startup IPO. Blue Apron is just a day away from being a publicly traded company on the NYSE where it will trade under the symbol $APRN. The company has already slashed its valuation ahead of the event, estimating stock prices will open between $10-$11 a share.

There’s been a great deal of speculation about the company’s S-1 filing and what their disclosures about revenue, customer acquisition costs and overall company health mean for interested investors.

We sat down with Daniel McCarthy, co-founder and Chief Statistician at Zodiac, a predictive analytics firm and data scientist at Wharton (aka he’s way smarter than us) to talk about the analysis he’s done on Blue Apron’s filing. He’s about to transition into a new role as a professor at Emory University. Daniel has written several interesting takes about the Blue Apron IPO looking deep into their disclosures and extrapolating additional info using data modelling and we wanted to ask him his thoughts about the company’s path to profitability on the eve of the IPO.

The Spoon: Given the challenge Blue Apron has with customer retention and your finding that retention actually gets worse with customer age, does the company have a path to profitability with the current model?
 

McCarthy: No, I don’t see a path to profitability if future customers are similar in retention and spend to the customers that Blue Apron has acquired in the past, especially those acquired over the last twelve months. At the same time, Blue Apron is a high-quality business. I would be optimistic that they could be profitable if they adopted a more LTV-centric way of doing business.

In particular, they should refocus and rationalize their customer acquisition spend around prospects similar to their high-value customers. This could (1) substantially reduce their CAC, which has moved up considerably over the past year, and (2) increase the quality of their subscriber base from a retention and spend standpoint. The downside to this strategy is that it will naturally be smaller, so there is less of a “sky is the limit” growth story to tell. Still, that seems better than being structurally unprofitable.

The Spoon: Blue Apron is reporting “active customers” in their filling as opposed to their subscriber base numbers, which you’ve noted is an unusual way for a subscription service to report their users. Do you have a sense of why?

McCarthy: I think they are reporting active customers instead of subscribers for two reasons.

  1. Active customers will always be a bigger number than total subscribers, so it makes them look bigger. Who doesn’t like to look bigger?
  2. I think that a part of them likes to think of themselves as more like a retailer than a subscription offering. If their customers come in and out periodically over time, they could argue that churn doesn’t matter as much, because the churners will come back at some point.There are a few issues with this line of reasoning. For one, churn matters at retailers too, even though we do not get to observe exactly when customers churn. For two, I think many of their periodic customers are strategic, only showing up when they are able to get a new promo discount. Finally, Blue Apron doesn’t provide us with meaningful data points about how periodic behavior (if there is any) affects the unit economics of their business.

The Spoon: You’ve reported that the revenue that Blue Apron is generating from more recently-acquired customers is less than from customers acquired in the past. Why is this?

McCarthy: They introduced the family plan in 2015, which has a lower price point ($8.99/serving versus $9.99/serving). It could be that we saw a mix shift in 2016 towards people with this plan, and that people on family plans are simply not generating as much revenue than the rest of the subscriber base.

The Spoon: Blue Apron turns a profit on 30% of its customers but their break-even point is moving farther away with each cohort due to declining revenue and growing customer aquisition costs (CAC) for newer customers according to your analysis. Can you tell how fast that percentage is declining?

McCarthy: It’s a great question, and it would be pretty risky to do a simple extrapolation off what we’ve seen over the past twelve months, especially since the rise in CAC has been very dramatic lately.

The Spoon: Subscription services for goods is a popular trend right now, both in the food market and outside. Is there an example of another subscription startup that’s getting customer acquisition right?

McCarthy: Dollar Shave Club has wonderful customer retention. While I generally am leery of relying on business intelligence firms to make absolute statements about retention, I think they are a very helpful tool for making relative comparisons across firms. This chart was very striking in that regard. It really highlights how much better customer retention is at DSC relative to Blue Apron. And that Blue Apron’s retention, while not good, is nevertheless better than their competitor, Hello Fresh.

We’re interested to see what happens to the Blue Apron stock tomorrow as it hits NYSE and how the first meal kit delivery IPO will shift the still growing market. Stay tuned.

Blue Apron’s Biggest Problem Pre-IPO? Finding Loyal Customers

Blue Apron’s impending IPO has been the subject of much speculation and anticipation in the recent months, especially as the meal kit delivery market has experienced great fluctuation in the past few years.

The S-1 filing has been analyzed by hordes of financial analysts, but perhaps the most important deep dive into Blue Apron’s documents was around its customer acquisition costs and ongoing challenge to retain a core customer base.

Daniel McCarthy, a professor of marketing at Emory University, conducted an analysis of Blue Apron’s subscriber retention and churn rates using data found in the S-1 and financial modeling. The S-1 itself leaves out the raw data on the company’s retention and churn rates, but what McCarthy found using marketing costs and costs per customer, he could determine the number of customers they acquired in any given period.

So what did he find?

Blue Apron likely acquired around 2.9MM subscribers over its life and then lost 1.9MM subscribers to finish Q1 of this year with 1MM total. Using a customer-based corporate valuation model, McCarthy plugged in the customer numbers and found that close to two-thirds of Blue Apron’s customers leave within 6 months. The meal kit startup spends, on average $94 to acquire new customers but only makes $25 per month in gross profit off of that new customer – meaning it takes about four and a half months to break even. A problem when many new customers aren’t sticking around for that long.

Does Blue Apron have a problem, or does the problem lie with meal kit delivery in general?

It’s hard to say that the problem is inherently Blue Apron’s but rather that they have struggled with being an early leader in the market and enjoyed success before competition flooded the space. With an array of meal kit options to choose from and dozens of offers for a box of free meals to try new services, customers are harder to lure and even harder to keep. Marketing and customer acquisition is going to keep getting more expensive as more companies try to compete for dollars and as the novelty of meal kits begins to wear off.

“Blue Apron isn’t getting nearly as much out of its marketing spend as it once did. The company’s marketing expense more than doubled in the first quarter.”
– The Motley Fool

The other challenge that the entire meal kit industry faces is the stickiness of their basic product. Meal kits are often easy for consumers to try – companies make it simple to sign up and offer quick delivery and attractive new customer promotions. But they are a huge departure from the way we have been taught to shop for and purchase our food – and while they might be more convenient in some ways, they are inconvenient in others. If the kit doesn’t come in time, a last minute trip the grocery store is needed. Or if the meals that come all seem too complicated or involved, it might sit in the fridge and spoil while the customer picks up quick take-out. As much as we want to believe we’ll eat healthy and cook gourmet, fresh meals every day of the week, life often gets in the way.

Eating meal kit style is a behavior change. Some find it enjoyable and enlightening, introducing new flavors and methods of cooking in foolproof ways with ready to cut and cook ingredients. But ask anyone if they’ve tried Blue Apron or any of their competitors, and you’re likely to find many of them will say yes, but are no longer an active customer.

How might Blue Apron and the rest of the industry change this? The move to put meal kits into grocery stores for pickup is certainly one way, getting rid of the timing and delivery piece that may deter some from continuing with the service. It also fundamentally changes the subscription mode and doesn’t solve for that business model much except to change it entirely.

There’s no question that Blue Apron’s IPO will be watched by many and read as a sign of the future of meal kits as the convenient and healthy future of cooking.

Martha Stewart + Amazon Partner To Bring You Dinner Tonight

The best part about meal kits is that they take away the need to meal plan and decide what’s for dinner. Each week, a box arrives at your door and gives you 3-5 preplanned dinners with exactly the right ingredients to prepare and cook each. The worst part? The amount of planning it requires to get the kits in the first place.

The problem meal kits solve is the age old question – what’s for dinner in the future – but they don’t tackle the very common, end of the week and out of groceries question – what’s for dinner TONIGHT? If you’re like me, you have at least one night in the week where you’ve made all your meals, you haven’t grocery shopped yet, and take out just doesn’t sound appealing (or healthy). Martha Stewart (and Amazon) are here to help.

Martha Stewart partnered last year with Marley Spoon to create a branded meal kit, joining the 100+ other meal kits out there, many of them also backed by a celebrity name. But they recently announced a true stand-out feature – partnering with AmazonFresh, Stewart & Marley Spoon will now ship their meal kit the same day you order it.

According to Inc, who has the full scoop,

Users can now order a single meal for two adults in the morning, and find it on their doorsteps that evening.

The company hopes that the move will give them an edge in the meal kit market, and welcome new consumers into the fold. The typical meal kit consumer tends to be 25-44 – Marley Spoon hopes this move might appeal to older consumers as well who aren’t able to leave the home as much. It seems more likely that it will open them up to people who aren’t great at planning meals all the time – busy parents, or busy professionals in general – and want a quick, last minute solution that isn’t takeout.

The meals can be ordered in the morning and will run about $24/meal for the food and on demand service. Not cheap, but probably similar to what a restaurant-quality takeout meal would cost and with fresher, healthier ingredients.

Amazon, on the other hand, is clearly interested in all areas of food commerce – from the grocery store to fresh food delivery to meal kits, they’re putting their footprints in almost every area.

Want To Eat Like A Star Quarterback? There’s A Meal Kit For That

Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in general usually elicit one of two reactions: complete fanboy love or abject hatred. But if you’re in the love fan group or you’re just someone who wants to follow the diet plan of a superstar athlete, then meal kit delivery service Purple Carrot has a new product for you.

Called TB12 Performance Meals, a nod to the quarterback and his Patriot’s team jersey, they were designed to give consumers a super healthy, plant-based, gluten-free weekly meal plan that mimics Brady’s own regimen. According to Purple Carrot, the TB12 meals were designed around the needs of someone who requires fuel that promotes healing from intense physical workouts and fuels the body to encourage peak performance.

The TB12 philosophy is focused on preventing injury and promoting accelerated injury recovery through holistic, whole-body wellness, incorporating exercise, recovery, and hydration & nutrition concepts like those expressed in TB12 Performance Meals.

The meal kit comes with ready to prep ingredients, similar to competitive meal delivery kits like Blue Apron, Hello Fresh and Sunbasket but is higher priced at around $13 per plate or $78 for the week at only 3 meals a week. The meals are highly specialized and created to be high in protein and low in sugar, soy and processed ingredients. Purple Carrot points out in the FAQs that the TB12 meals are different from their traditional offerings, designed specifically for individuals that have a higher metabolism due to increased daily activity and are only available for 1-2 people in each box.

Brady’s diet and commitment to personal wellness are well known among fans and was chronicled in the Boston Globe extensively. Purple Carrot approached Brady last summer and the pair began to discuss the potential meal delivery partnership. They worked to identify meals that Brady regularly eats at home and on the road and crafted workable recipes that could be recreated in a meal kit.

In a statement to Fortune, Purple Carrot Founder & CEO Andy Levitt said about the opportunity, “The meal kit industry has grown significantly since I launched Purple Carrot two-and-a-half years ago. Partnerships with great organizations like Whole Foods Market, and incredible people like Tom Brady, enable us to elevate our brand even further.”

Brady isn’t the first celebrity to cash in on their personal brand and the meal kit boom – Martha Stewart partnered with the Marley Spoon to create one her own along with countless celebrity chefs like Michael Mina and Jamie Oliver. Athletes as food spokespeople is a well-known advertising tactic and it’s no surprise that companies will look to increasingly popular products like meal kits to continue that trend as the way we cook and consume food evolves.

The TB12 brand is something Brady has worked to build out with other offerings as well, partnering with Under Armour to offer apparel, creating a foundation to support elite athletes who become injured and creating a personal gym and fitness program. TB12 Performance Meals can be ordered today and boxes will start shipping on April 3rd.