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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

meal kits

Project Open Hand Aims to Make Food as Medicine a Key Tenet of Healthcare

Non-profit Project Open Hand (POH) announced today a new CEO and, with that, further plans to expand its mission of treating chronic illness with doctor-recommended foods.

The announcement itself is brief, stating only that the new CEO, Paul Hepfer, M.S., will be “instrumental in continuing to leverage and expand Project Open Hand’s relationships with government partners, health plans and providers, private funders, donors and volunteers.”

But it also puts the spotlight on the many initiatives the San Francisco-based organization has kicked off in the last few years to raise awareness around the larger role food needs to play in healthcare — particularly for underserved individuals.

POH specifically targets critically ill and vulnerable populations in the Bay Area. That includes those in need living with conditions like AIDS/HIV, diabetes, and cancer, as well as elderly and disabled people who don’t necessarily have access to healthy food. The organization started in 1985 as a grassroots response to the AIDs crisis, tackling the negative effects of malnutrition on terminally ill individuals. It has since expanded to include several different initiatives around getting people what it calls “medically tailored meals” — that is, meals built around the specific conditions, medications, and side effects that come with chronic illness.

According to the organization’s site, POH serves over 2,500 meals per day to seniors and persons with disabilities around San Francisco via its Community Nutrition Program, and POH claims access to these meals can lower risk of disease and cognitive decline. Those 60 years and over who are San Francisco residents, and those diagnosed with a disability, can apply. Upon acceptance, they receive hot meals free of charge at one of the participating San Francisco locations.

But it’s the organization’s Wellness Program that gives us a good look at where the food-as-medicine movement is headed. Those individuals who qualify (according to this list) can sign up for the program and get medically tailored meals as well as groceries, both for pickup or delivery. Nutrition counseling is also part of the package. The Wellness Program is different from the Nutrition Program in that it specifically targets those individuals living with illness and disease, including cancer, lupus, diabetes, and HIV/AIDs, among others.

Though it can be easy to be skeptical of the so-called wellness movement, POH has partnered with a number of different researchers, scientists, other not-for-profit groups, and government departments to back up its offerings. It’s also a founding member of the Food is Medicine Coalition, a volunteer association of nonprofit, medically-tailored and nutrition services. It has worked with University of California, San Francisco, to publish data on the health benefits of food as medicine, and the aforementioned Adults With Disabilities meal program is completely funded by The SF Department of Aging and Adult Services (DAAS).

To be clear: POH isn’t telling anyone to ditch their meds in favor of kale. But a growing number of companies, organizations, and government sectors are grasping onto the idea of proper nutrition as preventative care when it comes to illness and disease.

And even those with disposable income who don’t need outside assistance can benefit from the food-as-medicine movement, and the most common way to do that as of right now is through the food-as-medicine sector of the meal kits market. Yes, it will require picking through and bypassing meal delivery plans that seem to care more about your Instagram feed than your health.

But don’t dismay: there are numerous options out there that would qualify as medicinal meal kits. Be Well Eats delivers meal kits to your door compiled by a team of certified nutritionists and holistic health coaches, and led by celebrity chef Tricia Williams and NYC-based Dr. Frank Lipman. Meanwhile, over in Los Angeles, the Phood Farmacy operates a virtual kitchen that delivers “preventative” and “healing” foods to Angelenos.

While both those options would be out of reach financially for POH’s demographic, it’s encouraging to see efforts being made up across the spectrum towards making food a bigger part of the healthcare discussion. Ideally we would one day see a grassroots initiative like Food as Medicine teaming with these higher-end meal kit companies to deliver to a wider swath of the population. Perhaps part of Hepfer’s plans as CEO of POH will include finding ways for non-profits to team up with more consumer-focused companies to make healthier eating easier for all.

Home Chef Launches Customizable Meal Kits, Expands to 500 More Kroger Stores

The customizable meal kit is sort of a white whale for The Spoon. The idea that you could pick and choose your ingredients and have them assembled and delivered to you in a timely fashion is something we’ve been watching, waiting (and writing) on for the past couple of years. Today we got one step closer to that reality when Home Chef and its parent company, Kroger, announced a new Customize It feature for its meal kits.

According to the press release, The Customize It feature is available to customers shopping for meal kits online at Home Chef, where they can now swap, double or upgrade ingredients on “many of their favorite recipes.”

Kroger claims the move makes Home Chef the first “leading meal kit company” to introduce this type of customization. We haven’t seen anything similar from other meal kit companies, so this seems to mark a milestone for the meal kit sector.

Depending on how much of it is allowed, adding customization features gives more power to the consumer and could help fend off issues mail order meal kits have with customer retention. If you have a particular allergy or taste preference, being able to swap out an ingredient means shoppers can choose from a broader selection of meal kit menus rather than abandoning the service entirely. And the ability to double ingredients makes a lot of sense for people throwing a dinner party — everything you need arrives in the box ready to go.

Now we’ll see if this customization will trickle down into the meal kits Home Chef sells through Kroger. The companies also announced today that Home Chef meal kits will be available in an additional 500 Kroger stores, bringing the total number of Home Chef retail locations to more than 700.

We’ve already seen some signs of meal kit customization with Kroger’s “Easy for You!” frozen buffet. Easy for You! allows customers to assemble various frozen ingredients together into an oven-ready bag they can cook at home. Broadening that customization to fresh food in Home Chef meal kits could allow for customers to create a bespoke meal kit online with the pre-portioned ingredients they want, and have that packaged meal either ready for pick-up at the store or delivered to their home same day.

This is the reason we’re waiting so intently for customized meal kits, this combination of choice and convenience could drastically alter the way we shop and eat.

Chef’d Returns From the Dead to Invade Retail Stores Across the U.S.

Shuttered meal kit company Chef’d is back from the dead, this time as a clean-label retail kit courtesy of True Food Innovations. The latter just announced it will roll out meal kits under the Chef’d and True Chef monikers in retail outlets in 2019.

True Food purchased the assets to Chef’d in July 2018, shortly after Chef’d unexpectedly closed its doors, citing funding and expense issues. The company was one of the first to sell meal kits in stores, via a Costco partnership, in addition to its mail-subscription service.

Under True Food, Chef’d kits will return to stores, this time with a 55-day shelf life thanks to a patent-pending formula True Food has developed that uses high-pressure processing without the need for preservatives. All kits require 15 to 20 minutes of prep time. Most interesting, True Food claims its kits’ 55-day shelf life has “cracked the code” on meal kits and that it’s a “key differentiator and absolute requirement for retail meal kits to be commercially viable for nationwide distribution.”

No word yet on which stores will carry the resurrected Chef’d meal kits, but True Food has said the rollout will be nationwide. We’ve reached out to True Food for more launch and pricing details and will update them here as they roll in. What we do know is that Chef’d historically worked with non-traditional retailers, forging partnerships with drug stores, wholesalers, and even one with Byte, to supply office fridges with meal kits. One wonders if True Food will continue that approach with the newly resurrected Chef’d.

Whichever stores Chef’d lands in, it will go up against numerous other meal kits that have turned to the retail sector over the last year or so. Kroger, who bought Home Chef, announced in December 2018 it was rolling out a pilot with Walgreens to sell meal kits in the drug store. Walgreens previously had a deal with Chef’d before the latter shut down. Albertsons bought Plated last year and started offering its meal kits nationwide in stores.

No one’s been so bold as to claim they’ve cracked the code, which is a way of saying you have the ultimate solution the industry has been frantically digging to find the last few years. “We listened to our retail partners and we developed products to solve their problem: shelf life,” Alan True, CEO and founder of True, said in a release.

The numbers will tell us soon enough if a longer shelf-life is indeed they key to selling more meal kits. But if that’s the case, I can’t help thinking it might be cheaper and easier to just grab a frozen dinner and call it a day.

SimplyCook Closes Series A Round for Its Flavor-Focused Meal Kit Service

London-based meal kit company SimplyCook just closed a 4.5 million Series A funding round, led by Octopus Investments (via TechCrunch).

Rather than ship full meal kits a la Blue Apron or HelloFresh, SimplyCook focuses on the extras involved with making a meal: herbs, spices, and sauces. Each “kit” is shipped with recipe cards and whatever flavorings the meals call for.

It’s yet another example of what the meal kit could be, and joins others that cater to mealtime extras: coffee, baked goods, and booze are also popular.

But don’t think SimplyCook simply ships powdered flavorings you could just as easily scoop out of a jar yourself. The company says it creates its own flavor blends of different ingredients that take the form of pastes, oils, rubs, and stocks, in addition to dried herbs and spices. Flavorings are pre-portioned, as well. Customers need only add the whole food ingredients called for on the recipe card. The company also sells its kits in-store at retail outlets in the UK.

There are some folks who can glance at a shelf full of spices and create an amazing meal with them on the fly. Most of us can’t, and so a subscription service that exposes customers to more flavor combinations and tastes could appeal to a pretty wide swath of people. Because there are no proteins or produce shipped in the kits, the monthly price is a lot cheaper than, say, HelloFresh or The Purple Carrot. That in turn translates to less risk in the consumer’s mind about spending money on a meal kit service that may or may not line up with their tastes. And since SimplyCook ships non-perishable items, there’s less risk for both the company and the consumer: the former doesn’t have to worry about food spoiling in transit; the customer doesn’t feel pressure to immediately make the dish the day it arrives.

Stateside, there are many SimplyCook-like options. RawSpiceBar, based out of the Bay Area, is $8/month for three fresh-made spices and corresponding recipes. You can build your own spice kit based on your dietary needs and/or preferences, and from there get even more granular in terms of what you want in a recipe, be it casserole dishes, grilled items, or, of course, raw foods.

Spice Madam is more expensive, at $20/month. Each month’s box contains spices and recipes from a different region, plus cultural info about that part of the world and a music playlist. Plus, 5 percent of each box goes to charity.

SpiceBreeze also focuses on different regions of the world, including flavors for between two and four different areas in one box. The only downside to this one is that you get just two dishes per month.

As for SimplyCook, it’s only available in the UK right now, though this new funding round will, the company expects, “fuel international launches.”

Phood Farmacy Launches a Food-as-Medicine Virtual Kitchen in Los Angeles

With the wellness movement and demand for food delivery both in full swing, a company called Phood Farmacy has decided to combine the two and launch a new concept: a virtual restaurant for medicinal foods.

According to a press release sent out this morning, Phood Farmacy sells pre-made, farm-fresh food, using “ingredient combinations designed to be preventative and/or healing.” Think lots of acai, leafy greens, fish, and the ubiquitous avocado toast. Menu items cover multiple different diets: chemo, keto, vegan, and gluten-free, to name a few.

It being a virtual restaurant, there’s no in-house dining room for Phood Farmacy. Instead, customers can order single items via Grubhub or the company website, or sign up for a three-day meal kit plan. The latter includes breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three days, as well as snack items, and is completely vegan. Picky eaters, take note: As of right now, it looks like you don’t get to choose individual dishes within the meal kit.

Meal kits as medicine are becoming more of a trend as consumers look to take health back into their own hands and prevent rather than treat illnesses like heart disease and diabetes. Since I’m not a doctor, I won’t try and determine the medicinal value of meal kits and locally grown veggies. However, at SKS 2018 in Seattle last October, Lighter’s CEO, Alexis Fox, told us the story of how Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams more or less reversed Type 2 diabetes by dumping the traditional American diet and switching to a plant-based one. So at the very least, offerings like those from Phood Farmacy could play a role in boosting health, and maybe even preventing some conditions.

Trouble is, medicinal and/or plant-based diets that give you the right amount of calories and nutrients require a lot of planning, particularly if you’ve never done one before. So a virtual kitchen peddling ready-made meals and easy-to-make kits seems like the obvious next step, since it’s providing the kind of convenience and assistance many of us need to make any kind of significant change to our diets.

Phood Farmacy only operates in the Los Angeles area right now. Outside of the City of Angels, you can check out doctor and nutritionist recommended meal kits from the likes of Be Well Eats and BistroMD.

Canadian Meal Kit Company Fresh Prep Raises $3.3M

Fresh Prep, a Vancouver, Canada-based meal kit company, has raised $3.3 million ($2.47 USD) led by First West Capital, according to Betakit. This is the first round of funding for Fresh Prep.

The deal caught our eye for a couple of reasons. First, Fresh Prep is a traditional meal kit company, delivering boxes of pre-measured ingredients to your door. Even in Canada, where meal kits generate $120 million in sales, these companies face the same issues with customer retention and making a profit as they do in the U.S.. To fend off these challenges, most meal kit companies at this point are migrating from mail order to retail outlets. Fresh Prep, it seems, is bucking this trend, and raising fresh capital while they’re at it.

Fresh Prep is also raising money in the face of a much bigger competitor in Canada. In October, HelloFresh, the biggest meal kit player in the U.S., acquired Toronto-based meal kit company, Chefs Plate, which also has a fulfillment center in Vancouver.

Meal kits are a tough business, and Fresh Prep aside, VC money isn’t flowing into the sector anymore. Just Add Cooking, a Boston-based meal kit company shut down last month. In the scramble to find a sustainable business, meal kit companies are experimenting with new sales channels, like selling in drug stores. Meal kit companies are also now facing added pressure from CPG companies like Stouffer’s, which are coming out with their own frozen meal kits sold in grocery stores.

Despite all these headwinds, Fresh Prep still found investors. Now the company needs to show that it can scale up.

Kroger Expands Home Chef Meal Kit Sales in Walgreens Drug Stores

Kroger and Walgreens announced today that the two companies are building on a pilot program launched in October that has Kroger selling both grocery items and its Home Chef meal kits in Walgreens drug stores.

Walgreens will carve out floor space for a new “Kroger Express” section in select stores that will sell 2,300 curated items including meat, dairy, produce, CPG products as well as Home Chef meal kits. Kroger purchased Home Chef earlier this year for $200 million. The first such Kroger Express is already up and running in Florence, Kentucky (near Kroger’s Cincinnati headquarters) with twelve more pilot stores also across Northern Kentucky opening early next year.

At the same time, Kroger said that today it launched sales of Home Chef Express meal kits across 65 Walgreens in the Chicago area. The Home Chef Express meal kits serve two, promise to take only 15 minutes to prepare, will feature a rotating menu and will cost roughly ~$17.00.

For Spoon readers, what’s noteworthy about this news is the continuation of a trend that has meal kits moving to new and non-traditional retail outlets. Chef’d was a pioneer in this and had actually partnered with Walgreen’s as a meal kit sales channel in June of this year… before it abruptly shut down. According to The Wall Street Journal, Albertsons was going to sell Plated meal kits in Rite-Aid stores as part of their planned merger, but that merger fell through.

Kroger’s agreement with Walgreens is still just a pilot, so we’ll see if consumers want to grab a Hickory Seasoned Salmon and when they stock up on exfoliating cream. But it reinforces how Kroger continues to be nimble in its bid to fight off Amazon from swallowing up the grocery industry. In addition to this deal, the grocery giant is also experimenting with self-driving delivery vehicles, established an innovation lab, and is building out robot-driven warehouse fulfillment centers.

Is the Future of Meal Kits Frozen Dinners?

Meal kits have been migrating away from mail order and into grocery aisles over the past year. But is the next step in meal kits a blast from the past? Is the race to create more cooking convenience turning meal kits into just a fancier version of frozen dinners? And does it matter?

I started thinking about this when Stouffer’s dropped us a note this week to let us know about its new line of frozen meal kits. The Stouffer’s Complete Family Meal Kits, which started rolling out earlier this month, cost $15.99 each, serve a family of four, and come in Roasted Tuscan Style Chicken, Braised Pork, or Sesame Chicken flavors. Ingredients are pre-chopped, take less than 25 minutes to prepare and will last 12 months in the freezer if you want to wait.

On its face, the Stouffers frozen meal kits solve a lot of the issues we have with the more traditional mail order meal kit products:

  • The food is pre-measured, pre-cut and all laid out in individual bags
  • Meal components require little work to reheat (just boiling, frying or microwaving)
  • They don’t have to be eaten right away
  • They don’t arrive on our doorstep in a monstrous box with excess packaging

While you’re grabbing a Stouffer’s meal kit from the store freezer, you may also notice that Tyson has its own version of the frozen meal kit. In fact, as my colleague, Catherine Lamb pointed out earlier this year, we are in a frozen food renaissance, and meal kits are no exception.

In September of this year, Kroger launched its “Easy for You!” frozen-food-meets-buffet-cuisine line. As I wrote then, Easy For You! “lets customers bundle together frozen entrees and sides into a package that can be taken home and heated up. Selections include prime rib strips with mushroom and gravy, gumbo and mac and cheese among others. There are even videos at the display to show customers how to prepare their food. All meals are sold by weight at $7.99 a pound.”

Easy for You! may not technically be a meal kit, but it’s pretty darn close. When you consider that Kroger started rolling out its Home Chef-brand meal kits in October, it’s not hard to see them combining the two lines into one frozen “Easy for You-Home Chef!” offering at some point.

Meanwhile, over in Belgium, Mealhero is doing just that, selling frozen food meal kits components that you can mix and match and reheat in an accompanying countertop appliance. Back here in the U.S., First Chop sends out boxes of pre-made frozen meats that you just sous vide to prepare.

And I suspect we’ll be seeing more frozen meal kits options on the way.

From a business perspective, frozen meal kits make some sense as there’s less logistical pressure to ship perishable ingredients in a timely fashion. And with ingredients already cut and cooked, there isn’t a need for odd shaped containers to protect something like a whole tomato, so companies can rely on more standardized packing materials (and, in theory at least, cut down on waste).

From a consumer perspective, frozen meal kits make sense because you can pick them up as you do your normal shopping and keep them in the freezer to eat whenever you want.

As a child of the ’70s who grew up eating his fair share of Swanson’s salisbury steak dinners, it’s just funny to see old ideas get new packaging. But at the end of the day, whether meal kits are just refashioned frozen dinners doesn’t really matter. There won’t be just one meal kit solution, or one meal kit form factor. There will be many, as companies carve out their own niche: organic meal kits, meal kits that teach you how to be a better cook, specific diets meal kits, and meal kits that come in a box from the frozen section of the grocery store.

Meal Kit Startup Just Add Cooking Ceases Operations

Just Add Cooking (JAC), the Boston-based meal kit company specializing in locally-sourced meals from the New England area, has ceased operations.

The news went out today via an email to customers from company founder Jan Leife. According to the email, the company had been in search of financing over the past few months and, not surprisingly, investor appetites for meal kit startups has soured in the wake of Chef’d’s sudden shut down and Blue Apron’s struggles.

From the email:

Over the past several months, we’ve been focused on finding a long term financing solution. As meal kit companies have shuttered and others have been bought by large companies, the market hasn’t played in our favor, and unfortunately we have not succeeded in finding a viable solution for long-term financing.

The effort to find funding included a Wefunder equity crowdfunding campaign less than a month ago to raise up to $300 thousand, but the effort fell far short with only $7.7 thousand in funds coming in. According to the Wefunder page, the company has taken in a total of $1.48 million from 32 investors over its five-year lifespan.

The news is yet another sign that startups are having trouble making the economics of meal kits work even while sales rise.  JAC saw its revenue grow 19% year over year, fueled in large part by sales of their meal kits in grocery store locations around New England. According to the company, overall revenue was on track to hit $1.9 million by the end of the year.

Based on the email, it’s not immediately clear if JAC will continue to look for a strategic option such as selling the company. We’ve reached out to Leife for a comment and will update this post when we hear more.

UPDATE 11/6/18: Jan Leife responded to our question about what’s next for Just Add Cooking with the following statement:

“Currently we are seeking a company who could continue to serve our customers or meet their needs in a different way.

In our six years of operation, we have built a community of thousands of loyal customers passionate about local food. A recipe database with hundreds of recipes that utilize local ingredients and are created with the financial and logistical restraints of meal kits in mind. We enjoy a strong brand recognition in New England and been awarded Best of Boston 2018 by Boston Magazine.”

Hat tip to Spoon reader Elina for the head’s up on this news.

The full email is below:

Dearest Customer,

As of today November 5th Just Add Cooking will be ceasing operations in Boston. We are so sorry to bring you this news, and want to explain why we have come to this decision.

We set out six years ago with a big idea about a new local food delivery service and an ambition to create a new food system in New England helping busy customers reclaim their kitchen. Since then, we’ve accomplished many things we’re incredibly proud of. We built a brand and a supply chain with many of the finest farms and food companies there are in the region. We’ve created hundreds of amazing and delicious recipes and we built some truly exceptional relationships with engaged and loyal customers such as you. Last but not least we manage to gather an exceptional group of people who made Just Add Cooking great, every week.

That said, Just Add Cooking today still has many challenges to overcome. Over the past several months, we’ve been focused on finding a long term financing solution.

As meal kit companies have shuttered and others have been bought by large companies, the market hasn’t played in our favor, and unfortunately we have not succeeded in finding a viable solution for long-term financing.

We wanted to close by thanking all of you one last time for ordering, for telling your friends to order, for rating us, and for telling us how we were doing. We hope you enjoyed the journey as much as we did.

Sincerely,
Jan Leife and the Just Add Cooking Team

Wirecutter Picks its Best Mail Order Meal Kit

Whenever I need to buy something — well, anything really — the first place I turn is The Wirecutter. From big-screen TVs to blenders, I’ve never been disappointed by something the review site has recommended. So when The Wirecutter ran its meal kit recommendations today, I knew it would be worth reading.

And it was! The site only looked at mail-order meal kits, so nothing you can buy in the store (which is where most meal kits are headed), and they only considered more general meal kits (sorry, vegan-only meal kits). Having said that, it is still a thorough list that was tested over a period of four months, so they got a chance to try an assortment of menus.

What was interesting is that in general, The Wirecutter echoed many of the same concerns about meal kits that we’ve had here at The Spoon: they take a lot of work, they are expensive, and they use a lot of packaging. In their defense, The Wirecutter pointed out that meal kits can help you learn to cook and help you to climb out of your eating ruts.

So, with those caveats in mind, which meal kits made The Wirecutter’s Best Meal Kit Delivery Service? It’s not broken down in a strict first, second and third place, but Blue Apron, Martha & Marley Spoon, Plated and Sun Basket all earned a spot for various reasons.

In what is turning out to be a good week for Blue Apron, The Wirecutter found that it was the best meal kit for getting started. This follows the announcement from earlier this week that Jet.com will be selling Blue Apron’s kits for same day delivery in New York.

You should check out the full list to see why each one was picked. Do you have a favorite meal kit? Tell us which one(s) in the comments.

Just Add Cooking Launches Crowdfunding Campaign for Hyper-Local Meal Kits

This week Just Add Cooking launched a WeFunder campaign with a $300,000 goal to raise money for their super-local meal kit delivery service.

Founded in 2013, Boston-based Just Add Cooking (JAC) focuses specifically on providing local food, which they believe will help them succeed in the cutthroat meal kit market. All meat and produce are sourced from the New England area, and all meal kits are packed and assembled in the region.

From their WeFunder page:

Just Add Cooking is different. We’re local and don’t intend to go national – by keeping our operations focused in the Northeast, we’re building a truly local food economy between our customers, farmers, and distributors.

They also hope to distinguish themselves from competitors by letting customers add local produce (eggs, lettuce, etc.) a la carte to their orders. Sort of like meal kit meets grocery fulfillment meets a local farmers market.

JAC is following the path of other meal kits, however, by diversifying from delivery-only into retail channels. To combat low customer retention and razor-thin margins, companies like Blue Apron, Home Chef, and others have shifted from a home delivery model and onto supermarket shelves. In May of this year, JAC started selling through retail channels; as of now, kits are available at 13 Roche Bros. grocery stores in the New England area.

Prices range from $9.50 to $14.25 per serving, depending on the number of people you’re feeding. That’s on the pricier end for meal kits. However, considering that the company uses organic, locally-sourced ingredients, the price isn’t too bad.

Previous to the WeFunder page, JAC had raised $850,000 from investors. If they meet their new goal, JAC plans to use the funds to develop a personalizable meal kit using “AI-driven technology.” We at the Spoon have referred to the fully customizable meal kit as the Holy Grail. In other words, by allowing customers to choose exactly what meals they want and when, a lot of the issues around meal kits (rigidity, dietary constraints, etc.) melt away.

Though JAC didn’t give many details on how they hope to achieve this elusive personalized meal kit, they will have an easier time of it than some of their competitors because of their size. By consolidating their ingredients, clients, and operations in the Northeast, JAC has room to be more flexible with logistics.

Of course, their emphasis on local is a double-edged sword: it also limits them. While the JAC website doesn’t state what percentage of the meal kit will actually come from local farms and fisheries, presumably they’re more of a slave to the seasons than other kits which source from far-reaching areas. Which means JAC customers probably won’t be able to get a juicy Caprese salad or Zucchini in the dead of winter.

The WeFunder page states that JAC will use the funds to expand their delivery beyond Boston to more cities in the Northeast. If they’re smart, however, they will stay relatively local and focus on securing loyalty and return purchases from their customer base. Down the road, though, they could potentially set up regional wings in other areas: JAC Southern California or Pacific Northwest, anyone?

JAC will also launch more meal plans crowdsourced from dietitians, chefs and food bloggers, ready-made options, and even kids’ lunches. It will be especially interesting to see how that last category plays out. Kids meal kits have been seeing a lot of churn lately, with quite a few companies folding around the same time Yummly raised $7 million.

It’s no secret that many independent meal kit services are struggling, especially those which rely heavily on delivery. Despite all the challenges they have to overcome — razor-thin margins, competition from food delivery, etc. — I think JAC may be one of the few meal kit services that actually makes it. By leveraging the popularity of local foods and targeting a regional customer base, they’ve got a sustainable approach in place. And if they can create a customizable meal kit that can scale appropriately and profitably (admittedly a tall order), they just might survive.

Kroger Begins Roll Out of Home Chef Meal Kits

Kroger announced yesterday that it has started the nationwide roll out of Home Chef meal kits on its grocery shelves.

Kroger purchased Home Chef in May of this year for $200 million, and as we wrote at the time of the acquisition:

By acquiring Home Chef, Kroger can meaningfully jump into the meal kit space and scale up quickly. Home Chef brings with it national prep and distribution systems already in place, and lots of data from existing paying customers to maximize how meal kits are rolled out in stores.

Home Chef also brought with it valuable data about what meals its customers order. Together, Kroger and Home Chef can figure out where to target particular meals for different regions and demographics.

The Home Chef meal kits will first be offered at select Kroger locations across the Midwest, with further rollout happening in 2019. Each location will have four menu options that will rotate weekly. Meal kits in store serve two people and start at $17.

As part of the announcement, Kroger also said that it is testing a new Home Chef Express product. Express is a quick-cook meal kit that promises to take only 15 minutes to make.

We’ve been talking about meal kits moving to retail for a good chunk of this year, and soon we’ll start seeing concrete data as to how well they are faring. Last year Albertsons bought Plated and this past April started the nationwide rollout of its meal kits in stores. Blue Apron started selling its meal kits at Costco. Amazon/Whole Foods has its own meal kit option. And HelloFresh signed a deal with Giant Food and Stop & Shop.

Will in-store convenience convert people en masse to meal kits? And if adoption rates increase, how will meal kits evolve? Will something like the new “Express” version of Home Chef’s meal kits, with their 15 minute make time, prove more popular than the full version?

The convenience question is actually worth examining further with Kroger, as the company recently expanded its Easy For You! line of almost-customizeable meal kits. Easy For You! is sort of like a frozen food buffet line. Customers bundle together different proteins and sides and pay by the pound to simply reheat at home. Will this level of convenience cannibalize Kroger’s other, more traditional meal kits?

It’s worth it for Kroger to experiment to see what consumers gravitate towards. The concept of in-store meal kits is relatively new, now, where shoppers take them remains to be seen.