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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Food Tech News: Kroger to Accept SNAP for Pickup, KFC China Goes Plant-based

It can be a bright spot to think that even when everything is turned upside down in the food world, companies are still coming up with creative ways to stay afloat and help folks have access to healthy food.

In this week’s food tech news roundup we’ve got stories on just that. There are bits about Kroger ramping up SNAP acceptance for pickup, healthy meal services pairing up with fitness classes, and KFC in China dipping its toe into plant-based meat. Enjoy!

Kroger to accept SNAP payments for grocery pickup
Kroger will accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments at all 2,000 of its grocery pickup locations by the end of the month (h/t FoodDive). Consumers can select the “SNAP/EBT” option when ordering groceries online, then use their EBT card to pay for covered items when they pick up. Thus far, the service is only available at the chain’s Ohio stores. This comes as Kroger bulks up its pickup service, adding slots, hiring workers, and waiving pickup fees.

Photo: Trifecta

Meal service Trifecta partners with Basecamp Fitness
Trifecta, an organic premade meal delivery service, is teaming up with Basecamp Fitness to deliver healthy meals to their members’ doors. Per an email sent to The Spoon, Trifecta will offer subscribers six types of meals — keto, paleo, vegan, etc. — as well as an à la carte section that operates like a miniature online grocery store. Trifecta is already geared towards healthy, fit people looking to eat to sustain their workout, so it makes sense to partner with a fitness service that’s essentially a captive audience (literally and figuratively).

Photo: KFC

KFC to offer plant-based fried chicken in China
Yum China, the parent brand of KFC, announced this week that it would begin selling plant-based fried chicken at select KFC locations in China. The nuggets will come from Cargill, which only recently launched its own alternative meat brand, and will be available in three locations from April 28-30th. A five-pack of the nuggets will cost 1.99 yuan ($0.28 USD).

Beyond Meat Targets Hardbodies with Trifecta Meal Delivery Partnership

Beyond Meat is branching out from grocery stores and restaurants and into a new retail channel — one geared towards all you fitness nuts out there. The plant-based meat company announced today that it will offer its products through healthy, organic meal delivery service Trifecta.

Trifecta offers pre-made healthy meals and also à la carte mains and sides, like flat iron steak and quinoa. As of now Beyond’s burgers are only available à la carte, but Trifecta announced over Instagram that they would soon be adding Beyond products to their pre-selected vegetarian and vegan meal plans.

Though Beyond is already in a boatload of retailers and restaurants around the world, this partnership is the first time that their prepared plant-based products will be available through a delivery service. And I’ve got to say, Trifecta is a pretty interesting choice of partner on Beyond’s part.

Trifecta is geared towards hardcore healthy people who are eating to lose weight or do some serious muscling up. It offers meal plans like Keto, Paleo, and Clean, all of which are gluten- and dairy-free. The Trifecta site even has before and after photos. Basically, it’s meal delivery for hardbodies — or aspiring hardbodies.

Trifecta’s meals are also on the pricier side. The plans start at $109 per week, which gets you seven meals of your choice (breakfast, lunch, dinner, or something called “third entree”). Prices go down as you bundle more meals together.

That shakes out to roughly $15 per meal, which is more expensive than pretty much all of the major meal kit companies out there. Then again, Trifecta’s meals put emphasis on lots of protein, so that explains the high cost.

The Beyond Burger is available in Trifecta’s à la carte section for $23.49 a week, which includes 7 servings. The patties are delivered pre-cooked, which, to me, seems to make the whole point kind of moot. Beyond Meat retails for $5.99 for two patties, which are ready to eat and just have to be heated in a pan. If you’re buying them pre-cooked from Trifecta not only is it more expensive, but since you still have to reheat them you’re basically guaranteeing a rubbery, overcooked burger. But people will pay a high price for convenience.

I was initially pretty surprised to read about this partnership. Why was Beyond Meat, whose whole raison d’etre is to make eating plant-based meat tasty and accessible, partnering with a company that’s all about carefully monitored fats, healthy carbs, and protein?

But then I thought about it for five seconds and realized that it actually makes a lot of sense for Beyond to work with Trifecta. It shows that they’re a serious source of protein fit even for a bodybuilder. Or, you know, Shaquille O’Neill. On Trifecta’s part, adding Beyond Meat to the menu is a smart, easy way to feed the growing demand for plant-based protein.

As Beyond Meat prepares to go public later this year — and continues to compete with other alterna-meat producers like Impossible Foods, who’s heading into retail — they’re smart to branch out into as many markets and distribution channels as possible. We’ll see if the company can bulk up their IPO as much as they can bulk up bodybuilders.