While meal kits have been a popular way to save money, eat healthier, and try new cuisines, the industry has reached a moment of reckoning. Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods and Blue Apron’s IPO are both examples of the challenge these companies face in attracting and retaining customers.
캠핑밀키트Many meal kit services struggle with customer acquisition, leading to high churn rates. To help companies stay competitive, Packaged Facts has analyzed the top brands in the market, and compiled a skimmable table of key characteristics and pricing.
Blue Apron
Blue Apron is a meal kit brand that offers a variety of recipes to help you cook healthy meals at home. This service also helps you save money by limiting food waste.
Founded in 2012, Blue Apron provides premeasured ingredients and step-by-step recipes that can be easily made at home. The company also focuses on sustainability and promoting planetary wellness, and its ingredients are sourced from people who practice sustainable farming practices.
The meals in the Blue Apron menu range from international favorites to classic comfort dishes, and many of them feature a mix of different cuisines. They also cater to different diets and lifestyles, with options ranging from carb-conscious meals to low-calorie dishes.
These dishes are all a great choice for anyone who wants to make healthier dinners, and the company’s nutritional facts are clearly outlined on each recipe’s card. You can even choose a vegetarian option if you’re looking for a diet that doesn’t include meat.
In addition to the meal kits, Blue Apron also offers a market of cooking supplies that can be purchased separately. These items are generally quite reasonable and can include items like cooking pans, gadgets, and gear.
The company’s recipes are rated by chefs and food gurus, and they use fresh ingredients. This ensures that the foods are always as delicious as possible.
If you’re a new user, you can get a discount on your first box of Blue Apron meals. It’s a great way to test out the service before making a commitment.
Blue Apron has been around since 2012, and its mission is to empower home cooks to embrace their culinary curiosity, challenge themselves in the kitchen, and see the difference a quality meal can make in their life. Its ingredients are GMO-free and sourced from farms that practice sustainable farming. The company’s food safety procedures are well-regulated, and its fulfillment centers adhere to the FDA’s good manufacturing practices.
HelloFresh
HelloFresh, which started in 2011, is one of the top meal kit brands in the world. The company has a reputation for providing fresh, tasty, and affordable food. They also offer a wide variety of recipes, and their meals are low in calories, fat, and sodium.
Their meal kits are packaged in insulated cardboard boxes that keep ingredients cool until delivery. This ensures that meals arrive ready to eat.
They have strategically placed warehouses throughout the United States, which allows them to deliver meals anywhere in the country within a few days. They offer a selection of dietary options, including vegan, vegetarian, and paleo recipes.
Meal kits are shipped out weekly and come with a recipe card that provides step-by-step instructions for cooking each dish. These instructions are very helpful for people who have a limited understanding of how to cook.
Another great feature of the HelloFresh website is that it allows you to manage your deliveries online. You can skip a week, set your menu for upcoming weeks, or cancel your subscription at any time.
In addition to meal kits, HelloFresh offers an a la carte market, where you can add snacks, sides, breakfasts, and more to your orders. This helps you avoid making unnecessary trips to the grocery store, which can save you a lot of money and stress in the long run.
In order to attract customers, HelloFresh utilizes a marketing strategy that emphasizes sustainability and a variety of incentives for their target audience. This includes partnerships with influencers, celebrity contracts, and referral marketing, among other tactics. These efforts help HelloFresh reduce churn and increase customer retention rates. Moreover, they have managed to achieve this while also reducing their carbon footprint.
Chef’d
Chef’d shook up the meal kit space in 2015, and was the first to move beyond subscription-based meal delivery services. It offered a wide selection of meals, many of which were sourced from actual chefs.
The company’s products were available at more than a dozen retailers nationwide, including Costco, Harris Teeter, Tops, Hy-Vee, Weis Markets and Gelson’s Markets, as well as online via its website. Its kits feature quick and easy recipes, such as 20 Clove Garlic Chicken with Mashed Purple Potatoes and Spinach, Weeknight Chicken Pad Thai with Carrots and Sugar Snap Peas, and Black Truffle Butter Sirloin Steaks with Roasted Garlic Potatoes and Asparagus.
With a growing number of retailers offering meal kits and competition from online meal services like Blue Apron, HelloFresh and Gather, the meal kit industry has become more competitive than ever. However, it’s not without its challenges.
One challenge is the cost of customer acquisition. Meal kit companies must pay expensive marketing fees to attract customers and a large number of consumers drop out after only a few uses.
Another challenge is customers’ aversion to subscriptions. While many people want the convenience of a home delivery service, they’re not willing to commit to a long-term deal.
As a result, the meal kit business model remains a difficult one to sustain. Its profitability is largely dependent on the price point and customer retention.
True Food Innovations, which owns the Chef’d brand and operates in the clean label retail meal kit space, has been pursuing long shelf life products that will enable nationwide distribution of retail-ready meals. The company says it has developed patent-pending formulations and high pressure processing to create new retail kits with a 55-day shelf life, in addition to its existing, shelf-stable, fresh-cut ingredients and proteins.
Home Chef
Home Chef is a meal kit brand that sends pre-measured ingredients and easy-to-follow recipes to people every week. It’s available for purchase online and in stores, and it has a wide variety of meals that are affordable and approachable for almost anyone.
Founded by Pat Vihtelic, Home Chef was launched in 2013 with the goal of helping people save time while eating healthier food. Vihtelic and his co-founder, Bryon Finke, decided to raise money in 2014 after the company was able to attract a large user base.
At that point, Home Chef was able to deliver more than 20,000 boxes per month. That helped them grow their customer base to about 60% of the US population from Kansas to the East Coast, which was a big success for the young company.
The meals that come with Home Chef are tasty and filling. They’re made with high-quality, fresh ingredients and can be cooked in just 30 minutes or less.
These meals are calorie-conscious and carb-conscious, with a low-fat option as well. They also feature vegan and vegetarian options.
Many customers have reported that the recipes taste great and are a great way to get kids to eat healthy foods. But some users have said that the food can be too salty, and there’s not enough fiber in some of them.
Home Chef offers a free trial for new members to try out its service, and most of the meal kit brands offer discounts to first-time users. Some even offer rewards credit cards to help cut costs. These savings can be especially helpful for people on a budget who are looking to switch to a new subscription service.
Territory
If you’re looking for a healthy meal kit that offers an extensive rotating menu, Territory is a great option. This service delivers high-quality meals to select cities throughout the United States. Its rotating menu has over 50 options and is curated by independent chefs in your area.
This is a great option for those who are busy and don’t have the time or resources to prepare healthy meals. The company’s chefs use responsible sourcing methods and local production kitchens to ensure that their meals are of the highest quality.
The company also donates proceeds, volunteers, and meals to non-for-profit organizations that fight hunger in America. Their commitment to food security and sustainability is reflected in their packaging, which can be recycled or composted.
Territory’s calorie-dense meals are low in fat, making them an excellent choice for people on a diet. This type of eating pattern lowers cholesterol levels and reduces cardiovascular risk, which is recommended by many medical professionals.
For those who are interested in eating plant-based, Territory also offers a variety of vegan options. The brand’s vegetarian dishes are free from dairy, and they also contain no gluten or refined sugar.
Meals are gluten-free and made with real, organic ingredients that are sourced responsibly. They are also high in vitamins and minerals and low in sodium.
Xponential Fitness, the largest global franchisor of boutique fitness brands, has partnered with Territory Foods to provide ready-to-eat prepared meals for members. The nutrient-packed menus are designed to complement each of the company’s programs and help members maximize the benefits of their workouts, whether it is Pure Barre, Row House, Rumble Boxing, or StretchLab.
The Xponential partnership with Territory Foods further demonstrates the company’s focus on holistic wellness inside and out of its studios. By pairing the health-promoting benefits of a Xponential workout with the nutritional value of fresh, healthy meals, members are set to transform their lives as they continue their journey towards “fully energized” 2023.