Nestlé leads $77M round for healthy meal startup Freshly | Hacker News Reader

Nestlé leads $77M round for healthy meal startup Freshly

techcrunch.com

28 pointsjanober56 comments

> That doesn’t mean you order from Freshly every time you want to eat — instead, you get one delivery of all your meals for the week. Then, when you’re hungry, you just heat one of them up in your microwave or stove.

That doesn't sound fresh at all...

Taking a look at reviews, this appears to be basically a mail order delivery service that delivers high quality TV dinners.

The meals even come in the same black plastic containers sealed with a film on top as a TV dinner or microwave meal from your grocer's freezer. So with Nestle's acquisition, this is basically a higher quality Lean Cuisine as a service.

I feel like the pre-made meal delivery sector is one where the company that throws the most money into advertising is the one that will win. The market is so saturated.

Personally, I'm not a fan. They don't end up being much cheaper than eating out, and by circumstance of being microwavable food in a plastic container, they never plate anywhere near as well as they show the pictures. They will never taste as good as you'd hope either, because microwaved salmon steaks just aren't that good.

I actually got some from a local company that does paleo meals, but I just found them to be too expensive for what they are.

There are a number of staple dishes (pasta with any number of sauces, curries, stir-fries, etc) that can be cooked easily. I'm surprised no one is driving around in a van with a cook in the back, and delivering just-made meals. No extensive menu, just focus on specific things on particular days. Aim for something decent at a good pricepoint rather than trying to replicate and deliver fancy food that ends up being like microwaved meals.

These folks tried that, didn't work: https://sf.eater.com/platform/amp/2017/1/10/14231188/bento-c...

That sounds a little different. They were offering three options and four out of six sides. I'm talking about 1-2 fixed options on any given night, and someone literally cooking in the back of a van while it drives a circuit. Discounts for pre-orders, or for people coordinating their block/building to order en masse, etc.

One driver, one cook. Driver optionally runs deliveries to the doorstep if need be.

Like an ice cream truck for hot food?

Basically. Imagine an ice cream truck, but with some rice cookers and curries going in the back, playing Bollywood music, and driving a route in the suburbs. Plus an app estimating time until arrival, taking orders, etc.

There was an Indian restaurant near my office that was almost always empty - good people and decent food, but they never did anything to try and stand out. They've disappeared now. Were I in their shoes, I would've been trying something like this on the side for sure.

Don't most major cities in the US (and the world) have dozens of these?

Food trucks are generally quite static and not in the suburbs. They pick a spot and stay there for hours at a time. At least, the ones I've seen around the world.

I have been saying the same thing for years. The thing is that food trucks can do very well by parking where many people are. They dont need to drive around.

I bet if the driving/parking situation for these larger vans were better in cities we would see them driving around taking orders to people.

Or, you know, staying in one place so they still get the walk-up traffic, but send out delivery guys at the same time to fulfill orders via their app.

Wait a minute...this sounds suspiciously like a counterserve restaurant ...

... but without paying rent or real estate taxes!

Welcome to the 3.0 economy where an established business's fixed costs and adherence to zoning laws is another business's profit margin.

Try that in Chicago, which is maybe the most pro-restaurant and anti-streetfood city in the country. You can only park your food truck in one of 37 designated spots or cannot be within 200ft of a restaurant, and cannot park in the same location for more than 2 hours at a time (barely enough time to prep/clean).

I bet you could work around that with app based ordering and "delivery" consisting of throwing prepared food at your customers while in transit.

The thing is, home cooking technology is improving, with home combi-ovens the same technology that is used is quality restaurants to reheat quality frozen food and serve as new. So the quality could be there. There's also the new solid-state microwave ovens which may also work well.

As for the price vs eating out ?

Well, part of this is scale and nestle can make this stuff for cheaper. But also, if this stays fresh for a week, it might fit a distribution channel like a grocers pickup service,which costs a lot less than deliveries, and marketing cost could also go way down.

I order a lot of food from my local pre-made meal startup. The food is never particularly good, but it wins out because:

1. They deliver fast. I usually get my food within 20 minutes.

2. They have single-person portions, so there is no food wastage or leftovers.

It's honestly nothing that my local restaurant can't do. But somehow, they just haven't wizened up to it.

I find it a bit mind-boggling that this is quicker than just going to the supermarket to get the same thing. I'm in the UK, and if you live in a city where pre-made meal startups can deliver within 20 minutes, you can probably walk to a small supermarket within 5-10 to buy essentially the same sort of thing for less money.

Delivery is the added value here

To each their own, but when I'm hungry I'd rather take a 5 minute walk (or get something on the way home) rather than wait 20 minutes and pay more, with a smaller selection. If you live further away from appropriate shops I can see the value though.

With a dash of externalized cultural decoherence.

Even if I trusted Nestle's motivations here, which I do not, supporting your local farmers market/grocer/coop is a more ethical way to go.

The chance you have a local farmers market/coop within 5 minute walk from your home/work is pretty slim unless you live/work at a farmers market (or downtown of a city in Vermont).

Agreed. We've had 75 years of the modernist industrial program, e.g. tearing up trolly lines in favor of cars, or suburbanization as a civil defense initiative (among others). The point is not a quick solution, however the point _is_ to have livable cities focused on the human _first_.

What's the difference with just ordering food from a restaurant to be delivered? Is that not an option in your area?

Wouldn't you rather have larger portions so you have leftovers for work the next day?

So the food is trash, and yet you continue to order? Life is too short to eat garbage food. Especially for premium prices.

I enjoy mealkits, but it seems like it would be trivial for existing grocery stores to swoop in if/when this model gains broad popularity. I could see Costco, which already has an upscale prepared foods department, offering Blue Apron/Freshly style meals at 50%-60% of the cost if they determined that they could sell a few hundred meals a week. I don't see what the moat for these businesses is.

Grocery stores in Houston already offer this. HEB, Whole Foods, Central Market, and a few others have prepared meals. It is also inexpensive and the meals tend to be good

Is this in other cities?

How inexpensive are they ?

Don't worry. Nestle knows how to make money from food commodities.

Crossing the Chasm for all these new food business will be difficult.

If you scale up, are you're quality and customer service could drop, or you'll be just another mass-produced food entity.

I think they all need to look into In-n-Out or starbucks to get ideas how to maintain brand and control and scale.

The issue is, how will consumers decide which brand to try as the choices and options grows and how will they maintain customer loyalty.

Ultimately, I believe any food business will become a restaurant business. Low margin high-volume to survive, or high margin, low volume, high quality.

You better be really into cheeseburgers.

And another soul sold to the devil.

Those who downvoted should read the history of Nestle and see that it is almost as poisonous to society as Monsanto/Bayer.

Any particular reading you suggest?

I grew up with plenty of Nestle products around (mainly chocolate related) so I've got a generic positive childhood nostalgia for them. Should I not?

Nestlé have deceptively and aggressively marketed formula milk in the developing world.

It's a cynical and greedy exploitation of poor people with low levels of literacy.

This has caused death and harm.

Here are a few, but there are literally dozens of stories over many years of Nestlé being deceptive and misleading.

2001: http://www.irinnews.org/report/16921/pakistan-dispute-over-b...

2005: http://www.irinnews.org/news/2005/08/19/nestl%C3%A9-jack-inf...

2011: http://www.irinnews.org/news/2011/06/23/ngos-flay-nestl%C3%A...

2013: http://www.irinnews.org/report/97943/pressure-philippines-en...

You should perhaps look up their approach to paying cents on the dollar for exclusive rights to public water sources that they then bottle and sell to the public for huge profits. This in itself isn't too bad until you consider the fact that they've purchased exclusive rights to the water... so you no longer have free access. If you want the water, you have to pay for it from Nestlé or one of their competitors. If you continue to take water from what was previously a publicly accessible water source, you are fined, dragged to court and potentially imprisoned for losing your basic human rights. Welcome to America.

As a kid, we all have positive childhood nostalgia for them. They're the makers of the fun breakfast cereals, chocolate and candy. As a kid we weren't aware of their toxic business practices. We all need to grow up and do some critical reading about the origins of the products we buy and learn to make hard choices about what kinds of business practices we support.

I'm not saying Nestlé is bad. But like all large corporations, they have some really toxic business practices and policies that need to be exposed to the mainstream and eradicated.

The last time I visited the Middle East (specifically Jordan), it was insane how much of it is owned by American companies. If you wanted to buy any bottled water, it was either Dasani (owned by Coca-Cola) or Aquafina (owned by Pepsi). Every other building in the commercial districts had giant billboards for Nescafe on them.

> And another soul sold to the devil.

Nestlé?

They are one of the scummiest companies on the planet. Always have been.

How long until Amazon starts supporting these approaches into automated ordering and delivery with Whole Foods?

Kale drone delivery.

The drones will only supply Soylent and Fiji water, as per the codified mandates of the DAO http://offline.computer/hermicity/

>Kale jokes

Enjoy it while it lasts, Whole Foods is headed down-market to compete with Walmart.

Why is kale such a punchline in the US?

It was largely unknown, then became briefly popular among health nuts and hippie-yuppie types, which some businesses took advantage of to overcharge for a super cheap crop. It became a symbol of overpriced healthy foods marketed to suckers.

Pretty much this. Kale is effectively wild cabbage, it's a salty leaf that is common in Europe as garnish or a side dish (usually boiled). It pretty much can grow anywhere it's an extremely cheap crop to produce and it was 100% marketing fad that capitalized on the ignorance of consumers.

This isn't tech news.

Let's just agree that everything that's not related to tech, when it happens on/through the internet, is still not tech.

It would be tech if there was a robot preparing my Freshly meals.

This isn't a tech news website. From the Guidelines:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

That's hard to argue with.

Meh. All these pre-made things will die out when we have robots prepare food from fresh ingredients on demand ... http://8-food.com/ ... maybe they will live on as niche options for people in low density areas.

Yes, and these robots that prepare food from fresh ingredients will die out when we have nanobots measuring all our vitals and providing minerals where needed. Doesn't mean we should not take intermediate steps towards the future :)

That doesn't sound very tasty.

The nanobots in your brain's pleasure center will disagree.

Good to know that the future holds mostly parasitic nanobots.

Seems plot for reboot of Matrix, where Zion population is infested with nanobots.

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