I would buy A LOT more, and probably even overpay because of convenience if I could walk into my local Harris Teeter/Krogers/Food Lion and just pick up a 3 meal/2 person box with most of what I need.
Granted, this is a very new store in the Kroger home of Cincinnati and used for a lot of testing, but it's something they have been working on.
The problem for these bigger companies is that they are big companies. What works for large, urban markets doesn't work for their more rural stores. So finding the mix of services can be hard, especially when you don't have the floor space to devote to new products. Also, integrating these types of products into your existing distribution network can be a challenge.
I've been impressed though by how much these companies still do try to innovate in response to competition. For example, when Amazon bought Whole Foods and opened up Prime delivery of groceries in our area, Kroger within weeks started to offer their own 2-hour delivery service. But again, this isn't a service that would be practical to offer across their entire footprint.
This sounds like the Newport Kroger I frequent as well. I've been really happy with the pilots they've done there too as far as the one-step kits and the frozen case.
What's your take on the Prep+Pared meal kits?
It’s strange the mix of technology different stores have. One store near us (Hyde Park) has the equipment to effectively scan items into your cart as you go to pay without a checkout line, but doesn’t have the new food kits.
As far as the kits, I don’t think we’ve tried them. My family has been pretty happy with Hello Fresh, so we haven’t tried the Kroger kits. The thing I have found particularly difficult with meal kits is how they handle kids. It can be hard to expand palettes and cooking styles, but still have something that two adults and two kids will still want to eat (let alone be able to make it fast).
The now-hip contemporary subscription meal kit is a box of raw ingredients packaged separately, and there's a fair bit of effort that needs to be expended to prep and cook. The fact that it shows up at your door is great for convenience, but the fact that you have prep for 30 minutes isn't. Most meal kit companies have embraced the prep as an experience to be marketed, and that's smart -- clearly, people exist who will pay for the experience. But in this space, retention is low, and it's hard to be profitable because of the costs of logistics and assembly.
Upmarket grocery stores are in a perfect position to make this style of product work, because they already have the logistics around ingredients figured out, and they have labor on hand in stores and in their distribution and prep centers. And, in theory, they're even cheaper to prepare than the meal trays they sell today. But it remains to be seen whether paying a hefty premium for a pre-selected box of raw ingredients at a grocery store will be a hit or an object of ridicule.
They also have a new offering that's a bunch of containers of frozen things like shrimp and potatoes where you can pay one price by the lb and mix and match across 10-15 different options. It's nice if you want a flexible portion size, just cooking for 1-2, etc.
Part of it is that there are definitely people who want to cook a meal from "scratch" with their SO but need some structure and pre-packaging to get started. I suspect some it though is that when you're shipping things, you're probably better off shipping things in their raw state if possible.
Personally, if I were to buy a kit at a local grocery store to bring home for dinner, I'd like to see onions pre-cut, etc. as much as reasonable. I don't mind cooking at all but if it's going to be a bunch of effort I'll just do my own thing; I don't need a kit. If I can grab something that only needs 15 or 20 minutes of active time to put on the table, that's appealing.
Example - https://www.kroger.com/p/prep-pared-meal-kit-vietnamese-insp...
Imagine instead of many different, individually packaged, products, you have one (or maybe a handful) of pre-packaged meals for one or two people. The retail space and checkout would be insanely efficient as you'd just grab and go.
You'd have the green angle too as there wouldn't be any excess packaging to keep the food fresh nor carbon emissions from all the individual deliveries. Just standard refrigerators and pictures of happy patrons walking home with their meal kits.
The recurring subscription model, i.e. the holy grail of high valuations, could be added as well. Either through the usual $X/period gets you Y meals or maybe just a discount ($Z/month to get Q% off).
Or taking it to the next level, imagine a meal kit vending machine. The owner would stock it each day (say around 3pm) and customers could grab their own meals with a quick swipe of their card. Same idea as the store but reducing the retail space from a mini store to a couple square feet.
You drive up, and you can get:
- Kit of ingredients and instructions for a home cooked meal
- Kit of prepped ingredients for a home cooked meal
- A pre-cooked meal ready to take home and eat
By combining with an app/website/service, you would develop meal plans, number of portions, food allergies.
You could walk up and pay full price, or get a discount by pre-buying a meal plan that gives the store more ability to plan and purchase in bulk.
I think the key to profit here is healthy, local, appropriately priced meal kits for families.
Then again, the more I think about it. You know if you added in a system of reusable containers (for small amounts of spices and herbs), which could be returned for a discount on your next order. . .
Still a hell of a lot to consider, but in a busy enough place (eg Tokyo), might be an interesting idea.
They only sell ready meals, aiming to be a higher quality than the slops you can buy in supermarkets. They've won several Great Taste awards here, which is a fairly well-respected stamp of approval. Perhap the main difference from what you're suggesting is that they're not ingredient kits, they're prepared meals or components (e.g. main/side/dessert).
They have high street shops in - let's be honest - rich parts of the country like the South East. Quality seems quite good and the price isn't that bad - at most £5 per person with reasonable break points for couples, families. The store itself is a few rows of freezers.
I've never tried, but people I know say that it's good if you need an emergency meal that actually tastes nice.
They make pizza on fridays and the line goes out the door. Highly recommended. They also have opera singers once a week.
The only reason we haven't yet tried a prepared meal is pricing. If prices dropped ~30%, we would be regular buyers.
It was a great business that people in the neighborhood loved, but it also lost a ton of money and closed in under a year. I'm still sad about it.
It's custom prepared for you though, so you could probably cut back on costs by making them more of a grab-and-go thing.
They have special parking spots up front for people picking up ClickList orders. It'd be interesting to see if those were made available for this too. I suppose you could probably even order the meal kit via ClickList and have it brought to your car (+= $5).
People definitely love them. They even have a food truck/trailer concept for the business crowd downtown. They are a bit pricey-ish but not too bad. Seems to work for their target market (on the go professionals and middle upper income families)!
My Fit Foods had about 50 locations and was popular but shut down [2], but from what I read management was poor and quality dropped more so than it was bad economics [3].
[1] https://www.snapkitchen.com/locations/ [2] https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2017/02/13/austin-he... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/5tphuu/my_fit_foods...
In Brazil, one can easily get "marmitas" (aka "quentinhas") delivered for cheap, which are ready-made meals.
Now I'm in the EU and have been seeing low-cost, healthy, packaged meals in many supermarkets. Seems to have caught on. When I look at two basic options now, I see chicken breasts for 3.50 euro or a ready-made meal for 2-3 euro. Even though the chicken would be enough for two meals, I'm often pulled in by the easier, one-meal option.
My problem with the mail order kits is that I have to plan the week before and I have to commit to multiple meals over the course of a week, neither of which are really a fit for me.
Good signage could path customers quickly through the store without the appearance of too much diversion. Perhaps Kroger realized that to break the dominance of each department within the storm that a 3rd party was needed
This is more prepared than a lot of meal kits are but, for a lot of scenarios, that may be a feature rather than a bug. The fact that it's probably easier to get 75% prepped meals at a supermarket rather than shipped to you may be an advantage. One of the common complaints about meal kits is that they can still be fairly time consuming. I know that's one reason I don't use them. If I'm going to cook a full meal, it's really not that hard for me to just do it from the base ingredients.
The Metro markets are the Mariano's-alike in Wisconsin, I think?