Most higher-end grocery stores in the US sell trays in which the raw, unfrozen ingredients are assembled and require baking -- a sort of upmarket TV dinner. Some sell kits that have some groupings of the ingredients packaged separately, because they need to be cooked separately or in different ways. I'm not a market researcher, but I'm guessing these existing products are packaged in this way for convenience, to appeal to people who want a complete meal with little effort. I can imagine that the thinking goes, if the customer went to the grocery store, they either want to browse and select the ingredients from the entire store themselves -- y'know, the entire reason you stock quality ingredients and furnished the store in an appealing way -- or they're looking for something more prepared that they can grab and go.

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.