Why boxing clever can deliver a classic Xmas

A seasonal family feast to feed 12 for $360? New Zealand’s booming food trend has got you covered. By Catherine Harris and Jayne Atherton.

MEALS subscription business Woop is getting ready to deliver an entire Kiwi Christmas dinner in a box this festive season.

The one-year-old firm says the pre-prepared feast will feed a 12-strong gathering for around $360, leaving the table groaning with ham, turkey and all the trimmings topped off with a traditional fruit pavlova.

Buyers will be able to shun the stress of crowded supermarkets and have all their cooking timings worked out, Woop owner Thomas Dietz said.

‘‘Christmas lunch will be sorted in half the time,’’ said Dietz. ‘‘Plenty of food for everyone in the extended family, and no chance that you’ll have to make a last-minute panic dash to the supermarket for forgotten ingredients. It’s a Kiwi Christmas without the stress.’’

Auckland-based Woop – which stands for World On Our Plate – is one of the newcomers to the preprepared food and grocery delivery sector, which is thought to be worth around $100m.

According to Neilson’s March Consumer Media Index survey, 113,000 Kiwis had gourmet meals, recipes and ingredients delivered to their homes.

Venture capital investment into the sector generally is running at around $500m per quarter, and Woop itself is about to launch a round of capital raising for another $600k to help spread into other areas of New Zealand.

Since the success of My Food Bag, supermarkets and restaurants have been trying out similar ideas to carve a slice of the home delivery pie for themselves.

Meals subscription services are growing far faster than the fresh, ‘‘ready-to-eat’’ meals market which is worth around $16m by comparison.

But New Zealand is at ‘‘a tipping point’’ when it comes to ready-made meals, a supermarket expert believes.

‘‘As New Zealanders, we’ve got a very strong culture of scratch cooking,’’ Emily Blumenthal, Foodstuff’s head of insights, says.

‘‘I think that’s why we haven’t seen as much innovation in that frozen and prepackaged meals, ready to throw in the microwave segment.’’

However, that’s changing, she says, pointing to Foodstuffs’ new trial of ‘‘Love Food Box,’’ a box of fresh and measured ingredients for a meal which still requires cooking, in a style not dissimilar to My Food Bag, through certain South Island New Worlds.

Blumenthal believes supermarkets will soon dedicate a lot more space to this kind of food.

‘‘The consumer trends that are coming through are really strongly centred around meal solutions, and I think, in our market, it’s time for a shift in focus to meet consumer need.’’

Foodstuff’s rival, Countdown, is also moving into the ‘‘fastgrowing’’ ready-to-eat market.

‘‘Most of our stores provide meals to go,’’ says Countdown spokesman James Walker. ‘‘We have eight stores to date with dedicated ‘ready food’ sections.’’

In a nation obsessed with MasterChef, the irony of New Zealanders wanting to buy their dinners doesn’t escape Blumenthal.

‘‘When people have got the time, they absolutely love sitting down and making a beautiful meal. It’s just during the week, people are just so time poor, and they still want to eat really well but it needs to be super-fast.’’

‘ People are just so time poor, and they still want to eat really well but it needs to be super-fast.’ EMILY BLUMENTHAL