Dinner’s here!
Meal-kit delivery services cater to local tastes, demands
Kthat each week moves about 300 pounds worth of flavorful feasts — recent dishes included chili rellenos and delicata puree with roasted red pepper — to homes within an eight-mile radius of Boston.
Every Monday, Gonson's team of cooks prepares its menu at Cuisine en Locale's Somerville headquarters, which doubles as a dining hall and culinary reheating and are better suited for short-distance delivery.
One of the earliest local entrants to the scene was JJ Gonson, a zippy music industry vet (she palled around with the likes of Kurt Cobain) turned spirited personal chef. By 2005, her passion for local food had turned into Cuisine en Locale, a “meal CSA” (CSA standing for community supported agriculture) business own spins on the concept, each appealing to different tastes and with prices designed for different budgets. And their regional scope offers certain values that the big players can't match: ingredients sourced straight from New England farms, lower carbon footprints and the option of prepared meals — professional-chef-made dishes that only require which conducts market research studies on food and beverage products, meal kits — homedelivered boxes of pre-measured ingredients with accompanying recipes — now represent a $1.5 billion market. The major players, such as Blue Apron, have national reach. But on the local level, Boston is home to a number of new businesses putting their nock, knock.
Dinner is at the door.
For time-starved workaholics, harried parents and busy singles who can't stand to cook, meal kits are emerging as an increasingly popular way to get dinner on the table.
According to Packaged Facts,
events space, using only responsibly grown ingredients culled strictly from farms within 100 miles. On Tuesday, a fleet of bicycle-based deliveries goes out to diners, delivering to doorsteps thermal green totes filled with the customers' weekly “share”: eight to 10 preportioned, ready-to-heat meals. Weekly shares are $155.
“People choose these programs for different reasons,” Gonson said. “I think our customers are savvy about food — they know how to cook. They just don't have the time.”
Gonson added that her customers choose Cuisine en Locale not just for convenience, but also as a “political action.” The service directly supports New England farmers, all of whom are vetted for their methods. The choice of pedal-power delivery is a purposefully eco-conscious one. And Gonson makes many small choices — like using natural maple sugar instead of white, refined sugar — to quietly support healthier habits. Gonson is also finalizing plans to sell Cuisine en Locale's prepared meals through small local markets, like Jamaica Plain's artisanal grocer City Feed and Supply.
The Foodery, a meal delivery service launched in 2012 by Mike Speights and John Bauer, shares a similar ethos. The old college buddies abandoned their jobs in the financial sector to launch the business, which now has about 1,000 subscribers and cooks out of a shared kitchen facility in Malden. Weekly-changing prepared meal options, such as rice noodle bowls with shrimp and tandooristyle chicken, are ordered a la carte in portions of two to four servings at prices starting around $25. And the Foodery is designed for diners who, like its founders, want to eat locally and responsibly
but lack the time to hunt, gather and cook all the right ingredients. Produce is organic; meats, like pork from Maine’s Pineland Farms, are antibiotic- and growth-hormone-free; and small local specialty shops, such as Somerville’s fresh pasta maker Capone Foods, fill in the blanks.
Demand is strong and the business is readying to expand, Speights said. The Foodery plans to add a second round of weekly drop-offs and widen its scope to serve beyond the current confines of the “I95 loop.”
Though prepared meals offer the ultimate in convenience, other local businesses are suited for customers who still want the joy of cooking. Needham-based home delivery service the Purple Carrot, launched in 2014, assembles creative ingredient-loaded meal kits used to make fully vegan recipes. The Pantry, opened last year, sells chef-designed, pre-measured meal kits out of its brick-and-mortar Brookline food boutique and through home delivery.
And then there’s Bostonbased Just Add Cooking, launched in 2013 by friends Jan Leife and Anders Lindell, Swedish transplants who modeled their approach after meal kit services they said have been long-popular in Scandinavia. Just Add Cooking’s twoand four-person meal boxes ($59 and $89, respectively) rely on New England farms and fishing fleets, are packaged and delivered sameday for peak freshness, and the service even taps local star chefs to contribute recipes: Andy Husbands, award-winning barbecue guru of Cambridge’s The Smoke Shop, will contribute to October’s deliveries, and Diane Kochilas, the Greek cuisine expert who steers the Seaport’s Committee, will pitch in for November.
Though smart eating motivates a lot of meal kit customers, other businesses are simply having fun with the concept. One of the quirkier new entries is BurgaBox, just launched by the team behind the Boston Burger Company restaurants, which sends monthly shipments of insulated coolers bearing all the supplies you need to make the joint’s famously outlandish burgers: from 8-ounce beef patties to condiments to such wacky toppings as homemade mac ’n’ cheese used for the “Mac Attack” burger, a hit sandwich featured on Guy Fieri’s Food Network show “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.” BurgaBoxes start at $45 for two-person kits and include such sides as baked beans and coleslaw.
“The world is evolving, and people expect to have things dropped at their door,” co-founder Chuck Sillari said. “You can go on Amazon and have toilet paper and toothpaste delivered to your house the same day. Meal delivery kits are just the next step.”