A dash and a stir
The meal kit is the kitchen equivalent of paint-by-numbers: you don’t need talent or training to make something worthwhile. This week, Checkers became SA’S first retailer to sell meal kits in its stores.
For the uninitiated, meal kits are recipes and ingredients packaged in precise quantities for home cooking and consumption. The model started out as a subscription delivery business, but has to some degree migrated to the retail grocery channel. It’s big business in the US where retailers Walmart, Kroger and Costco all peddle meal kits. In-store meal kits generated $154.6m in sales last year, posting growth of more than 26% year-onyear, according to Nielsen. To put that in context, total brick-and-mortar sales for categories like shelf-stable groceries (that’s pantry shelf stuff like baked beans and dry pasta), dairy and frozen foods dipped 0.1% in 2017 to $374bn.
For those who want a no-think approach to mealtime that’s slightly more accomplished than an all-briskness and little-pleasure microwave special, meal kits are a practical and convenient week-night alternative. Another perk (if you are so inclined): built-in portion control.
Humblebragging is also involved, as most meals have a gourmet-lite cachet. Think: sustainably raised
Aspen Ridge steak, papas bravas and green beans with an Argentine salsa criolla and garlic aioli. The meal kit market in SA is still tiny — we have operators like Ucook and Daily Dish. For Shoprite-owned Checkers, its Ready to Chef range is another effort at growing its share of the LSM 8-10 market (read: luring Woolworths and Pick n Pay’s highend customers).
Checkers is opening stores in underserved, affluent areas and not too long ago it launched a fancy range of ready meals — a patch of the market on which Woolworths has built its reputation. As evidenced in results from fast-food players, people aren’t eating out as frequently and are actually eating an increasing number of their meals at home. It makes sense for supermarkets to push these … meal solutions.
Ready meals and, by extension then, meal kits are a gold mine — margins are far higher than those from fruit and veg and dry goods. Remember that of all meals, dinner is probably the one most based on impulse.
It’s not exactly apples and apples but Ready to Chef’s meal kits are priced between R119.99 and R179.99 a meal for two people. Woolies’ 1kg Meals for Sharing ready meals cost between R109 and R147.99.
I should point out that there’s been a level of oversaturation in mature markets with some traditional meal kit delivery businesses teaming up with brick-and-mortar retailers to sell their kits in store to grow their customer base and keep marketing costs low. New York Stock Exchange-listed Blue Apron at one stage turned to discounting because people were not renewing subscriptions and were heading back to the shops to their old grocery habits.
I believe there are two kinds of people in the world: those who like the idea of having the first steps of meal prep done for them so they can finish the process themselves, and then the rest of us — who’ve read too much Ottolenghi, Oliver or Lawson — and think we just know better.
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