Meal Kit Mania Riles Restaurants & Grocers

Restaurants customer counts are falling or flat for just about every sector of the restaurant sector. Traditional grocery stores are finding customer discontinuity as the only sector of the traditional grocery stores that is growing is the grocerant sector filled with Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food. 

Regular readers of this blog know Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® has been talking about companies focused on disrupting the legacy pantry business for several years which is a blow for traditional CPG companies and disruptive for grocers. Restaurant chains are simply trying to put butts in seats every day.  Both the restaurant and grocery sector will have to work a bit harder as Marth Stewart and Marley Spoon want consumers to stay home and cook as they provide the food.  

What’s for Dinner?  Well if Martha Stewart has her way What’s for Dinner will be a meal kit from Martha & Marley Spoon.  Yes, Martha Stewart is jumping on the growing popularity of subscription meal kits meaning you won’t have to go to the grocery store or restaurant for dinner. 

The press release stated “Sequential Brands Group, the company that bought Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia last year, has partnered with meal kit company Marley Spoon to rebrand the entire service under Martha's name, to be called Martha & Marley Spoon. All of the company's neatly portioned dinners for two or four will be based on Martha Stewart recipes.”

Technomic estimates that Meal kit sales are expected to reach nearly $4 billion in the next five years,  creating incremental disruption for the restaurant sector. Forty-seven percent of consumers said they would reduce restaurant delivery and takeout spending if they subscribed to a meal kit service, according to Technomic.  

Restaurants have taken notice and have not been idle some restaurants have launched meal subscription services of their own.  Grocery stores are now bundling meals and meal components to fend off these new competitors. 

Is your retail food brand looking more like yesterday than tomorrow?  Martha Stewart is dynamic not static she is entering the fastest growing new segment of food retail today the grocerant niche.  What are you doing? 

Are you trapped doing what you have always done and doing it the same way?  Interested in learning how Foodservice Solutions 5P’s of Food Marketing can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization? Email us at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit:  www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information.