Meal Kits in Every Channel of Foodservice

Convenience Stores, Dollar Stores, and Grocery Stores are developing meal kit programs to drive top line sales and bottom line profits with a valued add customer relevance according to Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru®, Steven Johnson. The battle for incremental sales is now focused on meal solutions and meal kits reduce consumer’s consternation over What’s for Dinner.

While in the US the Meal Kit business sales are reported to hit $1.5I Billion in 2017. In fact Piper Jaffray published a note in June 2016 predicting that the Meal Kit market will reach $4 Billion near term and $36 Billion in annual sales by 2026. There is huge opportunity in grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared meals and meal kits solutions. 

In-store meal kit sales totaled $80.6 million in the year ended March 4, 2017, up 6.7% from the previous year. In 2017 25% of the US Households have tried a meal kit.  Meal kits are as our Grocerant Guru® pointed out three years ago training wheels for Millennials.

Meal kits have added customer relevance as they are perceived as healthier than other meal options available to them. In fact, 81% of consumers in a recent Nielsen survey said they believe meal kits are healthier for them than prepared foods from their local grocery store.

The undercurrents of success and adoption of meal kit by both your and old as meal kits are delivering: 92% of adults say they’re satisfied with the quality of the produce in their meal kits, 91% are satisfied with how the meat is packaged and 66% say they eat seafood more when they purchase meal kits according to the Nielsen study.

Nielsen study also found that, 44% say would be influenced to start buying them again if they helped save time on meal planning.  86% say they’d like them to include a dessert and 36% say they’d like meal kits available at their local grocery store. And as with any consumer product, price is always a key influencer, as 46% of consumers say they would buy meal kits if they were less expensive.

What we know now is that Dollar stores will offer meal kits for less money, Convenience stores will offer meal kits with ease and quick service, and grocery stores will offer meal kits in that are awkward to find in the store, CPG focused not customer focused, and spend more time tweaking their meal kit location in the store, than focusing on Why customer want them in the first place.  Restaurants on the other have will double down drive cost and consumer solution based meal kits garnering incremental Share of Stomach.

Success does leave clues www.FoodserviceSolutions.us  is the global leader in grocerant niche business development.  We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities.  Has your company had a Grocerant ScoreCard completed, Grocerant Program Assessment, or new Grocerant niche product Ideation?  Want one?  Call 253-759-7869 Email: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us