Hi everyone, it's Alissa Coram. I'm here with Russ Britt our tech editor at Investor's
Business Daily. Thanks for joining us. My pleasure. All right, so today we were
talking all about the meal kit delivery space and Russ did his own test of a lot
of the different companies. First let's talk quickly a
little bit about the market here for meal kit deliveries' rapid growth. We're
seeing revenue expected to hit 10 billion by 2020. What do you think about
that? Well, it is growing rapidly. There's a lot of curiosity but there are also a
lot of players coming up, and I sense there's going to be a shakeout at some
point. Quality of the food and perhaps packaging and all those
sorts of things will go into which ones will survive right right they
need to perfect the business model. There's a lot of waste in their
packaging. There's some issues with delivery. The food is good, the smells are
good, but there are other issues. Let's talk about your
experience. You tried a couple of these different services, so overall, what was
your experience? It was generally good There was, like I say, there were some
delivery issues, but the food was always good. The smells were really good. I
botched the recipes only twice that I can remember. I burned the rice once. It's
not supposed to be crunchy, but it still tasted good even though the main
ingredient in that particular dish was hamburger.
Let's talk a little bit about the convenience factor here. It's
restaurant quality food in a sense. I'd say so, but it's it's all proportioned for
you, and the price kind of falls between the spectrum of grocery and what you
would pay at a restaurant, but getting closer to grocery as you can see with the
shake out. Taking a look at what the packaging is like because
it's individual portions that makes it easier for you when you're cooking.
Now can you tell us a little bit about the portion sizes here. Well you might
get a single clove of garlic and something like this
or you know just enough. This was the chicken marsala dish that we made. You
had just enough cooking wine in here. You just dump the whole thing in there and
that's it. You don't have to measure anything.
Do you feel like the the premium over the grocery store price was
worth? I was a little worried when I saw the portions at first, and and you
know the steaks there were a couple of steaks that looked really small, but once
I made everything and got it on my plate I go, 'well that's not bad.' And once I ate
I was fine. So back to the business model a little bit, what do you
think there's room for improvement for here? The
deliveries are an issue, and I think really the waste is the worst part.
You'll get a giant box. They basically have to turn this box into a mini
refrigerator that you can leave on your grass, so there's cold packs, giant cold
packs that I have no room for. All this insulation all of these little
containers here that I'll never use again, so you know that's something
they'll have to deal with. One of the lingering questions here for a lot
of delivery services and retailers is that looming from Amazon, so right how do
you think that's going to shakeout? That's another issue. Some of
them require memberships and Amazon and Walmart aren't asking you to join a
membership or join a club, so they're gonna have to contend with that because
the convenience of not having to remember to cancel your order on a
certain week is is going to be a big draw. Well, this space is
definitely one to watch here. We have Blue Apron, the pure play here that's
public, but we we could see some shifts in this space here coming up, probably
some buyouts there already occurring. Well, for more on this story on
meal kit deliveries make sure to check out Russ's
feature in the IBD weekly, as well as an Investors com.