Match Game

Grocers must consider values, variety, common goals and more when looking to partner with meal-kit services.

- Randy Hofbauer

Meal kits are a big business, rocketing to $5 billion in sales today, according to market researcher Packaged Facts. And the Rockville, Md.-based firm expects solid continued growth in the space.

But with an over saturated market for delivery services and grocers rolling out kits of their own — along with Amazon introducing its own kits and likely to sell them at Whole Foods Market, which it now owns — it’s becoming vital for delivery services to seek added exposure and captive audiences inside brick-and-mortar stores, especially as shoppers seek to purchase products wherever, whenever and however they desire.

This has made the market ripe for acquisitions. In September, Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons Cos. acquired meal-kit service Plated, advancing a shared strategy to reinvent the way consumers discover, purchase and experience food. Additionally, the CEO of Green Chef has said that he’s open to accepting offers for his company, while another service, Home Chef, has hired bankers to explore a possible sale, signaling an opportunity for it to be snatched up by an interested retailer. Further, Blue Apron recently shedding 6 percent of its workforce has left industry speculators wondering if it, too, will soon be scooped up.

However, more strategic partnership deals between grocers and meal-kit services have been inked in recent times, including Southern California grocer Gelson’s with Chef ’d, and Whole Foods with Blue Carrot (the latter of which wound down earlier this year). Moreover, eMeals — which doesn’t individually package portioned ingredients in kit format, but still essentially functions as a meal-kit service — has added Walmart, Kroger and Amazon Fresh to its list of grocers willing to offer click-and-collect (and, in Amazon Fresh’s case, delivery, too) shopping for its meal-building program.

Consider Carefully