Offering Take and Bake Meal Kits
You may have heard of meal kits, and noticed an increasing number of ads for meal kit companies online. According to the National Restaurant Association, in 2019, 41% of consumers said that they would purchase take and bake meal kits from their favorite restaurants, if offered.
Meal kits are online companies that provide pre-packaged cook-and-eat and heat-and-eat meals. Most are a subscription box service and provide unique recipes and flavor combinations that can be added into a shipment. Popular meal kit companies include HelloFresh and Blue Apron.
By 2027, the meal kit industry is expected to reach $20 billion in revenue. The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has only added to this growth with consumers looking for easy mealtime options. Even before COVID-19, this sector was growing. In 2018, brick and mortar grocers saw a 60% increase in purchases of in-store meal kits.
Increasingly, consumers are looking for these simple solutions that offer them a fresh and healthy meal in relatively quick time, without the labor of finding recipes or shopping for ingredients themselves. With all the proof of profitability and the projected growth in this area, it may be time to consider take and bake meal kits for your restaurant.
It’s important to make a distinction between take and bake (or cook and eat) vs. heat-and eat meals. A majority of meal kits are cook-and-eat, meaning they provide fresh ingredients for a dish with cooking instructions. Contrarily, heat and eat meals would be similar to that of a frozen dinner bought in the frozen food aisle of a grocery store.
Looking at Olive Garden’s “Take Home” offer as an example, the chain offers 4 dishes for take home meals. The offer is available for dine-in only, and Take Home dishes cost only $5 with the purchase of an entree in-house. Looking at the available items, which are all pasta-based and relatively cheap to produce, it’s clear that Olive Garden is turning a profit on these dishes. This lesson can be applied to your restaurant. What dishes do you have which are relatively cheap to produce, but are beloved by customers? Can you package and sell them?
Given information about this market, there is a large business gap for local restaurants to start packaging and creating their own meal kits. Adults 35 - 44 accounted for 29% of online, and 27% of in-store meal kit purchases in 2018. Consumers are drawn to the take and bake meal because they can get fresh, simple meals. But what if they could also get them locally? 73% of Americans try to include locally-sourced foods in their diet, and eating at local restaurants is a large part of that. Consumers will choose a locally-owned option over a franchise or chain to support small businesses, eat local, and reinvigorate the local economy of their community.
If you’d like help developing and marketing a take and bake program, Sherane Chen is here to help! We’d gladly walk you through the process of dish selection, creating a pilot program, and launching a take and bake menu for your restaurant. Contact us today or call (386) 627-3628 for a consultation!