Meals on Wheels- Meal Kits, Food Trucks, & Home Delivery- What’s Next
Ginger S. Myers
University of Maryland Extension
Ag Marketing Specialist Ag & Food Systems
Director, Maryland Rural Enterprise
Development Center
301-432-2767
What this presentation DOES address:
The strategies, logistics, and customer buying trends for foods prepared at home or purchased for convenience.
What this presentation DOES NOT address:Business plans for adding this type of services to your operation and hard numbers for the costs.
Meal Kits are Really Popular-Maybe Not So Much
What is a Meal Kit? A meal kit is consists of
ingredients to cook a meal, primarily meat, fish, poultry,
vegetables, lettuce, sauce and spices.
Consumers mix the ingredients and cook the meal
according to the instructions provided.
Meal kits can be purchased in stores or consumers can
pay a fee to receive meals on a weekly basis.
Meal Delivery Services Gaining Popularity
Meal Delivery Services-
Services that send pre-cooked meals are called meal delivery services. Popularity on the rise but so is their costs.
Think pizza delivery with tons of options.
Amazon has not made any moves in meal
kits . HelloFresh remains the meal-kit leader
with about 33% of the market share.
•Customers Are Losing Interest in Meal Kits
•Losing Interest is not the same as going
away.
Sales of meal kits in grocery stores are increasing as it is easier for consumers to select what they want and prices are cheaper.
When chefs purchase from farmers food is evaluated for Flavor, Quality, and then Price.
When most customers shop the evaluate food on price, quality, and then flavor.
Opportunity exist for delivering more FLAVOR.
Meal Delivery Businesses
Eating in is the new dining out.
In 2020, more than half of restaurant spending is projected to be “off premise”—not inside a restaurant. In other words, spending on deliveries, drive-throughs, and takeaway meals will soon overtake dining inside restaurants, for the first time on record.
The New “Convenience” model
So what challenges can you expect when
launching a food delivery startup? Everything
hinges on the business model you choose.
Your on-line store???
Order only modelOrder and delivery modelMilk run delivery
Order only model
Order online or call in- pickup at your site
Shopify, Square, Grazecart- most popular
platforms
Order and delivery model
Charge a delivery fee- Flat rate or in zones?
Seven Sons Farm https://sevensons.net
J & L Green Farmhttps://www.jlgreenfarm.com
Product shipping- Considerations Commercial
carrier, packaging, product quality, frozen product very challenging
Milk run delivery- Efficiency of Time and
Travel
With milk run delivery, a food delivery company has a
base of couriers for regular deliveries. The company maps
a fixed route for each courier that reaches all delivery
points in one run. https://southmountaincreamery.com/
Which way should you go?
Arranging a robust delivery system can be very
expensive.
So if you’re a newcomer to the food delivery market,
you’d better start with the simplest business model ‒
order only ‒ and then move on once you have a solid
base of customers.
Is a Food Truck in Your Future?
What You Need to Know to Get Started:1. The truck- an average cost $50K - $200 K depending on how it’s equipped2. Will need to work with a brick-on-mortar kitchen to work out of.3. A secure placed to set-up- may need to pay for your parking space
4. Work day can be very long- start early, prep food, load truck, drive to location, sell, drive back to commercial kitchen, clean truck, put away product. 14-16 hours day are common.
5. Income potential varies greatly.
6.Food truck events are still very popular and new partnerships with agritourism operations and community events is increasing
Baltimore’s Best Brick Oven Pizza… On a Truck- Pizza di
Joey……Now at the Cross Street Market in East
Baltimore..
http://www.mdfoodtrucks.com/
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Producer considerations for “meals on
wheels” enterprise models:
1. 1. Customers are always considering added
convenience.
2. 2. Solving their problem of (1) what to eat and (2)
how to prepare it.
3. 3. Food trucks are big $$ investments and labor
intensive.
4. 4. Packaged meal delivery systems have aggregation
and timely delivery concerns.
1. 5. Can you add convenience to any
products you already market?
2. 6. Where can your convenience-added
products intersect with target clients in a
timely manner?
3. 7. Can you consider shipping?
Producer considerations for “meals on
wheels” enterprise models:
Photo CreditsMeals on Wheels Image-https://primeroedge.com/meals-on-wheels-school-food-trucks/Blue Apron Meal Kitshttps://www.eater.com/2019/2/7/18215702/blue-apron-knick-knacks-cheaper-meal-kitsSeven Sons Delivery Servicehttps://sevensons.net/how-pickup-locations-workSouth Mountain Creameryhttps://southmountaincreamery.com/PizzadiJoeyhttps://pizzadijoey.com/Meal Delivery Serviceshttps://lalymom.com/meal-delivery-services-weight-loss/
Ginger S. Myers
University of Maryland Extension
Ag Marketing Specialist Ag & Food Systems
Director, Maryland Rural Enterprise
Development Center
301-432-2767
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