Membership food subscriptions: grocery & food delivery services
These days, you can get almost any food delivered straight to your door on subscription. Whether it’s a monthly food subscription box of your favorite snacks or a weekly delivery of delicious meals, food subscriptions take all forms and cater to a variety of different lifestyles. Some, like monthly food subscription boxes of gourmet products, are popular for gift-giving. Others, like meal kits, fit into consumers’ personal daily routines.
The best food subscription boxes are able to achieve industry-leaving average order value (AOV). How? By balancing their customers’ needs and preferences with accurate forecasting, inventory management, and thoughtful communication. Below, we dive into the different categories of food subscriptions, as well as their draws for consumers, their benefits for merchants, and the key challenges their merchants face.
Meal kits
With a meal kit delivery service, subscribers receive deliveries of pre-measured ingredients to make specific meals. Along with this, they’ll also get printed and/or digital recipe cards containing instructions and cooking tips. Sometimes, certain ingredients are pre-prepared to facilitate an easier or quicker cooking experience—for example, sending cooked gcash databasechicken breasts in a pasta recipe—but the meal will still require assembly by the subscriber. Popular meal kit brands include Blue Apron, Sun Basket, Green Chef, Hellofresh, Marley Spoon, Purple Carrot, Home Chef, and more.
Subscribers of the meal kit brand Marley Spoon receive six-step recipes for their chosen meals, along with a box full of all the ingredients to make them.
Consumers are often drawn to meal kits for their convenience—their easy-to-follow recipes are approachable for less experienced home cooks. With pre-portioned ingredients, they also allow subscribers to easily try new foods and new dishes without having to purchase a large amount of an ingredient—for example, a special spice blend that isn’t available in their local grocery store.
Many meal kit companies cater to certain dietary restrictions, which can be a major draw for consumers looking for an easy meal planning strategy to meet their nutrition needs. For example, certain brands may offer plans for plant-based meals, gluten-free options, dairy-free meal plans, a keto box, meals without high-fructose corn syrup, or a meal plan centered around organic ingredients. Other meal kits may offer kid-friendly recipes geared towards families, or quick meals that can be easily prepared on weeknights.