Source: plated.com
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the monthly e-zine, CPGmatters.
Start-up companies such as Plated and Blue Apron have carved out a niche in the food business by delivering meal kits to the home. Major food makers are taking notice. Two of them — ConAgra Brands and Unilever — are considering entering the arena of delivering meals to the home to satisfy the needs of consumers for convenience and novelty.
“This is so different from models we historically have had,” said Bob Nolan, Senior Vice President of Insights & Analytics at ConAgra Brands. “We have to understand: Do we want to partner with someone or acquire them? We need to develop a solution for the next 10 years vs. what has worked for us for the last 50 years.”
Meanwhile, Unilever has been partnering with a lot of customers in e-commerce, and meal delivery is one of the areas it is exploring, according to Allison Scott, Director Shopper Insights.
“Plated has changed my life,” said Ms. Scott, a mother of three. She signed up several years ago for the home-delivered meal service, which provides chef-designed recipes and pre-portioned ingredients. “As a shopper insights professional, [I discovered] so many unmet needs I did not know I had,” she added.
The executives discussed the possibility of meal delivery to the home in a panel discussion about the state of the food industry at OmniShopper 2016 in Chicago.
Ms. Scott, who uses Plated three days a week, is studying the underlying insights that resulted in this market offering and trying to leverage those insights.
“I do not have to shop for those [days] anymore,” Ms. Scott said. “Yet I still have the experience of nurturing.”