ZEENAT MOORAD: The meal kit gold mine lands in SA
Checkers has become SA’s first retailer to sell meal kits in its stores
The meal kit is the kitchen equivalent of paint-by-numbers: you don’t need talent or training to make something worthwhile. This week, Checkers became SA’s first retailer to sell meal kits in its stores. For the uninitiated, meal kits are recipes and ingredients packaged in precise quantities for home cooking and consumption. The model started out as a subscription delivery business, but has to some degree migrated to the retail grocery channel. It’s big business in the US where retailers Walmart, Kroger and Costco all peddle meal kits. In-store meal kits generated $154.6m in sales last year, posting growth of more than 26% year-on-year, according to Nielsen. To put that in context, total brick-and-mortar sales for categories like shelf-stable groceries (that’s pantry shelf stuff like baked beans and dry pasta), dairy and frozen foods dipped 0.1% in 2017 to $374bn. For those who want a no-think approach to mealtime that’s slightly more accomplished than an all-briskness and little-p...
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