Meal Kits A New Sales Opportunity for Restaurants

If you’re a restaurant entrepreneur looking for ways to increase your sales, especially in situations where storefront sales can’t generate as good an income as it previously could, home delivery meal kits are another interesting market group that can increase sales opportunities for your business.

 Home Delivery Meal Kits…Another Option for Foodies 

In an era when people’s lifestyles have changed and are unfamiliar, eating is still a necessity. And when eating out is still a concern and delivered cooked food just doesn’t taste as good as dining in, but buying ingredients for a home-cooked meal is a big hassle, a new option is created for people who want to make simple dishes themselves while still getting the same flavor as the food from their favorite restaurants with meal kits, or prepared sets of ingredients for home cooking.

Meal Kits Are another Opportunity to Increase Sales for Restaurants in the “New Normal” Era

                        Since people in living in the city are always rushing somewhere, they don’t have a lot of opportunity to go browsing in a fresh market for ingredients for cooking at home. However, many people are probably familiar with meal kits because these days in supermarkets’ fresh food section they can see the ingredients for different types of food prepared as a set for people to buy and cook at home.

With the ingredients, sauces and seasonings, even if you don’t have any cooking skills, you can still cook a fresh meal yourself. Even some markets offer meal kits such as som tam kits that include papaya strips and every seasoning needed ready to be put in the mortar and pounded.

However, you rarely see meal kits at restaurants, even though looking from a sales opportunity perspective, it’s not hard at all for restaurants to create these products because they are prepared in terms of recipes and customer base. They only have to change from preparing food to be served at the restaurant to preparing kits with the ingredients for the restaurant’s dishes for customers to buy or order to cook at home. This can increase their sales opportunities and customer base. In a customers’ perspective, it’s fun to prepare a dish from their favorite restaurant by themselves at home to eat with their family.

            Which Customer Group Is Ideal for Meal Kits

In America, there are startup businesses that have entered the meal kit market, namely, Blue Apron, which was founded in 2012. Within 3 years, Blue Apron had sold over 2 million meal kits to customers nationwide by 2015, generating over 20 million US dollars per month. As a result Blue Apron made its IPO in 2017 and entered the stock market and has been operating the meal-kit business since then.

Blue Apron’s target market is modern city people who have been caring more about what they eat and are interested in making simple meals at home without having to buy large quantities of ingredients at a time to prepare just one serving. That’s why Blue Apron makes meal kits with the appropriate quantity of ingredients for each serving without any ingredients left to spoil.

In our country, restaurants can take Blue Apron’s example of preparing sets to match the number of people with things like sets for 1-2 servings. Our target market is no different: city people, people living in condos or dormitories or customers who can’t travel to eat at restaurants often. Restaurants can offer them meal kits to be cooked at home.

Ways to Sell Meal Kits

We’re going to use Blue Apron’s marketing strategy as an example. Blue Apron collects a membership fee and customers can choose a plan for how many people the kits can serve, and how many kits per week. The menu changes weekly.

In our country, we can follow Blue Apron’s example. It’s like having a standing order with a customer where the customer can choose what meals they want each week and for how many people. Or, if this method is too complicated, go back to basics and sell through the restaurant’s online channels and delivery platforms. Restaurants can make meal kits out of their signature dishes.

Most Importantly, Don’t Forget the Cooking Directions

Although the meal kits contain pre-portioned ingredients and seasonings, if you don’t tell customers how to cook them, the flavor and looks of the meals might not turn out as expected. Therefore, you should give customers step-by-step instructions, so the meals will turn out as close as possible to what they eat at your restaurant.

Although meal kits might not be a big market that generates your main income, there are a lot of customers who enjoy cooking their own meals who can give your restaurant extra income with the meal kit products. Just imagine, wouldn’t you love it if you were a customer who could make your favorite restaurant’s signature dish at home?  What’s more, you’d also be making customers feel like they’ve participated in the brand.

Images from: The Local by Oam Thong Thai Cuisine
Tueng Kaen Isaan Food and Blue Apron Website

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