Meal kit sales have blossomed during the COVID-19 pandemic but customers have had to accept a hefty side-order of plastic packaging with their orders.
However, there’s a new player in town, one promising no plastic, no prep, and not even any long-term subscriptions.
Housemade launched, softly, in December, and launched fully last Monday, offering meal kits customers can order whenever the need—or desire—arises. Meals are for one person, but one or multiple can be ordered, and all packaging is either recyclable or compostable. Even the stickers used on the packaging are water-soluble. Housemade uses 91 percent less packaging by weight, compared to other meal kit companies.
This new endeavor comes from fast-casual restaurant chain Just Salad, a pioneer in reducing packaging. Customers can order from Housemade, provided they live near a Just Salad, because that’s another important differentiator; meal kits are not shipped miles and miles, just within certain metropolitan markets (New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Chicago, and South Florida), keeping carbon emissions low. All meals arrive in less than an hour and are prepared in Just Salad kitchens.
“We feel we’re truly disrupting the meal kit business,” said Nick Kenner, CEO and founder of Just Salad, New York City.
Housemade’s gone one step further than being just a meal kit company though. Customers can also add certain grocery items to their order—produce, salad dressings, proteins, beverages, and snacks—or prepared salads from a limited Just Salad menu, to keep everyone in a family or group happy. Eventually, the entire Just Salad menu will be available, Kenner says. “People want options. Families are eating together more and more now and not everyone wants to eat the same thing.”
But he expects the meal kits “to be the driver and then our customers will add on to the meal kits to solve short-term grocery needs, and maybe a prepared meal.”
The seven meal kit dishes include Thai bowl, Buffalo chicken bowl, and Harvest bowl with chicken, vegetarian, and Beyond Beef options. They cost $10.49 to $11.49 and are all one-pot meals, ready in 15 minutes or less.
Kenner expects people to order because of the quality of the food, more than the reduced packaging “Even people with the best of intentions with the environment are not going to eat food if it doesn’t taste good.” He’s primarily getting the Just Salad customer base excited about this, he says, as well as people who buy meal kits who want to avoid plastic and consumers interested in sustainability.
So far, the meal kits are appealing overwhelmingly to people ordering a single portion, and more than 90 percent of customers order multiple meals.
“We’re a virtual brand launched to solve the commitment and sustainability meal kit issues,” Kenner said. “This is going to be a game changer for the meal kit industry.”
Related: Pandemic Trends Carry into 2021: E-Commerce Impacts Specialty; Brands Indicate Carbon Footprint on Packaging.
Image: Housemade/Just Salad