WASHINGTON — A New York Times story Monday estimated that there are now more than 100 companies selling some form of meal kits — boxes of pre-measured ingredients for creating home-cooked meals delivered directly to peoples’ homes.
Blue Apron alone, the segment leader, delivers about 8 million boxes of meal kits a month.
Customer reviews are generally positive, and meal kits have even won qualified praise from some professional chefs.
Prolific D.C. chef Geoff Tracy says he has personally never tried preparing one of these meal kits, but he has heard good things about the quality of the ingredients and the end results of the instruction-guided cooking process.
“I guess from my perspective, it’s another competitor, but overall, if people are cooking then people are cooking and I think that’s a good thing.”
Meal kits are another extension of the renaissance in home cooking brought about in the past decade by the success of cable channels such as Food Network and the Cooking Channel. However, the content has shifted from old school teaching techniques pioneered by public television to cooking shows focused on races, competitions and personalities.
Tracy, who runs Chef Geoff’s restaurants in Tysons Corner and on New Mexico Avenue Northwest near American University, as well as Lia’s restaurant in Chevy Chase, remembers getting inspiration from master chefs such as Jacques Pepin.
But he thinks even today’s overly commercialized food media landscape is a positive.
“I have young children ages 8, 8 (twins) and 7 and they love watching all the cooking shows, ‘Cupcake Wars,’ and all that kind of stuff, anything that involves some kind of competition, and that’s really creating a generation of people who are going to cook.”
Would Tracy ever consider getting into the business of creating and selling boxed meal kits? He gave a tongue-in-cheek answer.
“I certainly like the idea of instead of going through the process and having all the employees that have to cook all the food and then serve it to the people, I would certainly take a discount and serve all of the stuff raw to my customers,” he jokes. “They are sort of small portions compared to the price, and then they do all the labor. It sounds like a good business model, so perhaps something I should get in to.”
The Times quotes industry food analyst Technomic Inc. as predicting the meal kit business could grow to $5 billion annually in the next decade.
