Driven by consumers’ desire for fresh, convenient meal options and accelerated by the home-cooking trend sparked by the pandemic, the meal-kit market in the U.S. shows a healthy CAGR of 11.25% through 2025. That’s according to TechNavio, which adds that the greatest growth in the meal-kit market will come from the U.S., at 54%. However, meal kits are not just a U.S. phenomenon. According to ReportLinker, the global meal-kit services market is forecast to reach $17.8 billion by 2027.
Meal kits, in a nutshell, comprise a kit of pre-measured food ingredients—usually a mix of shelf-stable and fresh, depending on the meal—and an easy-to follow recipe that allows the consumer to prepare the meal at home. They typically operate on a direct-to-consumer subscription basis. For a large meal-kit provider, such as HelloFresh, one of the world’s leading meal-kit companies, the number of recipe options it offers its subscribers each week can total more than 50. For these companies, stocking a large range of shelf-stable items packaged in different portion sizes is viable.
