Dive Brief:
- Kid-friendly meal kit services are catching the attention of busy families as children head back to school and working parents look for quick ways to prepare school lunches and weeknight dinners, according to USA Today.
- Companies like Yumble and Nurture Life are differentiating themselves from traditional meal kit subscriptions with healthy, ready-to-eat options geared toward kids' picky palates. Nurture Life, founded in 2016, has a menu featuring foods for babies, toddlers and children up to age 18. The subscription costs between $52 and $119 per week.
- Yumble's fully prepared meals run about $48 to $168 a week, depending on box size, and the menu includes selections such as turkey cheddar pinwheels and chicken "pops." The company is planning to expand its menu and open a second kitchen this year, co-founder Joanna Parker told USA Today.
Insight:
With time and cost as the main barriers for parents who want to serve healthy family meals, kid-friendly meal kit companies have an opportunity to solve one of parents' biggest pain points: making high-quality meals on limited time. Most come pre-prepped and pre-cooked and are ready to eat or just require heating.
There are a few other kid-focused meal kit companies in addition to Yumble and Nurture Life. Wise Apple delivers individually sealed lunch trays that stay fresh for five days, with a focus on wholesome meals. San Francisco-based Scrumpt offers daily delivery of kid-friendly meals directly to school for around $7.50 each, and the company is working on expanding throughout California. One Potato bills itself as a meal subscription service that includes kid-sized portions and will keep the whole family happy with its menu.
The companies are delivering results, too. Yumble, which was co-founded by one of HelloFresh’s founders, raised $7 million in Series A funding last September. Nurture Life said its revenue grew 220% from 2018 to 2019. With many Americans still interested in trying meal kits and the market potential expected to increase, kid-friendly meal kits could be integral to the sector’s continued growth.
The price point for kid-friendly meal boxes isn’t exactly cheap, and while affluent customers may pay for health and convenience, average Americans aren’t so likely. According to the International Food Information Council Foundation’s 2018 Food and Health Survey, nearly 50% of respondents cited the cost of meal kit services as a key barrier to using them.
None of these companies have partnered with retailers yet, but doing so could be a smart move given consumer interest in retail meal kits. The meal kit makers would benefit from increased visibility and less customer concern over subscriptions, and retailers would get a boost from offering an innovative product.
