Blue Apron Expands Ready-Made Options as Meal Subscriptions Boost Convenience

As the growth of ready-to-go meal subscriptions outpaces that of traditional meal kits, Blue Apron is launching non-frozen prepared meals — part of an industry-wide trend toward more convenient options.

The meal kit company announced Tuesday (Dec. 12) the expansion of its ready-to-eat category with the launch of Prepared & Ready meals —single-serving, non-frozen prepared meals that recipients reheat in the microwave.

“Our new category of Prepared & Ready meals opens up the opportunity for Blue Apron to become a one-stop shop for its customers,” Blue Apron Senior Vice President of Physical Product John Adler said in a statement. “Now, we’re able to provide customers with multiple convenient meal solutions for a variety of occasions.”

Blue Apron, which was recently acquired by omnichannel food hall company Wonder, has been expanding its ready-made meal business throughout this year, making these options available for non-subscribers on DoorDash’s DashMart in the spring.

Overall, there has been a trend toward more convenient meal subscription options than the traditional meal kit, as providers look to gain share from restaurants and grocers. Blue Apron competitor HelloFresh, for its part, which bills itself as the “world’s leading meal kit company,” in 2021 launched its “Easy Eats” category, which includes oven-ready meals, three-minute microwave options and more. The company has seen this sector grow much faster than meal kits.

“It took us seven years to grow meal kits into a €1 billion business line and only about three years to scale Factor [a ready-to-eat meal subsidiary] from €100 million revenue run rate to over €1 billion annual revenue run rate,” HelloFresh CEO Dominik Richter told analysts on the company’s most recent earnings call.

Similarly, Kroger, the leading pure-play grocer in the United States, has been seizing on the opportunity to gain share from more traditional food sellers with its recently-launched Tempo heat-and-eat meal subscription.

“There are certainly going to be some people where this is replacing grocery,” Scott Payne, chief product officer at Kroger’s Home Chef and Tempo, told PYMNTS in an October interview. “There are some people who haven’t traditionally cooked in the past, so that might be replacing takeout, and there might even be traditional meal kits subscribers who are looking for something more convenient.”

Meal subscriptions are whittling away at traditional grocers’ market share. The report “The Replenish Economy: A Household Supply Deep Dive,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and sticky.io collaboration that draws from a survey of more than 2,000 U.S. consumers in September, found that 47% of HelloFresh subscribers have reduced their visits to brick-and-mortar stores, significantly higher than the 42% that said the same across retail subscriptions.

Plus, the demand for ready-made options is certainly there. The study “Connected Dining: Ready-to-Eat Meals Are Eating Restaurants’ Lunch,” which draws from a PYMNTS Intelligence survey of more than 2,300 U.S. consumers, found that the majority of consumers (57%) now purchase ready-to-eat meals at least once a month, and 28% do so once a week or more. As such, by offering more convenient meal options, subscription companies have the opportunity to reach a large portion of consumers.