#takeoutkit

“Takeout Kit was launched in 2016, is available nationwide, and is already profitable.The long shelf-life pantry kits, which are offered on a subscription or an a la carte basis, come with the option to add fresh ingredients, but contain all the components you need to make a complete meal, including proteins, explained Lake, who has not sought outside capital to date. 

Meal kit subscriptions have grown 67% over the past 12 months, although many of the subscribers are triers/researchers (40%), who frequently try many subscriptions in the same category before fully committing, it says. Surprisingly, men make up the majority of the meal kit subscription market (58%), compared to women, who make up 42%. This group is overwhelmingly young, as millennials make up 58% of the market, and skew on the lower side of income, as 55% of subscribers make less than $100,000/year. 

We attract customers that are a better fit in the first place Rather than seeing Takeout Kit as competing with the likes of HelloFresh or Blue Apron, said Lake, We think our market is the ~$300bn online grocery market.  

We're not spending huge sums of money on customer acquisition; we've found it's been most effective to be where customers are looking for meal kits such as on the Amazon marketplace under the meal kit category, or on Walmart.com, so most of the time they'll discover us there and then their second purchase will be direct from takeoutkit.com. 

Meal kit companies should be managed more like CPGs or grocery stores than startups. Yes, you should always invest in the brand, product, and efficient marketing. But avoid high new customer acquisition costs, especially when you learn that they are not sustainable based on average CLV  [customer lifetime value] data. Our best partners to-date have been suppliers that share our goal...”