Walmart Dips Toe Into Meal Kit Market

The retailer now stocks around 30 meal kits online by Home Chef and Takeout Kit.

December 13, 2017

BENTONVILLE, Ark. – In early December, Walmart started selling meal kits online recently, under Takeout Kit and Home Chef brands, and already, some of the 30 options, have sold out, The Street reports. The discount retailer had been talking with different meal kit companies about selling their branded kits via the Walmart website, for which Walmart receives a commission and referral fee.

Takeout Kit offers its global cuisine kits, which have a 60-day shelf life, and includes German beef garden spätzle and chicken tikki masala. Home Chef has more traditional American cuisine, such as “Salmon with Brown-Butter Tomato Relish” and “Tex-Mex Turkey Taco Salad.”

Terra’s Kitchen, one of the meal-kit companies Walmart approached about partnering with, sees what the retailer is doing as “a low-risk model” to test the waters for meal kits among its online shoppers. “There's no infrastructure risk, no marketing risk” for the retailer to see which meal kits “are the most interesting to them,” said Michael McDevitt, Terra’s Kitchen CEO.

Supermarkets have been getting into the $2 billion meal-kit business this year. Albertsons acquired Plated in September, while Ralph’s announced its version, Prep+Pared, will be available early next year. In May, Kroger started a test run of its own branded meal kits in four Cincinnati stores. Also this past spring, Unilever announced its investment in the Sun Basket meal kit startup.

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