Meal kit companies surged in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic and addressed two main needs. First, consumers were craving new and exciting flavors to replace restaurant outings. Second, consumers wanted to minimize as much as possible visits outside the home.
This trend was truly global and food kit providers across the world took advantage of the favorable trends. Perhaps unwittingly, the surge in demand presented a new challenge for meal kit companies: sustainability. Shipping food at the appropriate temperature requires a fair amount of potential wasteful packaging.
Throughout the pandemic, consumers shifted towards companies that committed to greener practices. The Canadian company FreshPrep deserves credit for being among the most innovative in the Canadian meal kit space by introducing an industry-first zero waste kit for its meal kit deliveries.
The Value Of Canadian Meal Kits
How often do you go to the grocery store and buy a bag of six onions and 10 pounds of potatoes only to use one onion and three potatoes? Or, how often do you visit the same grocery store two or three times because you keep on forgetting ingredients for your meal?
The business model behind Canadian meal kit companies and really their global peers is consistent: package just the right amount of food a client wants to cook and ship a package to their home. The immediate benefit is the complete elimination of food waste. According to one study, Canadians waste the equivalent of $21 billion worth of food annually due to failed quality standards or damaged packaging.
Canadian meal kits like Fresh Prep, HelloFresh, and others may look wasteful when arriving at a customer’s door but such is not the case. Surprisingly to many, studies have found that meal kit delivery companies come with a superior green profile.
A 2019 study from Shelie Miller, an associate professor at the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems found as a whole a meal kit produces 33% less greenhouse gas compared to a similar meal made with ingredients from a grocery store.
Fresh Prep Has A Solution To Remaining Issues
While an academic study found that meal kits as a whole offer a superior green profile, there are some individual components in Canadian meal kits that are troublesome to the environment. Most notably, meal kits include a lot of plastic packages and are delivered in a cardboard box.
Canadian meal kit company Fresh Prep is the first in Canada, and perhaps in the world, to introduce what it calls a Zero Waste Kit.
All meal kits delivered by Fresh Prep will come in a reusable meal kit container and reusable meal kit cooler bags. All parts of the packaging are dishwasher safe and made with BPA-free reusable plastic and silicone parts. Some customers are already receiving their meal kits in the new sustainable packaging and the company expects to fully transition to this method in the coming months.
Fresh Prep Co-Founder and COO Husein Rahemtulla said in a press release that single-use plastic is a “well-known and pervasive problem in the food industry.” Sustainability and innovation have been part of the Canadian meal kit company’s DNA since its founding.
“Since day one, we’ve experimented with innovative ways to make sustainability more accessible to our customers,” the executive also said in the press release. “We explored options such as mason jars and other packaging, but quickly realized that if we wanted to create a sustainable solution at a large scale, developing a reusable packaging solution that meets the needs of convenience and sustainability would be the best approach.”
Fresh Prep doesn’t stop at packaging in its goal of offering a more sustainable alternative to rival meal kit companies in Canada. The company works with locally-sourced partners to deliver high quality ingredients to its customers.
Online reviews of Fresh Prep mostly point to strong customer satisfaction. Most customers prefer the Canadian meal kit company’s independent delivery system and an easier to manage food kit that includes pre-cut vegetables.
What Are Other Canadian Meal Kit Companies Doing?
While Fresh Prep is the first to offer a sustainable way of delivering food, its rival Canadian meal kit companies are busy as well with their own initiatives.
GoodFood, for example, introduced a reusable delivery box in 2019 but as of 2021 the Canadian meal kit company continues to ship some packages in its standard cardboard boxes. Nevertheless, the Fresh Prep rival expects that customers who embrace the more sustainable delivery option will save the equivalence of 5 million cardboard boxes and 7 million single-use ice packs.
Fellow Canadian meal kit company Fresh Prep also offers a zero-waste food kit where customers can reuse the containers their food comes in.
Last, one of the smaller Canadian regional meal kit companies, ZestyKits, has a unique approach to sustainability on its website. The company highlights the Canada Food Price Report and notes that food inflation will be the highest in record in 2021.
To help consumers save a few dollars and lower their carbon footprint at the same time, the meal kit company is offering multiple soup recipes to use up leftover food and reduce waste. For example, the “Empty Fridge Soup” recipe shows how leftover vegetables from a prior meal can transform to a heart-warming and filling meal.
Conclusion: Canadian Meal Kit Companies Are Embracing Green
While specific actions to lower carbon footprints and waste vary from Canadian meal kit company to company, it is evident that all of the big and small players share a common goal. The meal kit companies understand the importance of embracing green initiatives and recognize that many consumers are refusing to do business with unclean companies.
