The meal-kit industry is looking for growth in the next generation of vending machines.
Chef’d, a company backed by Campbell Soup Co. and Smithfield Foods Inc., is putting its meals in hundreds of new-age machines across the Bay Area, including at the offices of Tesla Inc. and Chevron Corp., and on the campus of Stanford University. It’s betting that workers on their way out the door might be in the market for boxes of pre-portioned ingredients that allow them to skip the grocery store on the way home.
While Chef’d is a small player in the meal-kit market, it’s been driving growth through sales at grocery stores, an increasingly popular strategy in an industry mostly built on e-commerce subscriptions. About seven months after the company ramped up its retail push, Chef’d meals are in almost 1,000 U.S. stores. Sales from brick-and-mortar locations now generate more than half of revenue.
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