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Start a Meal Kit Delivery Business with EasyRoutes

Exploring the booming meal kit delivery industry, emphasizing its importance during the Covid-19 pandemic and offering guidance on starting a meal kit delivery service.

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The internet meal kit business is booming! Since the start of Covid-19, our world has altered tremendously. We’ve noticed a significant increase in the number of people ordering in. As a result, all areas of the food sector, including distribution networks, are in high demand. This covers takeaway, fast food, and meal delivery (freshly prepared meals, meal planning), as well as, of course, meal kit delivery.

In this post, we’ll try to answer the topic of “how to start a meal kit delivery service.” We’ll concentrate on the route planning and optimization aspects of meal kit services in general. It’s time to get more precise about how to establish a meal kit business.

Table of Contents

  • What is a Meal Kit Delivery Business?
  • How To Start a Meal Kit Service
  • Meal Delivery’s Big Problem: The Difficultly of Optimizing Delivery Routes
  • How to Organize Routes for a Meal Delivery Business
  • Final Thoughts

What is a Meal Kit Delivery Business?

How do Meal Kit Delivery Services Work?

A meal kit is a food service that is provided on a “subscription” basis. This aligns with consumer product trends like Dollar Shave Club, Quip, and other subscription-based services (per month or week). The following is how meal-kit delivery services work:

  • The company’s website sells meal packages to customers.
  • The meal-kit company prepares the ingredients.
  • The online meal-kit delivery service packages all of the meal kits.
  • Shipping picks up the boxes and delivers them to the clients.

Why Do Customers Order Meal Kit Delivery Services?

Many people may choose to purchase an online meal kit delivery for a variety of reasons:

  • They are not obligated to perform their grocery shopping at the grocery store.
  • They’ll be able to get their hands on fresh ingredients.
  • New recipes are given to them in the form of recipe cards.
  • They aid in the reduction of food waste.
  • They appear to be in good health and are happy.

What’s the Meal Kit business landscape like?

There are a lot of people involved, both big and small. Larger firms with well-known brands in the United States and internationally include:

These companies have a substantial market share in the meal kit industry.

Many local kit firms and entrepreneurs specialize in supplying meals and meal packages to the community, such as blue apron. Purple Carrot, for example, is a company that specializes in plant-based meal delivery. As is the case in all businesses, Davids still have room to fight Goliaths (such as HelloFresh or Amazon). There is no exception in the meal kit sector. The meal kit and kit delivery industries are flourishing, and there’s lots of room for a company to establish a successful kit business for a local market and attract new clients. These are preferred by both college students and working professionals.

How To Start a Meal Kit Service

There are a few steps to getting started in the food industry, package sector, or meal kit delivery market. Here’s a quick list of things to consider when drafting your business plan:

  1. Perform research on your target market or clients.
  2. Make an application for a business license.
  3. Create a commercial kitchen.
  4. Do some research to find the best meal kit delivery services.
  5. Begin the process of putting together menus and meals.
  6. Create your own kitchen or use one in a restaurant that already exists.
  7. Begin by looking for firms that distribute meal kits and facilities that are associated to the meal kit industry.
  8. Check to determine whether getting a delivery driver route planner is a better alternative.
  9. Create a long-term strategy.
  10. Run it by as many people as possible, including an existing meal kit delivery service.
  11. Refine the business concept for your online meal kit delivery service.
  12. Create an online ordering platform for meal kits.
  13. Begin marketing and promoting to your customers the benefits of avoiding food stores.
  14. You can pay for your services in a variety of ways (in-house or outsourced kit delivery).
  15. Start your amazing career as an entrepreneur today!

We may add more stages to this list in the future, but for now, we’ll stop here. We’ve also written a lot about other things, like how to launch a delivery service.

Meal Delivery’s Big Problem: The Difficultly of Optimizing Delivery Routes

EasyRoutes is a route optimization company based in the United States. Because delivery is such a crucial aspect of the meal kit business, any food company that does deliveries needs to be extremely precise and efficient. It’s crucial because it’s a part of the overall customer experience. For the following reasons, this is correct:

  • It’s difficult to plan a route. It’s nearly hard to calculate the best route when there are a number of stops, as there generally are with meal kit delivery services.
  • A Meal Kit firm desires prompt and on-time delivery. Consumers anticipate that their meal kits will come on time.
  • As a result, a meal kit delivery company’s success is determined by the delivery component, which is determined by the value of the route planning application.

Because the optimization problem is so complicated, we’ve assembled a big team of devoted professionals to help you solve it. This frees you up to focus on your meal kit business and ensures that each meal kit your customers receive is the best meal kit they’ve ever received.

Many food entrepreneurs and meal kit delivery providers rely on EasyRoutes to help them succeed. Like Illuminate Food, whom you can read about here!

How to Organize Routes for a Meal Delivery Business

So, you’ve created a meal kit company. You have a menu on your website. Your menu is well-liked by the general population. You’ve already had a few orders. A customer on the east side of town has ordered three meal kits per week. Two weekly meal kits are needed by another organization on the west side of town. You put your meal bundle together. Gather the necessary items, print the recipes, and clear the space.

This process continues until the company has advanced to the next level. “How am I going to organize all these deliveries in a manageable way?” you’re anxious. instead of focusing solely on meal kits, materials, and the preparation of meal kits

It’s difficult to choose the best course of action when you have one, two, or three drivers. How will we transport all of these meal packs to their designated locations? How are we going to provide these meal packages to you on time? While maximizing our delivery drivers’ efficiency?

At this point, route planning comes into play.

EasyRoutes Route Planning

Our answer is to provide you with a simple, intuitive, and user-friendly interface that allows you to rapidly access your Shopify orders and addresses, create routes, and have your drivers deliver your meal kits in no time.

Our meal kit delivery service has allowed users to:

  • Choose the orders that must be routed.
  • Create routes with the option of customizing them.
  • Share routes with their drivers or deliver on their own.
  • Save a lot of time, money, and kilometres/miles by using this route.

As a result, companies can focus all of the time and money saved on enhancing their core product and gratifying their customers.

Final Thoughts

In brief, we recognize that strengthening this area of the process is crucial based on consumer feedback, and we want to be able to help you as much as possible so you can focus on your ingredients, recipes, and other market-relevant information.

Also, if you happen to be reading this and live in our area, please get in touch with us. We’d want to try out some new ingredients and recipes!

Happy delivering!

About Roundtrip

Roundtrip's mission is to equip every business with the software tools they need to deliver products to their customers in a delightful way. Thousands of worldwide choose EasyRoutes to power their local deliveries across dozens of product categories, from meal kits and groceries to coffee, cupcakes, kibble, and so much more. Our easy-to-use route planning and delivery optimization app is certified Built for Shopify, a two-time Shopify staff pick, and the top rated local delivery app on the Shopify App Store.

"We have a very complicated system that used to take half a day to sort out the routes. Once we switched to Easy Routes, we complete our routes in less than 5 minutes."
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