Product Profile: Home Chef
INDUSTRY
food
Category
meal kit delivery services
products Profiled
Home Chef meal kit delivery service
Home Chef meal kit and prepared meals available through Kroger
H-Score
58
ranked 3rd of 25 within the food industry
ranked 23rd of 76 overall
product descriptions
Home Chef’s meal kit delivery service allows subscribers to choose from a variety of recipes and ingredients for weekly delivery. Subscription plans have base rates, dependent on the number of meals and servings per meal, that are then adjusted according to recipe selections. Home Chef’s “Fast & Fresh” line offers prepared meals that are microwaveable, oven-ready, or meal kits that involve no more than 15 minutes of prep/cooking time. Home Chef’’s Family Menu offers meals, designed for “picky eaters,” for larger households.(1) Additionally, their meals are available at select Kroger facilities for purchase on-site.
product use
Home Chef does not provide unique meal plans tailored to specific diets, but their plans come in a variety of options that allow subscribers to customize based on dietary preferences / restrictions and time constraints. The filters available include “calorie-conscious,” “carb-conscious,” “vegetarian,” “keto-friendly” and more. Subscribers can also specify certain types of food (e.g. beef, poultry, nuts, shellfish) to avoid. Subscribers are able to select from recipes created by their professional chefs. Subscribers have the option of adding extras (desserts, sides, extra meat, and other meal items) and upgrading and customizing meals. Subscribers can order up to six meals per week with two, four, or six servings.(2) Home Chef enables subscribers to select prepared meals as items to be picked up at nearby supermarkets that are part of the Kroger family of brands. Non-subscribers may also purchase prepared meals in these Kroger-affiliated stores.
who’s affected
The target market for meal kit delivery services in general values convenience and healthy eating. Meal kit subscriptions can often be more costly than food purchased at a grocery store or meals from chain restaurants due to the packaging of all ingredients in small servings and home delivery shipping costs. For this reason, subscribers tend to have above average income compared to the general population. In addition, meal kit delivery services may not be offered to customers in remote, rural locations due to delivery limitations. Home Chef delivers to 98% of the United States,(3) likely excluding customers in lesser populated areas.
influence on health-related behaviors
EATING
slight to moderate positive influence
Home Chef’s meal kit service enables people to cook meals with fresh ingredients two to six times per week.
In general, fresh, home-cooked meals have been shown to be healthier than meals eaten at or taken out from sit-down or fast food restaurants.(4-8) People who cook at home more frequently also tend to have diets that have higher compliance with dietary guidelines.(9)
In Building H’s consumer research, nearly 80% of meal kit users (not specific to Home Chef) said that meal kit meals were healthier than (34%) or as healthy as (46%) the meals they cooked for themselves. In addition, 69% of users said that their meal kit meals were healthier than meals that they got via delivery or takeout.(10)
In an analysis conducted by Building H, Home Chef had a modified Restaurant Nutrition Quality (RNQ) score,(11,12) of 1.15. Of the five meal kit services in the Index, the range of modified RNQ scores was 2.30 (best) to 1.15 (worst). Home Chef’s score placed it the lowest of the five meal kit services profiled. For context, the median RNQ score for 11 chain restaurants analyzed by Building H was 0.71.
In terms of calories, a three-week sample of Home Chef’s meal kits meals had a median of 635 calories per serving, representing 0.92 times the recommended calories for women and 0.71 times the recommended calories for men at dinner.(13) Note that these calorie counts do not include beverages consumed with dinner.
Home Chef’s Fast & Fresh line emphasizes prepared, ready-to-heat meals rather than meal kits that are assembled from fresh ingredients. Prepared meals are typically less healthy than meals cooked at home with fresh ingredients, but generally more healthy than restaurant food.(14) It is not clear what proportion of Home Chef’s sales come from the Fast & Fresh line of meals.
- Set default or most prominently featured meal selections to the healthiest options available.
PHYSICAL ACTVITY
neutral influence
Cooking a meal certainly involves more physical activity than preparing ready-to-eat or takeout/delivery meals.
While Home Chef promotes home cooking, it also potentially deters subscribers from the physical activity associated with grocery shopping (to the extent that the meal kits obviate some amount of grocery shopping). By making its prepared meals available in Kroger-affiliated stores, Home Chef might lead to less of a reduction of in-person grocery shopping than other meal kit delivery services.
Sleeping
slight positive influence
By offering a relatively healthy alternative to fast food and other food delivery services and by providing a way to prepare meals that is more efficient than cooking from scratch, Home Chef could potentially be saving people time for sleeping while allowing them to still eat healthy.
Home Chef’s Fast & Fresh line of prepared meals enable quicker prep and faster clean up as a way to save additional time. Their prepared meals require even less time to prepare.
Engaging Socially
slight to moderate positive influence
Home Chef offers subscription meal plans for a minimum of two and up to six people. Requiring this minimum and offering additional meals might help bring families and friends together for meals.
In Building H’s consumer research, 77% of respondents who use meal kits (not specific to Home Chef) indicated that they eat with others (23% eat them alone). This result compares with a finding, from a 2015 report from the Food Marketing Index,(15) that Americans eat approximately 46% of meals alone – suggesting that meal kits could contribute to increased social engagement.
To the degree that the service leads to less time in grocery stores, it likely reduces the casual social interactions associated with in-person shopping. In Building H’s consumer research, 54% of shoppers rated these interactions positively, as compared with 9% rating them negatively.(16)
- Offer the ability to order additional meals (beyond normal limits) to facilitate gatherings of friends, family.
- Promote party kits intended for large gatherings.
- Include hosting advice/suggestions in meal kits.
- Consider volume discounts for larger orders.
- Offer and occasionally promote the ability to gift meal kits.
Getting Outdoors
slight negative influence
As noted above, Home Chef’s services can substitute for grocery shopping – although it also makes its meal kits and prepared meals available in select grocery stores. To the degree that the service cuts down on trips to grocery stores, Home Chef could potentially reduce time spent outdoors.
- Offer outdoor/picnic meal kits that don’t require cooking in a kitchen.
Notes
Home Chef. Direct communication, December, 2023.
Home Chef website, accessed September 2023.
Home Chef Support, accessed December 2023.
Julia Wolfson and Sara Bleich. Is Cooking at Home Associated with Better Diet Quality or Weight-Loss Intention? Public Health Nutrition. Volume 18, Supplement 8 (June 2015), pp. 1397-1406.
Junxiu Liu et al. Quality of Meals Consumed by US Adults at Full-Service and Fast-Food Restaurants, 2003–2016: Persistent Low Quality and Widening Disparities. The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 150, Issue 4 (April 2020), pp. 873–883.
R. An. Fast-food and full-service restaurant consumption and daily energy and nutrient intakes in US adults. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Volume 70 (2016), pp. 97–103.
Sharon Kirkpatrick et al. Fast-food menu offerings vary in dietary quality, but are consistently poor. Public Health Nutrition. Volume 17, Issue 4 (2014), pp. 924–31.
Lisa Powell and Binh Nguyen. Fast-food and full-service restaurant consumption among children and adolescents: effect on energy, beverage, and nutrient intake. JAMA Pediatrics. Volume 167, Issue 1 (January 2013), pp. 14–20.
Arpita Tiwari et al. Cooking at Home: A Strategy to Comply With U.S. Dietary Guidelines at No Extra Cost. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Volume 52, Issue 5 (May 2017), pp.616–24.
Steve Downs. A Survey of Modern Life: Food; Delivery Apps, Meal Kits, Groceries and Cooking Dinner. Building H on Medium. January 20, 2022.
Iris Liu et al. A continuous indicator of food environment nutritional quality. MedRxiv. November 26, 2021.
The RNQ is based on the ratio of nutrients recommended by dietary guidelines, e.g. protein and fiber, to ingredients whose consumption should be restricted, such as sugars, sodium and saturated fats, for the median menu item. Building H modified the RNQ by selecting a sample of eight meals per week for a three-week period in September 2023.
Based on a Building H review of three weeks of listed menu items, as compared with federal data on how Americans distribute their calories across meals (see Eliana Zeballos et al. Frequency and Time of Day That AmericansEat: A Comparison of Data From the AmericanTime Use Survey and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. USDA Economic Research Service, Technical Bulletin Number 1954. July 2019) and federal dietary guidelines for moderately active adults (see U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025. December, 2020. P. 140).
Angela Fertig et al. Compared to Pre-prepared Meals, Fully and Partly Home-Cooked Meals in Diverse Families with Young Children Are More Likely to Include Nutritious Ingredients. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. February 11, 2019.
Alison Aubrey and Maria Godoy. Party Of 1: We Are Eating A Lot Of Meals Alone. National Public Radio: All Things Considered, August 13, 2015.
Downs (2022).