Product Profile: Sunbasket
INDUSTRY
food
Category
meal kit delivery services
products Profiled
Sunbasket meal kit delivery service
Sunbasket Fresh & Ready delivery service
Sunbasket market
H-Score
58
ranked 3rd of 25 within the food industry
ranked 23rd of 76 overall
product descriptions
Sunbasket’s meal kit service allows subscribers to choose from a variety of recipes and ingredients for weekly delivery. Sunbasket’s Fresh & Ready delivery service offers prepared microwaveable meals for weekly delivery. Subscription plans have flat rates, based on the number of meals and servings per meal. Subscribers can add snacks, prepared meals, and other items from Sunbasket’s market for an additional fee.
product use
Subscribers have the opportunity to customize their order every week online. With the meal kit delivery service, subscribers select a line of menus (Paleo, Gluten-Free, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Mediterranean, Diabetes Friendly, Carb-Conscious, Keto-Friendly, or none) and may apply dietary preferences including high protein, low calorie, avoid dairy, etc. Meal Kit delivery service subscribers can order three or four meals per week with either two or four servings per meal, while prepared meal subscribers can order six, eight, or ten single-serving meals per week.(1) One box containing all the prepared meals or recipes and ingredients for the week’s meals, along with any added one-off items, is shipped each week.
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. Sunbasket delivery is limited, shipping to most zip codes in the US, excluding customers in Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, and parts of New Mexico.(2)
influence on health-related behaviors
EATING
moderate positive influence
Sunbasket’s meal kit service enables people to cook meals with fresh ingredients two to five 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.(3-7) People who cook at home more frequently also tend to have diets that have higher compliance with dietary guidelines.(8)
In Building H’s consumer research, nearly 80% of meal kit users (not specific to Sunbasket) 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.(9)
In an analysis conducted by Building H, Sunbasket had a modified Restaurant Nutrition Quality (RNQ) score(10,11) of 1.77. Of the five meal kit services in the Index, the range of modified RNQ scores was 2.30 (best) to 1.15 (worst). Sunbasket’s score placed it 3rd highest 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 Sunbasket’s meals had a median of 555 calories per serving, representing 0.81 times the recommended calories for women and 0.62 times the recommended calories for men at dinner.(12) Note that these calorie counts do not include beverages consumed with dinner.
Sunbasket facilitates healthier food decisions by offering a designated line of meals for a variety of healthy diets including carb-conscious and diabetes-friendly. By selecting a diet meal plan, subscribers are never assigned meals that do not fit the diet criteria.
Sunbasket’s Fresh & Ready 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.(13) It is not clear what proportion of Sunbasket’s sales come from the Fresh & Ready 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 Sunbasket 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).
Sleeping
neutral to 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, Sunbasket could potentially be saving people time for sleeping while allowing them to still eat healthy.
Sunbasket’s Fresh & Ready line of prepared meals enable quicker prep and faster clean up as a way to save additional time.
Engaging Socially
slight positive influence
Sunbasket offers subscription meal plans for a minimum of two and up to four 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 Sunbasket) 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,(14) 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.(15)
- 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
While Sunbasket’s service can substitute for grocery shopping, the weekly limit of five meal kits or 10 prepared meals per person likely forces subscribers to continue to shop at grocery stores. To the degree that the service cuts down on trips to grocery stores, Sunbasket could potentially reduce time spent outdoors.
- Offer outdoor/picnic meal kits that don’t require cooking in a kitchen.
Notes
Sunbasket website, accessed September 2023.
Frequently Asked Questions, Sunbasket website, 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).