This week’s blog series tackles the meal kit industry through the lens of Sun Basket. Sun Basket is the fifth largest meal kit company in the United States (Statista, 2019a), which may not sound very impressive. However, in a field of over 100 meal kit companies generating over $1 billion in sales as of 2015 (Scalco, 2018) with the largest brands being bought out by grocery store chains and a high level of churn as online-only companies compete for customers who don’t stay with one company very long, holding the number 5 position is actually quite impressive.
Sun Basket has managed to maintain a strong position in this niche food market by focusing its offerings in specialty diet categories, like paleo and the Mediterranean diets. The latter category is a particularly profitable category since the Mediterranean diet is the most competitive diet in the United States among high-income women willing to try a new diet (Statista, 2018b). Therefore, Sun Basket is well-positioned to enhance its market share in the online-only space since so many of its more profitable competitors are shifting focus to the brick and mortar grocery store market.
The best way for Sun Basket to leverage its strong position in the industry is to embark on a promotional campaign that highlights its Mediterranean offerings. This series of posts will provide evidence that Sun Basket should partner with a celebrity chef who already likes the Mediterranean diet and a YouTube chef with a dedicated audience who is already excited about Mediterranean food. And through their individual promotional outlets and food events, these personalities can promote a social media contest to their respective audiences that provide winners with anywhere from 3 months to 1 year of Sun Basket free meals.
Post #2 in this series explores the target audience for this promotion more.
References
Statista. (2018a). Market share of the leading meal kit companies in the United States as of February 2018. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/654783/market-share-meal-kit-start-ups-united-states-based-on-dollar-spend/
Statista. (2018b). Willingness to try selected diets in the United States as of March 2017, by income. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/716049/try-diet-trends-by-income/
Scalco, D. (2018). The History & Future of Meal Kits [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://foodboxhq.com/blog/history-future-of-meal-kits/
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