Best Meal Kit Companies of 2024
It’s that time of the year again! The leaves are turning from green to everything between that and black, the air gets lighter while the light gets dimmer. We hoard and pack it on until the end of the year, and then we resolve to unload and declutter by the time next spring swoops in and the first budding crocusus and daffodils remind us of our relationship to change and regrowth.
But until the season for aspiration takes ahold of our psyches, we hunker down and enter a period of technically clinical depression dominated by acts of convenience- and comfort-seeking and compromise.
To help you better manage this year, I’ve compiled a list of the best meal kit companies that serve as a healthy compromise between the irresponsible part of you that wants to order delivery and the responsible part of you that needs to prepare every meal yourself. The list is in no particular order, but there’s something here for everybody.
Farm-to-Flat
Maybe the “farm-to” moniker has gotten too hackneyed for some of you, and might have similarly dubious connotations to the “organic” label but I don’t like to judge a company by its name! A more judgmental person might look at a name like “Farm-to-Flat” and think “what were they thinking? It literally “falls flat”,” or they’d say “It sounds like the name of a company that contracts with land developers who buy up and demolish farm land and replace it with luxury condos” But that’s not me. I hear the name “Farm-to-Flat” and think “this is the kind of company that understands marketing, and that there is definitely a subsection of people - even outside of London where they call apartments “flats” more than in the US - who will understand what they’re getting with this one. So that’s the target demographic - people living in cities who understand what the company could possibly mean with “farm-to-flat”.
How does it work?
Farm-to-Flat does not use a subscription-based model, which is why they’re in the special number 1 slot despite their awful name (according to some critics, that is). Instead of a subscription model, which market research indicates is falling out of favor with consumers, Farm-to-Flat offers an experimental “pay whatever you want” model. Seems crazy, but I’ll tell you how they plan on pulling it off: in their app, every time you select an item to place in your shopping cart, you are charged for it (a carting fee). Yes, it seems insane, but they’ve tested it out in certain markets and people are actually willing to pay the carting fees. So let’s say you add 6 bananas to your cart - that’s 10cents a pop, per click. So 60 cents total to cart 6 bananas. If you want to remove the banana from your cart, you’re given a refund (they call it a “re-stocking” fee) based on how long the item has been in your cart. If the item sits in your cart for an hour, you can claim a maximum of 10% of the original price, or 1 cent per banana, or 6 cents for all 6 bananas. If you keep the item in your cart throughout the length of the order and you finalize with that item still in your cart, however, you gain a discount on the item.
It seems like a totally inane idea that’s anti-consumer and vulnerable to exploitation but the company and its investors are so confident that it’s a winning model that they’ve filed 18 patents on the technology and secured 900 million of start-up capital that I’m sure they’ll be using to market this bizarre carting fee model to other companies. I can envision them make a ton of money for about 18 months and then being sanctioned by the FCC for inserting gambling into online shopping. Maybe an opt-in clause would fix the ethical dilemma?
I’ve hardly discussed the actual meal kit that Farm-to-Flat offers because their financial model is so strange it’s worth talking about more than the actual product. Which may or may not be their undoing but I can tell you, firsthand, that Farm-to-Flat has some tasty offerings and very easy-to-follow recipes. Here are the pros and cons, to keep it brief:
Pros:
Ample choices of proteins, veggies, and fruits, grains, legumes
Only local farmers based on where you live, so you’re helping save on transportation costs
Great User Interface on the app
AI assistant accompanies you while you prepare the meals
Cons
AI assistant is VERY raw and needs a lot of work
AI assistant occasionally is actively hostile in a Hell’s Kitchen kind of manner; frequently yells and curses at you if you aren’t going quickly enough
Needs to be an easier way to permanently turn the Gordon Ramsay AI voice off and switch to someone more friendly-sounding like Ina Garten
AI seems to “remember” things you say and use your statements against you, even while not preparing meal and not activating the app
App does not work at all unless you Share Location “Always” and turn App is Listening and Recording to “Always On”
Final thoughts: Farm-to-Flat is a fantastic option for someone who enjoys taking huge privacy-based and financial risks, and who enjoys the accompaniment of an AI that simulates the experience of working at a Michelin start restaurant.
2. At-Home Buffet
So this is a new model that I have not seen yet in the meal-kit sphere: buffets. Typically a meal-kit is addressing the problem: I don’t have enough time/willingness/ability to go out an do weekly grocery shops and prepare my own meals, and also don’t have the funds to overspend on takeout/delivery throughout my life. Seems like a pretty large and probably growing market, right? At-Home Buffet is placing a bet that there’s an equally big market of people who have the same though process, but prefer the buffet experience to the restaurant or home-cooked meal experience. After watching a documentary about buffets during the pandemic, I might actually agree (disclosure: I have invested $14 in At-Home Buffet).
Unlike Farm-to-Flat which doesn’t really have a unique offering and so is hoping they’ll make their 900 million back via a Vegas-style shopping cart scheme, At-Home Buffet is confidently opting for the standard subscription model, charging their users $200 a week for their Day-2-Day Buffet option (a buffet every single day) $100 for their Leftover Lovers option (3 days of buffet, with reheatable and edible bowls), and their Weekly Buffet option (1 per week) at $40. I know what you’re thinking - they’re probably losing money on the Day-2-Day and the Leftover Lovers options, but they’ll make it all back on their Weekly Buffet option. And you’d be correct. The $40 weekly buffet option is actually still a steal - you get three 2 gallon tubs of whatever you’d like plus two pints of sides - probably enough to feed a couple for several days.
The Day-2-Day Buffet option, which you have to sign a waiver to order may be more geared to larger families, (and had to be approved by the FDA and but Nestle - the company sponsoring At-Home Buffet) performed a study and discovered that 81% of their users were single adults living alone. Because of the results of the study, a joint investigation by the FDA, ATF, and DEA was conducted and a new law was written to address the very real (according to their findings) possibility of using a service like At-Home Buffet’s to smuggle drugs and/or firearms and explosives. The law nearly died in Congress due to a restaurant industry lobby who contested that the inspections process would levy a burdensome expense on their shipping and distribution networks that would make operating restaurants financially non-viable. An earmark provision was written in to address their concerns and they were able to pass the law without any further friction.
As to the food - it’s difficult to describe, but I’ll do my best. After a full week had past and a few days of reflection, it occurred to me that I had managed to eat a whole day of buffet by myself without taking breaks or leaving the food to attend to other activities, for seven days straight. For my first day (AHB has allowed me to disclose one day of buffet, but not the subsequent 6), I ordered a tub of hot chicken wings, with six dipping sauces, a tub of mashed potatoes with 3 different gravies, and a tub of broccoli rabe, prepared Sizchuan style. My sides were cole slaw, mixed beans, and truffle fries, and I finished every single morsel of every single tub and container. It was a breathtaking experience that began with scents that I think must have been artificial - it smelled like a heavenly mix between a Boston Market and a McDonald’s but with undertones of Ferrero Rocher… It’s hard to describe exactly what was going on in my body while I was eating without using words like “dissociation” or “out of body experience”, or even “psychedelic” but I can tell you that I did not once feel the feeling of satiety, even at the end.
A week after the buffet binge I went to see my doctor, because I was concerned that eating 28,000 calories a day seven days in a row may have affected my physical or mental health in some way. Doc said that my weight had gone down, my blood pressure was normal, my heartrate had decreased, my muscle mass had gone up, and after some scans and MRIs the doctor concluded that everything was normal or improved since my last exam, except for one thing that he said needs more advanced testing: it appears that my stomach had doubled in size, and has split into four distinct compartments. Now, I’m not a veterinarian but the last time I checked, cows have four compartments in their stomachs, not humans. It was an alarming discovery, and I’ve been bombarded with research proposals from scientists everyone from Cornell University’s School of Animal Science to the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences (Norges Idrettshøgskole) to study my body. I had to ask my doctor to stop selling my medical records but he said he would take me to court to protect that right, so I let it go.
3. Cleanse Kit
The third and final spot for my Best Meal Kit Companies of 2024 list goes to this relative newcomer to the meal kit field, Cleanse Kit. Cleanse Kit, Inc began as a highly successful niche delivery service for people who needed on-demand cleaning products delivered to their door within a 1 hour window. They were for a significant stretch in 2022 and 2023 the most profitable specialty delivery service in Southeast Asia, until it was discovered that there was a very strong correlation between being a Cleanse Kit user, and being convicted of murder. The data leak proved to be a nightmare for the company, who decided not to rebrand and opted to pivot into the meal kit market, where - according to their press release in May of this year, “intend to make a killing”. You would think that trading off of an association with murder would be bad for business, but you would be wrong. Following their IPO in July they received a fine of $200,000 from the FTC, who cited the Son of Sam Law in their argument that also called for Cleanse Kit to be removed from the stock exchange (the SEC did not sign off on this provision). Cleanse Kit’ share price skyrocketed after the slap on the wrist was announced, and they now sit at $5.80 a share with a market cap of $980 million.
But what’s inside?
Inside a Cleanse Kit you’ll find three categories of items: produce (fruits and veggies), supplements (niacin, B12, etc), and cleaning supplies for your body, including but not exclusive to: a one-time-use at-home enema kit, wet wipes, and lubricant. Unlike Farm-to-Flat, which offers instructions on how to assemble the ingredients as well as an app with an AI bot to assist you, Cleanse Kit comes with no written instructions or in-app items. What comes included in every kit is, instead, a stamped envelope with an address in San Francisco, and what looks like a small DNA collection kit. There are, again, no notes or instructions included. I emailed the CMO of Cleanse Kit, mark.heiffer@cleansekit.biz to ask what the purpose of the DNA collection kit was, and he quickly replied:
“Dear Consumer,Thank for your interested in our product. We respond each email individually and with total human care.You’ve asked about our “DNA collection kit”, and we are please to reply to you with the appropiate answer, as you seeing below:“hey jakob, th dna collection kit is from a different company, not cleanse kit. they asked to keep their information private and anonymous from users and we have to follow the contract. i can't legally tell you where the dna goes or why they ask for it -mark”Warm Regards,Cleanse Kit Customer Service Team”I then got a second email about 5 minutes later:
“Dear Consumer,Please disregarde the former communication. Its sent in error. Failure to delete former email or forward its contents or repeat to anyone will result in Clease Kit take immediate legal action against you person. Please understand yoou will in breach of contract will you disregard this message”Best Regard,CleanKit Customer Servce Team”That wraps up my “Best Meal Kit Companies of 2024” list. Until next time!