What’s the meal delivery scene like in Colorado?
DENVER — Large cardboard meal kits outside of people’s homes have become a common sight in the last 15 years. The green HelloFresh box that sits down the hall in your apartment complex, the unopened Blue Apron box on the porch across the street that appeared a week ago — all are signs pointing to a shift in the way Americans consume food at home.
Popularized by giants like HelloFresh and Home Chef, the multi-billion-dollar meal kit industry saw exponential growth during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. With stay-at-home orders in effect, people shifted from eating out to ordering in, leading to a 43% increase in industry revenue during the pandemic.
Colorado-based meal delivery companies went through a similar change. Many local companies witnessed a drastic increase in customers, seemingly overnight.
“The pandemic, while causing a lot of uncertainty and impacting many lives, absolutely helped our business to the point where we were able to be recognized. It allowed us to realize the full potential of what we could do,” said Katie Kannen, co-owner of the Spicy Radish, a meal kit company based in Denver.
Six years removed from the beginning of the pandemic, industry growth is slowing. Local meal delivery services in the state are now focused on strengthening customer loyalty, filling culinary niches and providing sustainable alternatives to corporate competition.
Jennifer Redies started the Denver-based meal kit company Little Pink Kitchen before Blue Apron, a national meal kit giant, came to Colorado. She had just quit her job in 2013 to pursue meal delivery full-time when Blue Apron’s signature boxes showed up everywhere.
Redies — like other local food delivery services — works out of a commissary kitchen now, but originally started her business in her home kitchen, fitted with a retro 1940s oven.
“It was a shoestring endeavor, you know?” Redies said of her at-home operation. “I totally thought they [Blue Apron] were going to put me out of business.”
But going up against big-name competition had its perks. Redies said customers approached her in search of a more sustainable option.
“With Blue Apron, if you needed scallions for different dishes in your box, they would literally package the exact amount of scallions you need in different plastic bags, creating all this waste,” Redies said.
In 2021, Blue Apron announced plans to make packaging fully sustainable by 2025, using only 100% recyclable, reusable or compostable material for its meal kit boxes. In a recent blog post on Blue Apron’s website, the company acknowledges that it’s still working on making everything recyclable or compostable in its packaging, but that “there is still some packaging that can’t be easily recycled and should be put in the garbage.”
Redies uses glass Pyrex containers instead of plastic. Customers can return the containers to Redies for future deliveries.
However, whenever she sees her tower of glass before every delivery, she contemplates her decision.
“The idea of food coming to someone fresh in a nice container that they can put in the oven was a very creative enterprise in the beginning, but maybe not very practical,” Redies said, chuckling in her pink kitchen.
Sustainability is a common theme among Colorado meal delivery businesses.
Five Eggs, another Denver-based company, uses compostable boxes and reusable icebags, stemming from owner Sarah Lair’s own dislike of national companies’ use of plastic.
Lair founded the health-conscious meal delivery service Five Eggs in 2015. As a busy mom to a then-nine-year-old son, Lair saw a need in her community for meal delivery that minimized waste and saved time.
Five Eggs operates out of a commissary kitchen and delivers to around 180 customers weekly. In Lair’s mind, Five Eggs is not competing with national chains.
“I don’t really even consider them a competitor. Even other local chains … in fact, we work with several here in the kitchen. We know we’re not for everybody,” Lair said.
Redies knows her business model isn’t for everyone either, and often will point customers to other local meal delivery services if they’re looking for other options.
“I think the local industry here wants people to eat good food and wants people to be happy,” Redies said.
“It’s us and then the national guys, so hopefully people want to stay with us.”
Culinary industry professionals, from restaurant workers to private chefs, know that opening a business requires owners to wear many hats — the meal delivery scene isn’t much different.
Menu ideation, sourcing ingredients, customer service, cooking and delivering were once all part of Katie Kannen’s day-to-day.
In the 13 years that Kannen spent building up the Spicy Radish, she’s finally at a place where she can step away from the kitchen for a bit and be in a managerial position.
“It’s such an interesting transition, but it’s been nice to take a step back and look at other things I can potentially do with the business,” Kannen said.
The Spicy Radish now owns and operates a commercial kitchen in Denver’s Athmar Park neighborhood and employs eight kitchen employees, an operations manager and 15 contract drivers throughout the metro.
Kannen said the Spicy Radish’s growth is mainly from word of mouth and repeat customers, rather than social media marketing.
“We’ve always been a little concerned about trying to build our business on the back of social media, where we have no control over what the algorithm does and how people view things,” she said.
Dishes like The Spicy Radish’s Chicken Pot Pie continually sell out whenever it's on the menu, thanks to the popularity of the dish with repeat customers.
Five Eggs also caters to different types of customers with their “Mindful Meals.” These are alternatives to the traditional items on the menu that are gluten-free and dairy-free.
“I think it’s a nice way for our customers to be able to try a wide variety of cuisines and still have the time to go about their days,” Lair said.
The average adult in the United States spends one hour a day on home cooking.
“I really don’t like to answer the question ‘What’s for dinner?’” said Jillian Rowe, a Five Eggs customer and local business owner.
“I like that [Five Eggs] is local. Sarah and her team are coming up with the meals, prepping the food here so it spends less time sitting on a truck.”
These local companies either work with contract drivers or have company drivers to deliver food in the metro area every week.
Rowe orders from Five Eggs to have dinner Monday through Thursday, freeing up what she estimates is around an hour and a half each day to spend time on her business and active lifestyle.
A typical week at Five Eggs could feature a variety of a-la-carte items like chicken and rice with scallion-ginger sauce or creamy pesto chicken with three cheese tortellini, with “Mindful Meals” options for both dishes.
Both Five Eggs and The Spicy Radish operate with a menu-focused approach. Each week, the businesses craft fully made-from-scratch menus for customers to choose from.
The Little Pink Kitchen uses a slightly different business model. Rather than operating on a “per-meal” basis, Redies implements a package model where customers receive entrees and sides for the week. Meals are varied because Redies builds a mix-and-match menu.
For an Indian-inspired menu, Redies uses pork vindaloo, Indian butter shrimp and vegetable korma as entrees while supplementing her mains with sides like vegetable biryani and coconut saag.
Success in the industry looks different for every business, but curating towards their customer base is at the forefront of their minds.
“People get busier and busier and will continue to be looking for ways to streamline and make things more convenient in their lives,” Kannen said. “We kind of fit right into that need.”
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