Martha joins meal-kit game
NEW YORK — Cooking like Martha Stewart is about to get easier.
The home goods mogul and cookbook author is getting into the fast-growing meal kit business. Subscribers will get a box shipped to their door with Stewart’s recipes and all the ingredients needed to cook up the dishes at home, including pre-measured raw meat, fish, vegetables and spices.
“It is, I think, the way to cook for the future,” Stewart said.
The new venture is a licensing deal with existing meal kit company Marley Spoon and brand management company Sequential Brands Group Inc., which bought Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia last year. Financial details of the new partnership were not disclosed.
Marley Spoon will be renamed Martha & Marley Spoon in the U.S. and will tap Stewart’s library of thousands of recipes.
Meal kits have exploded in recent years and have been popular with city folk who want to skip the supermarket and still whip up a meal at home. People around the world spent about $1.5 billion on meal kits last year, with less than half of that coming from the U.S., according to research group Technomic. The U.S. market is expected to grow to as much as $6 billion in the next four years, Technomic said.
Stewart joins other famous names in the space. TV chef Jamie Oliver appears in commercials for rival HelloFresh and cookbook author Mark Bittman joined vegan meal kit company Purple Carrot last year.
Competition has been heating up and Marley Spoon hopes adding Stewart’s name will set it apart from Blue Apron, HelloFresh, Plated and the many other companies that ship boxes of raw food.
Stewart said she tried all the rivals but was “hooked” on Marley Spoon. She began talks with Marley Spoon about a deal eight months ago.
Marley Spoon has been operating in the U.S. for a year and has been shipping meal kits in Europe and Australia for about 18 months. Marley Spoon won’t be adding Stewart’s name to its international business for now, but it may in the future.
“We’re starting now here in the U.S. because everybody knows Martha,” said Marley Spoon CEO Fabian Siegel. “But why not, in the future, try it out somewhere else? I think that’s something we’ll look at.”