[LrnByTeach]

100 years ago, every family prepared their own Tomato Ketchup from scratch, 50 years ago every family prepared their own Cookie dough from Scratch. We are evolving to higher level abstraction in Food consumption, following is my view where we will be by 2025 .

Here is my Vision (Comprehensive thought process) on the UNIT Economics of Food delivery, how this will manifest by the year 2025 .

Pre-requisites:

a) Massively centralized, highly Automated Kitchens : can prepare 10,000 meals/hour

b) offer quality Meals at $4/meal with delivery ( with Self driving fleet starting year 2022 )

c) Monthly meals plan : a family will buy pre-paid 60 meals/month plan, USE it or LOSE it in a month.

Here are the Plan details.

1. If we take avg. family size as 3 people in US, a family consumes 2 meals/day X 30 days X 3 people = 180 meals/month for family of 3 people

2. for family of 3 grocery bill is say $540/month, that give s Raw material cost as $3 per meal

3. Meal preparation + Cleaning dishes etc.. takes about 1.5 hours/meal that is 3 hours/day for two meals a day for a family

4. If massive Centralized Kitchens ( like the Amazon Robot handling warehouses) can offer meals at $4 per meal ,people hook on to on REGULAR basis.

5. For this massive centralized Kitchens in order offer at at these low $4/meal, they need 'Commitment of minimum number of meals per month' from a family. I would say 60 meals/month

6. Basically this 60 meals/month minimum for $4/meal is like pre-paid PLAN, it is USE it or LOSE it in a month.

7. With the Mobile phone app, you set your Default Delivery place, if any thing change, you change Delivery location 2 hours in advance, your meal will be delivered to that place. ( with self driving fleet that should not be a problem)

8. These Centralized Kitchens Offer all Kinds of meals: Chinese, Japanese, Thai, American fastfood etc..

9. When you have these economy of scale where each family Order their food 1/3 of total meals in a Month, and it is offered almost same price as your Grocery Bill to prepare those meals ( with out 3 hours/day preparing meals /Cleaning dishes) , This MODEL will be successful

[sokoloff]

3 hours for the prep and cleanup for 2 meals is quite a bit longer than our experience as a family of 4. Breakfast and lunch prep/cleanup is closer to 15 minutes than 90 and dinner prep/cleanup might be 30-60 for most meals.

Breakfast and lunch also seem less amenable to delivery as they're often eaten "on a schedule" with little room for screwups or delays.

I agree that delivery has a place; I'm not so sure it's going to be from a centralized location/coordinated kitchens. That central location is unlikely to be experts at sushi, Vietnamese, pizza, subs, have the fries I love, Thai, etc.

[LrnByTeach]

People consume food predominately (70% of total meals in a month)based on ethnic lines and local customs why because that is how their Mom cooked first 15 years of their childhood and their taste buds were developed that way.

If you take a two month window,120 meals (2 meals X 60 days) , 90 meals that is 75% consists repeats from a group of 20 different food dishes .

Let us assume, you are living in typical US city where the population is 30,000 people. There may be 10 different categories of people BASED on their 'food preferences'.

When you combine this 10 different category groups with the above '20 different food dishes repeat' combine this with pre-paid Monthly plan and Centralized Kitchens, you have a quality food at close to GROCERY price bill .

Once the above AGGREGATION happens, It is not hard to have a sushi, Pizza, Thai, Chinese etc.. all under same roof Centralized Kitchen because the kitchen will be serving on a given day serving 1000 Pizza, 1000 Thai, 1000 Sushi, 1000 Subs etc.. for 30,000 population city .

[petra]

I think delivery could be solved today:

I assume we use chilled meals(which you reheat at home. can taste great), which last for 2-3 days - so let's say you need to delivery 2-3 times a week, and you delivery meals for the whole family. That's a lot of meals per delivery. Certainly helps the economics.

Now if as a requirement for delivery you would need to install a smart lock[1] on the trunk of your car(that the delivery guy can have the right access to), and a cooling box(maybe one that includes something like ice packets or similar passive temp. regulation tech), and the delivery guy will just drop the food there - this will be really helpful, because it shift delivery to the middle class from suburbs to somewhere near their work, which means much higher route density(deliveries per hour).

So i kind of think the technology part of cheap deliveries is solvable. But it all depends on the marketing part, and changing habits isn't that easy. And that previous plan requires a lot of interlocking parts together. hard.

So maybe a good way to do this is offering delivery for businesses(good delivery economics). Get people used to that. Get commercial kitchens offering great and cheap food based on that. That's what Amazon is doing.

And than, some commercial kitchen will start easy, with an offer of chilled meals for your home(for offices that already get deliveries). They will delivery to your office, you'll put in a cooling-box in office, and take it to your car at the end of the day.

And on top of that, you get a smart lock, or discounts for plans like you mention, or maybe discounts for group plans, etc.

[1]This of course would be a great help to e-commerce in general.

[emodendroket]

If you're just reheating a cold meal why am I going to pay you to do so and deliver it instead of buying one at the grocery store instead? I also own a microwave, a freezer, and an oven.

[petra]

There's a difference between chilled meals(which last 3 days), and frozen meals(which you find in the supermarket). Munchery sold chilled meals, and at least according to reviews/media, they we're quite good.

[emodendroket]

They sell chilled meals at the supermarket too.

[sudshekhar]

Biggest problem with food tech is (IMO) the low barrier to entry. You can offer food at 4$ rates but so will your competitors (eventually atleast).

> These Centralized Kitchens Offer all Kinds of meals: Chinese, Japanese, Thai, American fastfood etc..

Easy to say, much much harder to implement, specially accounting for personal preferences( extra tomatoes, less/more spicy etc.

That said, there is definitely a huge market opportunity here. A slightly easier approach, I've often thought about, is starting off with a single kitchen where the food is cooked, selling it in high density areas (subway/bus station) via kiosks and vendors. You can do quality control and build your brand. Eventually, you could go after this monthly meal option.

An even bigger opportunity could lie in the logistics space (Transporting the food from cooking location to destination).

This might also be interesting: 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala 2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxW9sUnodM8

[LrnByTeach]

>Easy to say, much much harder to implement, specially accounting for personal preferences( extra tomatoes, less/more spicy etc.

200 years ago, when every family is making their own tomato Ketchup, I am sure there must be 5000 very little variations of ketchup in USA. fast forward to today there are only 57 and all this is done by one company with couple of centralized locations and People who are used to those 5000 varieties confirmed to 57 varieties .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_57

When you consolidate and aggregate EACH of the food dish we eat will be consolidate into only 5 different variations. These centralized kitchens can handle 5 different variants ( Chinese Orange Chicken for example) and prepare 200 meals of each variety ( of total 1000 meals of Orange Chicken )

I have given an detailed answer on this issue in this thread, please search with following text.

Once the above AGGREGATION happens, It is not hard to have a sushi, Pizza, Thai, Chinese etc.. all under same roof Centralized Kitchen because the kitchen will be serving on a given day serving 1000 Pizza, 1000 Thai, 1000 Sushi, 1000 Subs etc.. for 30,000 population city

[barrkel]

I commute to work along an industrial road with a number of interesting warehouse buildings along it. There are catering suppliers you've never heard of for various different ethnic foods. Behind many cheap takeaway restaurants, there's an industrial supply chain for sauces and other basic ingredients; the centralised kitchens already exist.

Of course final prep happens on a more local site, but that makes sense - hot food doesn't travel well, which is the main limit on delivery, not time or cost - the buyer could always pay more, but they'll be getting an increasingly overcooked or tepid meal.

[walshemj]

not sure many people would be happy with eating 100% microwaved tv diners - not sure its particularly healthy either