Companies delivering meal kits with fresh, healthy produce for easier and faster cooking are no longer a new phenomenon.

In fact, there are many of them out there, including Hello Fresh, Pepperleaf and, of course, Marley Spoon.

In March 2017, Phil Shelper gave Marley Spoon a thumbs up on both food quality and approach.

They’ve evolved since then and have not only introduced more recipes – now every customer can choose from 20 different ones – but have also launched a budget meal kit business called Dinnerly, positioned as the “Most affordable meal kit in Australia”. The key difference between the two is that, on average, Marley Spoon has 10 ingredients per recipe whereas Dinnerly has 5.

Interestingly, when comparing meal kit pricing vs supermarket pricing, Marley Spoon’s CEO Fabian Siegel recently said:

“The reason we can supply such an affordable price competitive product is because we have a very different supply chain without any of the terrible waste which allows us to save a lot of money and compete with supermarkets.”

“Given that we are so early on and have already relatively high margins, it tells me that there’s opportunity as we grow for prices to come down. I think in the midterm we could be even cheaper than supermarkets and then people would ask themselves why on earth would I still use the supermarket if I’m cooking anyway three to four times a week.”

The point is, supermarket shopping invariably begets wastage and their pricing structure is marked up significantly in order to cover that.

The meal kit approach has been so successful that Coles has signalled it may look to implement meal kits at the supermarket sometime in the future. However, Siegel believes that it’s not an approach that will work, because the whole reason meal kits resonate so well is so that the consumer gets to bypass the retail shelf. This certainly makes sense.

When asked about the company’s approach to personalisation in a recent article, Siegel said:

“We’ll try to understand more and more what it is you actually like. Our customers select 3 to 4 recipes every week out of a choice of 20, so over time we can start offering custom choices really geared towards your personal tastes. The move from 12 to 20 recipes was an important first step in that direction and you will see more of that in 2019.”

Regrettably, we live in an age where the term ‘personalisation’ can sometimes feel like an overused buzz word, mainly because all companies talk about it, but not too many actually get it right.

Using a machine-learning  approach which learns what each customer buys on a regular basis and puts forward recommendations based on their tastes would do wonders for continued engagement and customer lifetime value, and ensure Marley Spoon have a chance to make personalisation really work.

Max Savransky is Loyalty Director of Loyalty & Reward Co, a leading loyalty consulting firm based in Sydney. He has 10 years’ experience within the loyalty industry including roles at Mastercard Loyalty (Pinpoint), Silverneedle (Next & Sage Hotels) and Pureprofile. As Loyalty & CRM Manager at HOYTS, he launched the highly successful partnership with Qantas Frequent Flyer, including a world-first Qantas Points in-store redemption proposition. He is an active cryptocurrency trader.

Max regularly contributes to www.blockchainloyalty.io, a global resource centre for everything blockchain loyalty.

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