Kroger, Walmart Offer New Meal Planning Service for Curbside Pickup

Walmart and Kroger are taking advantage of a new mobile meal planning service by offering it to their customers through curbside pickup courtesy of Instacart. 

eMeals has introduced a choose-your-food-style meal kit solution that works with local grocery pickup and delivery partners. Subscribers can select from 15 different eating styles ranging from Quick & Healthy to Paleo, Clean Eating, Low Calorie, Classic Meals and even Diabetic, Gluten Free and Vegetarian. Subscribers can personalize each week's menus by selecting meals from any of the food styles or substituting favorites from previous weeks. 

At an average per-serving food cost of $5 for families and $7 for couples, dinners through eMeals cost up to 50 percent less than other meal kit services by using local grocery providers and eliminating the expense of measuring and packaging ingredients for each recipe. Consumers buy only the groceries they need along with the eMeals subscription, which costs just $5 per month for seven curated dinner menus every week.

Once a week, eMeals automatically populates the weekly shopping list with the necessary ingredients. Subscribers can also delete unneeded ingredients or add items such as cereal and toilet paper to the grocery list, a feature that eliminates extra shopping trips and is unavailable with traditional meal kits.

A survey of early eMeals meal kit customers using Walmart Grocery indicates that over 90 percent plan to continue the service with more than half stating that they "can't imagine life without it." The service is also driving online grocery adoption, with 55 percent of those surveyed saying they used Walmart Grocery for the first time by sending their shopping list from eMeals with a click and then driving up to a special kiosk at Walmart to have their pre-picked groceries loaded directly into their vehicles.

"Over the past decade, we've provided millions of weekly meal plans to consumers across the country, which naturally led to our expansion into the meal kit space," says eMeals CEO Forrest Collier. "Because of our experience and our use of grocery delivery and pickup partners, no other meal kit provider has the same food style variety, depth of recipes and shopping affordability. We are the perfect solution for people who want the convenience of meal kits but with lower cost and more personalized choices."