Impact Group

First off, what are meal kits? As the name promises, meal kits are a collection of all of the ingredients you’ll need to create a specific meal—proportioned ingredients, spices and sauces, and step-by-step instructions—combined in a single kit. Meal kits are usually ordered online from companies such as HelloFresh and Blue Apron. They typically arrive once a week as a subscription service, have two or more servings per meal, and usually are designed to be completed within an hour or less. Who is Buying Meal Kits? Although the age, income level, and general situation of consumers buying meal kits vary considerably, they tend to be more popular with a younger demographic. Perhaps predictably, the specific younger demographic most likely to order and eat meal kits are urban, middle- to upper-middle-class millennials, with men being slightly more likely to use a meal kit service than women, according to a survey conducted for MONEY. Why Are They Buying Meal Kit...

According to George Ritzer, in his book Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption , “retailtainment” is defined as: “the use of sound, ambiance, emotion and activity to get customers interested in the merchandise and in the mood to buy.” Less clinically, it’s making the act of shopping an experience-driven undertaking, rather than a necessary chore. So far, retailtainment has largely been deployed in retail outfits such as Target, Barnes & Noble, Armani, Lululemon, and mega-malls like the Mall of America in Minnesota and the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai, to name a few. While some of these stores may sell grocery items, they don’t exclusively. It’s no surprise that retailtainment has become so popular that more than 75% of millennials report that they’d prefer to spend their money on a memorable experience or event than on a desirable item. Needless to say, the retailer who can leverage retailtainment to capture the attention ...

A new industry trade association recently formed this September after the Good Food Institute’s Good Food Conference on UC Berkeley’s campus. The members of this fledgling organization were all representatives of the “cultured meat” industry—meat that is grown from animal cells in a lab (and therefore doesn’t require an animal from which to harvest said meat). Their first order of business was to replace the term “clean meat”—which, it was argued, might imply that traditional, live animal-based meat was less clean by comparison. The association settled on the phrase “cell-based meat” to resolve the issue, though it’s certain there will be more hurdles on the road ahead for this association and eventual product. Despite science fiction authors, futurists, scientists, and even world leaders having predicted the arrival and even takeover of cultured meat for years (Winston Churchill declared that it would make the current practice of animal-based meat production a...