Meal Kits Post Biggest Sourcing Gain

Pickup of ready-to-cook meal kits from supermarkets posted the largest gain of any weekly meal source tracked since 2023, according to Datassential’s Supermarket Prepared report.

Thirty-four percent of consumers now pick up a ready-to-cook meal kit from a supermarket or c-store weekly, up 11% from three years ago — outpacing every other behavior in the report’s weekly meal-sourcing table. Pre-made meal pickup gained 7 points, third-party delivery apps orders gained 7 points, and takeout pickup gained 5 points over the same period.

The only behavior to negligibly decline was cooking from scratch. The share of consumers who say they go to a supermarket to make dinner at home slipped three percentage points to 86%, while eating out at a restaurant held flat at 50%. Having groceries delivered to cook at home rose 10 percentage points to 28%.

The underlying pressures help explain the shift. Sixty-nine percent of at-home dinner makers say the ease of takeout or delivery sometimes derails their cooking plans, and 63% cite fatigue after a long day, according to Datassential’s Pantry Priorities & Plate Disruptors report. Meal kits split the difference between those two pressures, offering something easier than cooking from scratch without giving up the at-home occasion entirely.

Consumer uptake, however, is uneven. The Supermarket Prepared report found that more than 4-in-10 consumers have purchased a meal kit from a grocery store at some point, but Gen Z is about twice as likely as the total population to have tried and stepped away from the format. Millennials, by contrast, are the most consistent current users. 

Operators are responding to the demand. Every kit type is offered by at least a quarter of supermarket operators, with fully prepared kits and store-branded kits the most widely available. More than three times as many meal-kit-selling operators saw sales increase rather than decrease over the past year, and roughly 9-in-10 saw sales either grow or hold steady.