In its quest for world domination, Amazon has entered another industry and appears ready to dominate. Amazon has begun selling meal kits on their popular site and they are already selling out. Amazon getting into the meal kit business does not bode well for some of the innovators of the industry such as Blue Apron or Plated, which their stocks have already seen a dip.
The retail giant began selling their new meal kits to select Amazon Fresh customers. The motto for Amazon’s meal kit is “We do the prep. You be the chef.” Amazon, which recently acquired Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, already sells meal kits prepared by Tyson Foods Inc.’s Tyson Tastemakers and Martha Stewart’s company.
The kits have a meal for two or two portions and range from $16 to $20 per kit. Already, Amazon has challenged Blue Apron where their meals cost about $9.99 per serving. Amazon currently has 19 meals available, including “Steak Au Poivre,” “Tacos al Pastor with Pork,” and “Roasted Cod with Cannellini Bean Ragout & Pesto.” Each box contains all of the ingredients as well as “easy-to-follow, chef-designed” recipes.
Amazon Fresh customer Josh Chadd told GeekWire that he started Amazon’s meal kits a week or two ago. On Sunday night he prepared the Steak Au Poivre, which has a price of $18.99 on the Amazon site.
“The steak was an 8-oz. serving packaged by Corfini and was at least of USDA choice quality,” Chadd told GeekWire. “It was not an odd or awkward cut which is often the case with other services. The peas were very fresh with no blotches and tasted very sweet. The onion came pre-diced. It also came with fresh green peppercorns which I’ve never seen in another service even with a similarly named recipe. Overall the finished meal was a 9 out of 10 for any meal I’ve made at home even with my own ingredients.”
The 34-year-old systems engineer in Seattle, who has used other services such as HelloFresh, Sun Basket, Blue Apron, and Home Chef, said Amazon’s box was smaller and everything was pretty easily recyclable except for a couple plastic bags.
By Tuesday morning, five of the 19 single-meal “Amazon Fresh” options had sold out.
This is great news for Amazon, not so great news for ingredient-and-recipe meal kit service competitors. Based solely on the news of Amazon selling meal kits, shares of Blue Apron crashed as much as 7 percent and hit an all-time low. All bow to our new food overlords.