Instacart and Food Network join forces to launch meal-kit delivery service

Walmart expands curbside grocery pickup service across the US

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On-demand grocery delivery startup Instacart has partnered with the Food Network to deliver home meal kits, reports The Verge.

Instacart will be integrating with the Food Network's digital tools Recipe Box, which lets users plan meals, and Grocery List, which enables users to save shopping lists. Shoppers for Instacart will then pick up the required ingredients for saved recipes for home delivery.

This pits Instacart against competitors — like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh — in the quickly growing meal-kit space. However, whereas its competitors will measure out ingredients for the recipe, Instacart will simply be picking up the necessary ones. So shoppers will still need to be cognizant of how much they order.

The meal-kit delivery space is quickly gaining new entrants. Last month, Amazon announced the launch of its own meal-kit delivery service set to launch this fall in a partnership with Tyson Foods. Kits will include the recipes and ingredients needed to cook the meals at home. The service will be part of AmazonFresh and labeled Tyson Taste Makers.

Additionally, The New York Times is launching its own meal delivery service later this summer in a partnership with startup Chef'd. The partnership will involve sending out ingredients from Chef'd that correspond to recipes posted on the NYT Cooking website.

Grocery e-commerce is growing as consumers become more comfortable with ordering groceries online. Overall, 41% of US consumers have purchased groceries online at least once, according to a report from Brick Meets Click.

And the number of shoppers who say they've bought groceries online "in the past 30 days" has doubled in two years — 21% of US shoppers reported buying groceries online "in the past 30 days" in 2015, compared with 11% in 2013. As the market continues to grow, we expect to see many more partnerships and startups enter the space.