Publix is expanding its meal kit pilot program

VIEW SLIDESHOW
3 photos

Publix employees dish up samples of the chicken bruschetta tortellini meal kit at the… more

By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer  –  Senior Reporter, Tampa Bay Business Journal

less than a day ago Updated less than a day ago

Publix Super Markets Inc. is expanding its meal kit pilot, offering the kits at another store in the Tampa Bay region.

Publix rolled out the meal kits at its store in the Southgate Shopping Center in Lakeland on Friday, about five miles from its corporate headquarters.

It is only the third Publix store to sell the kits; the other stores are in Tampa and Orlando, which debuted the kits earlier this year. The kits are offered in three levels of complexity: simplest, which requires heating the food; simpler, which could mean up to four steps; and simple, a meal that takes up to six steps.

Initial sales are promising, Publix spokesman Brian West said, but the program is still very much in a test phase. He declined to say how much the grocer has invested in the pilot program.

Meal kits are a hot category for grocers. A Barclays analyst wrote recently that Kroger Co., one of Publix’s biggest competitors, should consider buying a third-party meal kit. In the Amazon.com era, meal kits are a way for grocers to offer the convenience of click-and-deliver shopping in a brick-and-mortar format.

On the surface, Publix’s kits are a simple undertaking: pre-cut, measured ingredients packaged in kraft paper shopping bags that are assembled in-store. But the logistics behind the kits — recipe development, nutritional informational and store placement — make them more complex than meets the eye.

“This is a ton of work,” Tracy Horton, the meals technical manager at Publix, said. “The nutritional panel, the ingredient statement — all that has to come together before you can get it in the store.”

Finding a space for the kits’ kiosk is among the most challenging parts of the project, West said. Grocers squeeze profits out of every available square foot, so bringing in a new case means something else has to be removed. With stores that range from 25,000 to 60,000 square feet, in urban centers and suburban subdivisions, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, either.

Horton and several other corporate employees were at the Southgate store Friday to oversee the kits’ debut in Lakeland. Store employees were sampling the chicken bruschetta tortellini kit for customers, with plans to offer samples from the pancetta orange shrimp kit later in the afternoon.

The selection of the most-complicated kits changes weekly; the simplest and simpler selection changes every two weeks. Asiago chicken pasta is the best-selling meal kit so far, Horton said.

“This [the kits] came from customer feedback, which was ‘I don’t want to buy a big jar of spice if I just need a teaspoon,’” Horton said. “So that was part of it, as was the whole competitive nature of the meal kits.”

Wendy Harrison, who owns Strand Salon in Lakeland, said she was excited to try the meal kits on Friday. She’s tried a kit from Blue Apron, but said she didn’t care for the delivery format.

She placed a kit for caramelized meatballs in her cart.

“It’s nice to see it and pick it up right away,” she said, “rather than plan ahead.”