Walmart has officially jumped on the meal kit bandwagon

By Eric Brackett — Posted on December 9, 2017 12:30 pm

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Meal kits have become increasingly popular over the past year, with numerous companies getting in on the action. There are meal kits for babies, kits that can help you with the holidays, and many more. Retail giants like Amazon are even starting to get involved. Now, a new retailer has entered the meal kit fray and it’s one of the biggest in the world. Walmart has started offering meal kits on its website.

The retailer isn’t selling Walmart-branded meal kits, which is probably for the best, as Walmart isn’t known for its fine cuisine. Instead, it is partnering with brands such as TakeOut Kit and Home Chef to provide customers with a wide array of options that change on a regular basis. The pricing structure also varies, but appears to be about $30 for most of the kits. Several of them are proportioned for four people, but that also varies depending on which one you order.

The Street reports that the various meal kit companies such as Home Chef or TakeOut Kit are responsible for fulfilling the orders made from Walmart’s website. In exchange for the use of its website, Walmart gets a referral fee and commission.

TakeOut Kit was the first meal kit to be featured on Walmart’s website. It arrived on December 3, and others followed soon after. There are currently about 30 meal kits available for sale on Walmart’s site. This should give consumers plenty of options — TakeOut Kit, for example, is known for showcasing cuisine from different countries around the world, whereas Home Chef focuses more heavily on American-style food.

“This is a low-risk model for Walmart to see if their e-commerce shoppers will have an interest in meal kits, and if so, which ones are the most interesting to them,” Terra’s Kitchen CEO Michael McDevitt said earlier this year. “There’s no infrastructure risk, no marketing risk.”

There is plenty of interest from among Walmart shoppers, as several of the meal kits are already sold out. It remains to be seen how successful this venture will be for Walmart in the long term, however. For now, the company has a winning recipe on its hands.