Covid-19 brought great disruption to the food industry and changed the landscape of how people get their meals. There has been a large consumer transition to online ordering and meal delivery. This transition has created new opportunities for meal prep delivery businesses.
Consumers have been forced to change from going out to eat at restaurants to ordering food delivery. Peoples’ modern lifestyles also leave little time for cooking and preparing their own meals. Restaurants and food delivery businesses have adapted and will need to meet the demands of consumers’ new lifestyles.
We will cover how restaurants and meal prep delivery companies have adapted to this new market shift and how they are taking advantage of this new growth.
Why are Meal Prep Delivery Businesses Rapidly Growing?
Growth in online meal prep delivery ordering has really accelerated demand from consumers for regular pre-prepared meal delivery. There is a definite upward trend in online meal delivery ordering. Here are some reasons for this rapid growth:
- The Pandemic
- New Business Model and Consumer Lifestyle
The Pandemic
Covid-19 definitely had a hand in the rapid growth in the demand for meal prep delivery businesses and the number of new meal prep delivery businesses. Lockdown restrictions, fear of getting the virus, and social distancing saw most consumers preferring to stay at home creating a wave of consumer transition to online meal delivery platforms.
Many local restaurants that relied on in-person dining were now facing a massive decline in customers. Many restaurants were forced to adapt to this consumer transition to online ordering and delivering.
Local meal prep delivery businesses whose platforms offered on-demand and scheduled delivery models are seeing an all-time surge in orders and their delivery. These can be small kitchens with just a small delivery radius. Customers are allured to order meals online by tapping a few buttons on the phone and receiving orders quickly or at a scheduled time.
New Business Model and Consumer Lifestyle
The model of having an online ordering platform in which consumers can order pre-prepared nutritious meals that can be delivered on a recurring schedule is new to the food industry. Food delivery has always been a massive market and now meal prep delivery platforms like Sprwt give even small businesses and kitchens easy access to that market.
Even beyond the pandemic, there has always been a growing consumer trend for ordering meals. Modern people lead very busy lives in which they don’t have time to buy groceries, prep ingredients, and cook a meal. Some people just don’t like to cook.
Pre-prepared meal delivery meets the demands of the modern consumer with its convenience and ease of access. Now, people can order delicious, healthy meals that are already prepared or cooked to be delivered right to their door. All of which can be done from an easy-to-use online ordering platform, saving the consumer time and energy.
Trends That Will Shape the Meal Prep Delivery Businesses
The pandemic has acted as a catapult for most of the meal prep delivery platforms. Consumers have embraced online meal prep ordering. As consumer behavior changes and adapts to modern demands, a few trends are bound to shape the meal prep delivery industry. Here are a few:
Streamlined Kitchen Management Systems
A kitchen management system is used to track orders, deliveries, ingredients, and more. Modern and sophisticated kitchen management systems can even tell the kitchen what groceries need to be purchased based on the meals that need to be prepared that day.
Streamlining the kitchen management system of a meal prep delivery business helps in reducing costs and boosts productivity while meeting consumer demands more efficiently. Using tools provided by a kitchen management system, calculating ingredients needed from orders becomes easy.
Meal prep delivery software, such as Sprwt, offers businesses a streamlined kitchen management system, an online ordering platform for customers, delivery management, and many more features.
More Demand for Organic Food in Pursuit of Health
Consumers have become much more conscious of their health and what they eat. As a result, consumers have started to purchase more organic foods.
Studies reveal that organic food has more antioxidants compared to conventionally grown food that contains harmful chemicals. It is healthier and tastes better with very little price difference compared to inorganic food. Other reasons for its demand include:
- Fitness, Health, and Wellbeing
- Environmental Protection
- Food Safety
Path Towards Personalization
Consumers enjoy personalization and with both consumers and businesses moving online it gives consumers access to businesses that service a specific niche and gives niche businesses access to those consumers.
Meal prep delivery businesses are now able to viably offer specific cuisines or types of food that appeal to a niche of consumers. Whereas before they had to appeal to the general consumer. A meal prep delivery business that offers high protein vegan meals now has access to consumers who are looking for such a specific type of cuisine.
Conclusion
Thanks to the demands of people’s modern lifestyles, there was already a trend of moving toward online meal prep delivery. But the sudden changes brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic forced both consumers and businesses to rapidly adapt and change. This has resulted in the meal prep delivery trend experiencing massive growth.
If you would like to take advantage of this trend then Sprwt’s meal prep delivery software can help get your business online and allow your customers to start ordering their meals from you. Why not book a demo today?