
Nestlé leads $77M round for healthy meal startup Freshly - janober
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/19/freshly-series-c
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rootlocus
> That doesn’t mean you order from Freshly every time you want to eat —
> instead, you get one delivery of all your meals for the week. Then, when
> you’re hungry, you just heat one of them up in your microwave or stove.

That doesn't sound fresh at all...

~~~
MrFoof
Taking a look at reviews, this appears to be basically a mail order delivery
service that delivers high quality TV dinners.

The meals even come in the same black plastic containers sealed with a film on
top as a TV dinner or microwave meal from your grocer's freezer. So with
Nestle's acquisition, this is basically a higher quality Lean Cuisine as a
service.

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toomanybeersies
I feel like the pre-made meal delivery sector is one where the company that
throws the most money into advertising is the one that will win. The market is
so saturated.

Personally, I'm not a fan. They don't end up being much cheaper than eating
out, and by circumstance of being microwavable food in a plastic container,
they never plate anywhere near as well as they show the pictures. They will
never taste as good as you'd hope either, because microwaved salmon steaks
just aren't that good.

I actually got some from a local company that does paleo meals, but I just
found them to be too expensive for what they are.

~~~
puranjay
I order a lot of food from my local pre-made meal startup. The food is never
particularly good, but it wins out because:

1\. They deliver fast. I usually get my food within 20 minutes.

2\. They have single-person portions, so there is no food wastage or
leftovers.

It's honestly nothing that my local restaurant can't do. But somehow, they
just haven't wizened up to it.

~~~
fredley
I find it a bit mind-boggling that this is quicker than just going to the
supermarket to get the same thing. I'm in the UK, and if you live in a city
where pre-made meal startups can deliver within 20 minutes, you can probably
walk to a small supermarket within 5-10 to buy essentially the same sort of
thing for less money.

~~~
hammock
Delivery is the added value here

~~~
denom
With a dash of externalized cultural decoherence.

Even if I trusted Nestle's motivations here, which I do not, supporting your
local farmers market/grocer/coop is a more ethical way to go.

~~~
hammock
The chance you have a local farmers market/coop within 5 minute walk from your
home/work is pretty slim unless you live/work at a farmers market (or downtown
of a city in Vermont).

~~~
denom
Agreed. We've had 75 years of the modernist industrial program, e.g. tearing
up trolly lines in favor of cars, or suburbanization as a civil defense
initiative (among others). The point is not a quick solution, however the
point _is_ to have livable cities focused on the human _first_.

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saturdaysaint
I enjoy mealkits, but it seems like it would be trivial for existing grocery
stores to swoop in if/when this model gains broad popularity. I could see
Costco, which already has an upscale prepared foods department, offering Blue
Apron/Freshly style meals at 50%-60% of the cost if they determined that they
could sell a few hundred meals a week. I don't see what the moat for these
businesses is.

~~~
mrcsparker
Grocery stores in Houston already offer this. HEB, Whole Foods, Central
Market, and a few others have prepared meals. It is also inexpensive and the
meals tend to be good

Is this in other cities?

~~~
petra
How inexpensive are they ?

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salimmadjd
Crossing the Chasm for all these new food business will be difficult.

If you scale up, are you're quality and customer service could drop, or you'll
be just another mass-produced food entity.

I think they all need to look into In-n-Out or starbucks to get ideas how to
maintain brand and control and scale.

The issue is, how will consumers decide which brand to try as the choices and
options grows and how will they maintain customer loyalty.

Ultimately, I believe any food business will become a restaurant business. Low
margin high-volume to survive, or high margin, low volume, high quality.

~~~
taimore
You better be really into cheeseburgers.

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TomK32
And another soul sold to the devil.

~~~
singularity2001
Those who downvoted should read the history of Nestle and see that it is
almost as poisonous to society as Monsanto/Bayer.

~~~
koolba
Any particular reading you suggest?

I grew up with plenty of Nestle products around (mainly chocolate related) so
I've got a generic positive childhood nostalgia for them. Should I not?

~~~
DanBC
Nestlé have deceptively and aggressively marketed formula milk in the
developing world.

It's a cynical and greedy exploitation of poor people with low levels of
literacy.

This has caused death and harm.

Here are a few, but there are literally dozens of stories over many years of
Nestlé being deceptive and misleading.

2001: [http://www.irinnews.org/report/16921/pakistan-dispute-
over-b...](http://www.irinnews.org/report/16921/pakistan-dispute-over-baby-
milk-formula-heightens)

2005: [http://www.irinnews.org/news/2005/08/19/nestl%C3%A9-jack-
inf...](http://www.irinnews.org/news/2005/08/19/nestl%C3%A9-jack-infant-
formula-supply)

2011: [http://www.irinnews.org/news/2011/06/23/ngos-flay-
nestl%C3%A...](http://www.irinnews.org/news/2011/06/23/ngos-flay-
nestl%C3%A9%E2%80%99s-infant-formula-strategy)

2013: [http://www.irinnews.org/report/97943/pressure-philippines-
en...](http://www.irinnews.org/report/97943/pressure-philippines-end-ban-
formula-milk-aid)

------
robg
How long until Amazon starts supporting these approaches into automated
ordering and delivery with Whole Foods?

~~~
dogma1138
Kale drone delivery.

~~~
wavefunction
>Kale jokes

Enjoy it while it lasts, Whole Foods is headed down-market to compete with
Walmart.

~~~
dagw
Why is kale such a punchline in the US?

~~~
coldpie
It was largely unknown, then became briefly popular among health nuts and
hippie-yuppie types, which some businesses took advantage of to overcharge for
a super cheap crop. It became a symbol of overpriced healthy foods marketed to
suckers.

~~~
dogma1138
Pretty much this. Kale is effectively wild cabbage, it's a salty leaf that is
common in Europe as garnish or a side dish (usually boiled). It pretty much
can grow anywhere it's an extremely cheap crop to produce and it was 100%
marketing fad that capitalized on the ignorance of consumers.

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amelius
This isn't tech news.

Let's just agree that everything that's not related to tech, when it happens
on/through the internet, is still not tech.

It would be tech if there was a robot preparing my Freshly meals.

~~~
adrianN
This isn't a tech news website. From the Guidelines:

 _On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one 's intellectual curiosity. _

~~~
amelius
That's hard to argue with.

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contingencies
Meh. All these pre-made things will die out when we have robots prepare food
from fresh ingredients on demand ... [http://8-food.com/](http://8-food.com/)
... maybe they will live on as niche options for people in low density areas.

~~~
ErikHuisman
Yes, and these robots that prepare food from fresh ingredients will die out
when we have nanobots measuring all our vitals and providing minerals where
needed. Doesn't mean we should not take intermediate steps towards the future
:)

~~~
graphitezepp
That doesn't sound very tasty.

~~~
adrianN
The nanobots in your brain's pleasure center will disagree.

~~~
problems
Good to know that the future holds mostly parasitic nanobots.

~~~
dump121
Seems plot for reboot of Matrix, where Zion population is infested with
nanobots.

