Kerry Potter wrote . . . . .
Picture the scene: a typical weekday evening in my kitchen. I forlornly eat the crusts from the children’s teatime sandwiches while wondering what on earth we’re going to have for dinner, given no one’s had time to go to the supermarket. My husband and I exchange hangry words on this subject, ending with a ‘who’s busier?’ competition.
While he cajoles the children into bed, I note that everything in the fridge has disintegrated into foul sludge. Spaghetti and pesto it is, then. Cue the least Instagrammable dinner ever, eaten in front of – ha! – MasterChef.
This week, however, things are different. My husband and I jostle for position by the stove. ‘I want to cook!’ ‘No, darling, I’ll do it. You have a glass of wine. Would you prefer duck with mango, chilli and courgettini, or the Brazil-nut, artichoke and parsley lentils?’ Twenty-five minutes later, a delicious, hearty-but-healthy dinner is served.
We aren’t auditioning for Come Dine with Me, nor is my mother-in-law staying. We’re trying out Mindful Chef, a sleekly branded, gluten- and dairy-free recipe-box-delivery service backed by Andy Murray and Victoria Pendleton.
On Monday, a cardboard box arrived containing the ingredients for three dinners – you can choose them online in advance – in the exact quantities needed (one stock cube, one chilli…), with three corresponding recipe cards.
Start price for the service works out at £6 per meal per head, which seems pricey compared to a casserole cooked from scratch, but is similar to the cost of a posh ready meal, or a bargain if the alternative is a takeaway.
My only criticism? It’s one to file under #firstworldproblems: an onion was missing from the box, causing a minor panic one night regarding the well-being of a Swedish-meatball sauce. That aside, we’re converts. As are a lot of Brits right now.
Spending on recipe-box deliveries was up by 65 per cent in the first half of 2016, compared with the same period the year before, according to analytics firm Cardlytics. Pioneered by Swedish company Middagsfrid a decade ago, the idea has been embraced in the US, with market leader Blue Apron now delivering eight million meals each month.
Over here, the service has evolved from Abel & Cole’s lo-fi organic veg boxes into something far more involved (although the company still sells the veg-only boxes alongside its meal kits).
The two biggest players in the UK both launched in 2012 – HelloFresh (founded in Berlin) is valued at about £2 billion, operates in nine countries and delivers almost nine million dinners per month globally, charging from £4 per meal; Gousto shifts 400,000 per month, from £2.98 per meal.
Mindful Chef is a hipster upstart that launched in 2015 and offers vegan and generally healthy kits, and then there are the other options, such as Simply Cook, which sends you a weekly pack of recipes, rubs, herbs and oils.
It’s not hard to see the appeal – it’s cheating to a point, but not so much you feel guilty. And anyway, what was once seen as cheating has been re-spun as time-saving savviness. This is cooking-lite, without the boring stuff like having to rush to Tesco halfway through because you’ve run out of tarragon.
Giles Humphries, co-founder of Mindful Chef, says the company has a surprising range of customers.
‘We thought our key demographic would be twenty-something urban professionals, but actually our best customers are in their 30s and 40s, maybe a busy couple with young children,’ he explains. ‘They’re not having to WhatsApp their partner during the day to have a long conversation about what to have for dinner.’
One friend, a working mother of two and HelloFresh Family Box aficionado, tells me, ‘I absolutely love not having to choose what to cook each night, because it’s one of those “emotional labour” chores – the tedious think-y admin that usually falls to women to sort. Now I feel like I’m delegating that to the recipe box.’
In addition to the appeal for people who have rolled in ravenous after a long day at work, there’s also the lack of waste as you cook exactly what you are sent, with no excess. Sophie Maxwell, futures director at Pearlfisher, a branding agency that works with food companies, draws a parallel with the invention of powdered cake mixes in the US in the 1930s.
These were originally designed so you would just add water, but later manufacturers developed a mix to which you had to add fresh egg – that way people felt like they were still, to some degree, baking. Similarly, she says, ‘Meal kits work because they still make people feel like they’re cooking, and we feel good about that.’
And then there are the social-media bragging rights – the visually impressive yet still charmingly DIY results of recipe boxes are Instagram catnip. The trend for curating our lifestyles has reached the point where we can get someone else to curate our meat and two veg – and then pass it all off as our own handiwork.
Although almost everyone I speak to about meal-kit deliveries raves about them, there is the odd grumble. Some think they’re too expensive, with Giles from Mindful Chef conceding that cost is the biggest reason cited for cancellations.
Meanwhile, my friend Alex, a talented home cook, says, ‘I did them for a while but I would hold the single clove of garlic in my hand and think, “Christ, the state of modern cooking! I’ve become the person who can’t even buy a garlic bulb, I have to be given individual cloves.” There’s something a bit humiliating and infantilising about it.’
Stella’s food columnist, Diana Henry, is similarly circumspect. ‘I have mixed feelings,’ she says. ‘If you’re buying takeaways or ready meals every night and switch to these deliveries, it’s a step in the right direction. But it worries me that you’ll end up with people unable to plan and cook their own meals without this as a crutch.’
The industry is only going to get bigger, though. Supermarkets are taking notice – HelloFresh packs are now sold at Sainsbury’s. And Maxwell predicts we’ll soon see a greater focus on personalisation, with meal plans worked out according to your DNA biomarkers and metabolism.
Neil Grimmer, co-founder of Plum Organics baby food, recently launched Habit in Silicon Valley, which gathers customers’ data using a blood test and cheek swab.
As for me, my recipe-box adventure is ending – partly because of cost, partly because it has given me the kick-start I needed to be more adventurous in the kitchen.
Tonight I was tempted to do bog-standard omelettes and salad but upgraded to the far hipper egg dish shakshuka.
Now all I need is someone to send me a box containing a magic wand and a spell to clean up the kitchen.
Source: The Telegraph
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Cooking with Kathy Man 