Kroger acquires Home Chef for $200M

I&#x27;m always surprised there aren&#x27;t more kits like what you would find in Blue Apron&#x2F;Plated&#x2F;Home Chef&#x2F;etc in grocery stores.<p>I would buy A LOT more, and probably even overpay because of convenience if I could walk into my local Harris Teeter&#x2F;Krogers&#x2F;Food Lion and just pick up a 3 meal&#x2F;2 person box with most of what I need.

This makes me happy.<p>I&#x27;ve tried a half dozen of the meal kit providers and Home Chef is hands down the highest quality in terms of ingredients and also providing recipes that are fancy enough that you don&#x27;t say &quot;I could have just made this myself&quot; like everyone says about Blue Apron. I order irregularly but my experience with Home Chef has been incredible.<p>I&#x27;m probably one of the few on HN who&#x27;s tried Kroger&#x27;s existing meal kits that have been piloted in a few stores around Cincinnati. They definitely target a different audience than the online meal kits, but being able to pick one up at the grocery store on a whim vs committing to buy + cook 3 kits in 1 week has been a game changer for me. I hope that they bring the Home Chef kits in store. Plus it&#x27;s got to save a ton not having to ship the kits and not requiring the ice packs.

Home Chef is by far my favorite of the meal kits I’ve tried (and I’ve tried a lot) in terms of both variety and quality. Fingers crossed this is one of those “keep doing what you’re doing but now with the funds for greater scale and distribution” acquisitions and not one of those “steady degradation of service while the new owner plunders you for parts” acquisitions.

It was reported when it happened, but most New Yorkers are unaware that Kroger bought Murray&#x27;s Cheese last year. They already have 400 or so standalone Murray&#x27;s shops _inside_ Krogers around the country, selling the best cheese and &#x27;specialty food&#x27; items (charcuterie, crackers, dips, etc.) you can get in the US. And every person behind the counter is trained by Murray&#x27;s to know their stuff and be able to make expert recommendations.<p>Murray&#x27;s bake-at-home mac and cheese, only available at Kroger, sounds quite nice.

I&#x27;m really not surprised by this at all. I know that Kroger was exploring a service like this last year, based on conversations that I had with someone from their legal team; they&#x27;ve had this in the Cincinnati area stores that I&#x27;ve been in recently (when I&#x27;ve been in that area) -- including their &quot;flagship&quot; Oakley store -- for at least the last six to eight months.

Kroger seems to have some vision on technology implementation. I’ve been impressed with thier clicklist (online grocery pickup) here in Salt Lake City. Looking forward to having this available.

&gt;And you can see why everyone’s diving in. As we’ve covered before: According to Nielsen research, “in the year ended 2017, in-store meal kits generated $154.6 million in sales, posting growth of more than 26% year-over-year. For context, total brick-and-mortar sales for center store edibles (grocery, dairy, frozen foods) dipped 0.1% last year to $374 billion.”<p>So, &quot;everyone&#x27;s diving in&quot; because meal kits are a rounding error to the other category?

Kroger is also potentially gearing up for an Alibaba partnership as well that was reported earlier this year. I know rumors are still floating down to the store level on this (my father is a store manager)

I did a study on Kroger, Costco, Walmart, Sams, Aldi, and Kroger was a scam.<p>Constant &quot;10&#x2F;10$&quot; or &quot;ALWAYS LOW PRICE $2.49&quot; on items that are cheaper at Costco, Walmart, and Aldi.<p>As a note, Walmart won or was on par with Aldi. Aldi had a very limited selection despite having decent prices. Costco isnt worth shopping at for food item with few exceptions(canned food, which isnt very optimal in general).<p>Anyway, my point is, I dont really trust Kroger. They overcharge for items and claim its cheap. They even have an &#x27;organic&#x27; section of the store, which makes me think is all marketing.<p>If anyone wants the link to the study, lmk, I avoid posting my link unless its relevant and wanted.