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Nestlé leads $77M round for healthy meal startup Freshly
- contingencies 9y agoMeh. 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 9y agoYes, 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 9y agoThat doesn't sound very tasty.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoI 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 9y agoI 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.
- prawn 9y agoWouldn't you rather have larger portions so you have leftovers for work the next day?
- lentil_soup 9y agoWhat's the difference with just ordering food from a restaurant to be delivered? Is that not an option in your area?
- fredley 9y agoI 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 9y ago
- TomK32 9y agoAnd another soul sold to the devil.
- singularity2001 9y agoThose who downvoted should read the history of Nestle and see that it is almost as poisonous to society as Monsanto/Bayer.
- koolba 9y agoAny 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 9y agoNestlé 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-baby-milk-formula-heightens http://www.irinnews.org/report/16921/pakistan-dispute-over-b... 2005: http://www.irinnews.org/news/2005/08/19/nestl%C3%A9-jack-infant-formula-supply http://www.irinnews.org/news/2005/08/19/nestl%C3%A9-jack-inf... 2011: http://www.irinnews.org/news/2011/06/23/ngos-flay-nestl%C3%A9%E2%80%99s-infant-formula-strategy http://www.irinnews.org/news/2011/06/23/ngos-flay-nestl%C3%A... 2013: http://www.irinnews.org/report/97943/pressure-philippines-end-ban-formula-milk-aid http://www.irinnews.org/report/97943/pressure-philippines-en...
- balabaster 9y agoYou should perhaps look up their approach to paying cents on the dollar for exclusive rights to public water sources that they then bottle and sell to the public for huge profits. This in itself isn't too bad until you consider the fact that they've purchased exclusive rights to the water... so you no longer have free access. If you want the water, you have to pay for it from Nestlé or one of their competitors. If you continue to take water from what was previously a publicly accessible water source, you are fined, dragged to court and potentially imprisoned for losing your basic human rights. Welcome to America. As a kid, we all have positive childhood nostalgia for them. They're the makers of the fun breakfast cereals, chocolate and candy. As a kid we weren't aware of their toxic business practices. We all need to grow up and do some critical reading about the origins of the products we buy and learn to make hard choices about what kinds of business practices we support. I'm not saying Nestlé is bad. But like all large corporations, they have some really toxic business practices and policies that need to be exposed to the mainstream and eradicated.
- robg 9y agoHow long until Amazon starts supporting these approaches into automated ordering and delivery with Whole Foods?
- dogma1138 9y agoKale drone delivery.
- kyledrake 9y agoThe drones will only supply Soylent and Fiji water, as per the codified mandates of the DAO http://offline.computer/hermicity/ http://offline.computer/hermicity/
- wavefunction 9y ago>Kale jokes Enjoy it while it lasts, Whole Foods is headed down-market to compete with Walmart.
- dagw 9y agoWhy is kale such a punchline in the US?
- coldpie 9y agoIt 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 9y agoPretty 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.
- rootlocus 9y ago> 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 9y agoTaking 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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- salimmadjd 9y agoCrossing 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 9y agoYou better be really into cheeseburgers.
- saturdaysaint 9y agoI 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.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- petra 9y agoDon't worry. Nestle knows how to make money from food commodities.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mrcsparker 9y agoGrocery 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 9y agoHow inexpensive are they ?
- amelius 9y agoThis 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 9y agoThis 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 9y agoThat's hard to argue with.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]