Start A Healthy Meal Delivery Service - Business Ideas

Updated: September 15th, 2022
Start A Healthy Meal Delivery Service

Please note that the data provided in this article are estimates and may vary depending on various factors, and should not be considered as perfect or definitive.

Meal prep delivery services offer healthy and nutritional meals to customers via e-commerce sites.

These services provide either DIY meal kits or Ready-to-eat meals, saving time and eliminating food waste.

They are particularly beneficial for busy people and health-conscious millennials who prefer nutritional food at home.

There are two types of meal services: online meal kits and fast food delivery services.

A meal prep delivery business can be profitable, especially when compared to restaurants, as they save costs on a storefront.

To make a good profit, one should invest less in groceries and ensure they have many customers.

Starting a healthy meal delivery service requires a great deal of effort, dedication, and most importantly passion.

If you're interested in how to sell healthy meal delivery service, or selling healthy meal delivery service online, you can use this page as a guide for everything you'll need to know.

Key Stats

revenue (monthly)
$96K
starting costs
$52.9K
gross margin
30%
avg product price
$11
time to build
210 days
growth
Word of mouth
business model
E-Commerce
time investment
Full time
work from home?
Yes

Startup Costs

Min Startup Costs Max Startup Costs

Office Space Expenses

$0

$7,000

Employee & Freelancer Expenses

$151

$352

Website Costs

$223

$7,215

Business Formation Fees

$600

$4,700

Equipment & Supply Expenses

$66

$700

Inventory Expenses

$350

$14,750

Food Business Expenses

$2,125

$36,000

App Creation Costs

$1,000

$20,000

Vehicle Expenses

$2

$10,004

Advertising & Marketing Costs

$0

$2,550

Software Expenses

$150

$2,420

Successful Businesses

Business URL Rank

MealSurfers

facebook.com

7

Freshly

freshly.com

20,718

Oddle

oddle.me

30,415

Sweetgreen

sweetgreen.com

33,899

Trifecta Nutrition

trifectanutrition.com

45,985

EveryPlate

everyplate.com

52,504

My Muscle Chef

mymusclechef.com

97,058

Macros

macros.com.au

161,252

Yumble

yumblekids.com

168,277

Nurture Life

nurturelife.com

173,212

Top 10 Best Meal Delivery Services

top10bestmealdeliveryservices.com

181,640

Pros & Cons

Pros Description

Flexibility

You can put as much time into the business as you'd like. If you like the work and have some initial experience, you can start small and manage all aspects of the business on your own.

Ability to start your business from home

It's not necessary to have a physical storefront or office space to get your business started. You can do everything from the comfort of your own home, at least in the beginning!

Traffic to your website

A healthy meal delivery service gives people a reason to visit your website and to keep coming back to you!

Meaningful business connections

You never know who you will meet as a healthy meal delivery service. This could be the start of an incredible business opportunity!

High customer retention rates

Once a customer invests in your product, they've invested their time and energy to utilize your product/service which is highly valuable to them. Typically, your product or service becomes indispensable to your customer.

Easy to encourage "impulse buy"

In the healthy meal delivery service, you have a much higher chance of encouraging your customers to buy on impulse - you can easily alter the price, placement, packaging, and promotional value to influence the decision of your buyer.

Cons Description

Motivation of employees

If you plan to have a sales/content team on board, finding creative ways to motivate them can be a challenge. It's important that you're able to offer great incentives and a good work environment for your employees.

Longer Sales Process

A healthy meal delivery service can be a big time and money investment for your customer, so it's important you plan and predict a longer conversion funnel and stay in communication with potential customers.

Low margins

The gross margins for your healthy meal delivery service are typically around 30%, which can make it more challenging to incur new expenses and maintain profitability.

High employee turnover

In the healthy meal delivery service, employee turnover is often high, which can be quite costly and time consuming for your business. It's important to try and avoid this as much as possible by offering competitive pay, benefits, and a positive work environment.

Taxes

As a healthy meal delivery service, you typically pay self-employment taxes which can be quite high. It's important to understand what you will be paying in taxes each year so you can determine if the work you're taking on is worth it.

Niche Market

A niche business is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact, it can be the key to your success. However, it can be more challenging and time consuming to find the perfect niche market and target audience.

Marketing Ideas

  • 1

    Affiliate Program

    Affiliate marketing is a great way to bring in a new revenue stream, especially when you don't sell products or services.

    Simply put, an affiliate program is an agreement where a business pays another business or influencer ("the affiliate") a commission for sending traffic and/or sales their way.

    The affiliate typically gets a unique link where clicks and conversions can be tracked.

    Learn more about affiliate program ➜

  • 2

    Word of mouth

    Word of mouth is when a consumers reflects their interest in a company’s product or service in their daily dialogues.

    Therefore, word of mouth advertising is essentially a free advertising triggered by the customers experience.

    According to Nielsen, 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family.

    Therefore, in today’s hyper-connected world, a single recommendation through a word of mouth can have a huge impact to your business.

    Learn more about word of mouth ➜

  • 3

    Partnerships

    A partnership is a formal agreement between two or more entities to oversee business operations and share profits and liabilities.

    Creating strategic partnerships with an existing business can be a huge win for a startup.

    This is considering that a partnership creates a new slate of future options for your startup.

    On the other side, pursuit of partnerships could suck up a ton of time, and bunch of resources, and fail to materialize.

    Therefore, entrepreneurs need to do proper research and evaluate the possibilities of achieving success through partnerships.

    Learn more about partnerships ➜