Chef’d buyer relaunches retail meal kits – with a processed twist

Just over six months after buying embattled meal kit company Chef’d, True Food Innovations says it is launching new products aimed at retail.

The Newport Beach, CA-based company has rebranded the meal kits with “fresh, clean label, preservative free recipes with 55 days of shelf life,” thanks to high pressure pasteurization.

The company said in a news release it identified shelf life as a “key differentiator” and “absolute requirement” for retail meal kits to be commercially viable.

“We are setting the standard for the retail category through innovation, product development and technology,” said Founder and CEO Alan True, in a news release. “We listened to our retail partners and we developed products to solve their problem, shelf life.”

The longer shelf life, and acquisition of Chef’d, help TFI offer retailers the broad range they’ve been looking for in meal kits, says Robert Jones, TFI president, in a news release.

“Our strategy is to provide retailers with a multi-brand offering with the ability to provide meal kit options based on price, demographics and geography; we have cracked the code that has limited large-scale rollouts of fresh meal kits,” he said, in the news release.

The company plans to launch True Chef and Chef’d Meal Kits in stores nationally through 2019.

Among the initial rollout are recipes like:

• Chicken Piccata;
• Peppercorn Steak;
• Saffron Tomato Chicken;
• Roasted Garlic Herb Chicken;
• Truffle Butter Sirloin Steak;
• Mediterranean Style Chicken; and
• Classic Chicken Marsala.

Each recipe includes a produce component, like brussels sprouts and purple potatoes, and cooks in 15 to 20 minutes.