Goodfood Expands Into Grocery Home Delivery

Need to Know

• Meal kit delivery service Goodfood is expanding into grocery delivery.
• Goodfood already offers 100 items “a la carte” alongside its meal kits for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and ready-to-eat options, but plans to expand to close to 4,000 options.
• The items will be available as add-ons to the meal kits, but will eventually expand to become stand-alone offerings.
• The new delivery options will include private-label products.
• Goodfood has 230,000 subscribers, delivers over 1 million meal kits per month, and hit $300 million in revenue in 2019.
• Goodfood revenue in Q1 2020 reached $56.3 million, a 90% YoY increase.

Analysis

One of Canada’s most popular meal kit delivery services, Goodfood, is branching out to grocery delivery in order to compete with Loblaw, Amazon, and more. Goodfood management estimates that the company has 40-45% of the market share of the home meal kit industry in Canada, with competitors like HelloFresh and Chef’s Plate offering similar, slightly differentiated options.  

Goodfood’s CEO Jonathan Ferrari believes that the online grocery market in Canada is just getting started and will balloon to between $15 to $30 billion per year. 

“In reality, meal kits are a form of grocery,” says Roslane Aouameur, director of investor relations at Goodfood. “The idea is that Canadian shoppers think about doing their groceries in terms of meals: what they’re going to make for a few breakfasts, lunches and dinners in a week, plus snacks. “Our overall product offering in meal kits and ready-to-eat, and now our private label really answers the full grocery question that Canadians have on a weekly basis.”

By offering Canadians different ways to fill their fridges and bellies, Goodfood is attempting to hit the time-crunched, activity-heavy families that are rushing in the house and scrounging dinners and breakfasts from the cupboards. Goodfood already offers around 100 a-la-carte options that include things like oils, pasta, condiments, breads, and fresh-cut fruits and vegetables, but plans to expand that offering to between 2,000 and 4,000 products in the medium-to-long term. A portion of the new products will be private-label goods.

That’s why Goodfood recently closed $30 million in financing to fund the buildout of a new grocery distribution center in the GTA and expand the existing facilities in Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver.

“The capital raised will accelerate Goodfood’s plan to build out a highly automated facility in the Greater Toronto Area, cementing our online grocery leadership with a strong presence in Canada’s largest market. Over the past 5 years, we have executed on an ambitious strategic plan that has led to tremendous growth and penetration across the country. We are now embarking on the next phase of our strategy by raising capital to expand our online grocery operations allowing us to dominate in a market in which we are already a clear leader,” said Ferrari. 

“The great advantage of being an online business is you interact with members on a weekly basis,” says Aouameur. “The overwhelming feedback was that it would be great to get some of the products we portion for meal kits as add-ons they could buy directly and not just be limited to the quantity that’s included in the meal kit. So that feedback hit critical mass and it became a very interesting opportunity for us to pursue.”

Right now, only Goodfood subscribers are able to purchase grocery items as add-ons to their orders, but the plan is to make the grocery items accessible to anyone in the near future.