Fast Food Restaurants Join the Meal Kit Renaissance

For those of us who a) lack the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen’s skills but b) want a restaurant-adjacent dinner experience, the drive-thru is coming thru with new meal kits.

• Chick-fil-A’s chicken parm meal kit arrives on menus today.
• Taco Bell released its “At Home Taco Bar” kit last week.
• Panera plans to offer DIY sandwich and salad kits by the end of May.

Zoom out: Stay at home orders have spawned a meal kit renaissance, reports the WSJ. In stores, U.S. consumers spent roughly $100 million on meal kits during the month ending April 11—nearly double the sales for the same period last year, per Nielsen. Online meal kit sales rose 63% annually for the week ending April 15, per Earnest Research.

Why it matters: Whether families order from Chick-fil-A or Blue Apron, they’re after quick, convenient dinners minus a grocery store trip. But the costs of sourcing, marketing, and distributing meal kits have proven to be a recipe for highly unprofitable businesses. For meal kit makers who thought they’d peaked with Pitbull in 2012, the recent demand surge could spell (temporary) salvation.