Meal Delivery Services

Earlier today, I talked elsewhere about some of the challenges in starting new food businesses and I linked to my tag for Food.Business on a site that is at a minimum currentlyon hiatus if not dead. With this post, I'm adding the tag FoodBusiness to this site as well.

I've seen a lot of ads for various meal delivery services. I've tried to look at their websites and sometimes tried to look up articles and I wrote a previous piece about Meal Kits and there's not a clear, bright line distinction between the two phrases as far as I can tell.

I haven't tried any meal delivery services and I'm reluctant to give my opinions of them based solely on ads and articles.

You can't get the sound taste from a story in a magazine.

As noted previously, I'm not a fan of microwaved food, though I have at times bought a microwave meals and followed the instructions for heating it in a regular oven, so IF those instructions are included, I'm not necessarily averse to eating microwave meals. I have a general interest in trying to foster solutions for eating well, so I think writing about the food business fits here and some of my observations are potentially useful to consumers.

The food industry is notoriously hard to start a new business in and tends to have extremely slim margins...

The movie about McDonald's called The Founder has some good scenes, such as one where they say 87 percent of our business is three items. I also really enjoy the scene where Ray Kroc visits McDonald's for the first time and the scene where they physically drew and redrew the new kitchen layout on a tennis court and tested it with staff until it worked smoothly.

If you're in this business and not entirely happy with how things are going, maybe watch The Founder and think about how to tweak your business model.

I saw a commercial for Hungryroot that talked about two-in-one meals. I like the concept and I think that has potential to have wide appeal.

I have seen questions online more than once for how to cook for a family where some members are vegetarian and some are not. I will suggest that this is a good place to start with offering meals that can be made easily into both vegetarian and non-vegetarian versions.

I saw a discussion once on Reddit where vegetarians were complaining that non-vegetarians will eat all the vegetarian offerings at a buffet as "sides" leaving nothing for the vegetarians. So non-vegetarians will eat many vegetarian dishes if you also give them a helping of meat to go with it and that's a super simple place to start: Offer dishes that stand alone as a vegetarian option but also work well as a side dish for meat.

In the Deep South, potato salad is often served as a side to go with burgers or hot dogs. It also works just fine as a vegetarian main dish because it contains eggs and serves as a hearty food in its own right.

My piece elsewhere on Vending Machine Lunches has a couple of examples of things that can be done as vegetarian or non-vegetarian. One is pizza with or without pepperoni.

And on that point, pepperoni contains pork so it is not halal and not kosher. Halal is basically the Muslim version of kosher.

A quick search suggests there are 15.7 million Jews on planet Earth and 1.9 billion Muslims, yet in the US I see kosher labels on foods but I don't recall ever seeing halal labels, even though my understanding is there is substantial overlap between the two in part because both eschew pork. I have heard that people who eat halal will look for foods marked kosher because they are largely similar.

Hungryroot uses a lot of creative "signature" categories, like gut health and non-inflammatory, and they don't really work as good communication with the consumer because these are not defined and regulated terms for the food industry. Rather than inventing a lot of creative new dietary labels which aren't standardized and have no legal definitions, I would hire someone to review everything to see what can be labeled halal and kosher and also use vegetarian and maybe vegan as well.

I would also use the label lactose-free. Lactose intolerance is a very common issue that gets under recognized in predominantly Caucasian countries because it's largely associated with being non-white. Additionally, some people are allergic to cow milk or have other issues that impact their capacity to tolerate dairy products.

Anything that qualifies as vegan will qualify as lactose-free because vegans don't consume dairy products. This will not be true of all vegetarian dishes and there will be non-vegetarian dishes that are also lactose free.

I follow an anti-inflammatory diet and I've read up on the concept. Food lists for what is inflammatory and what is not don't all agree with each other and don't necessarily agree with what works for ME. 

Furthermore, I have not heard of any governing board that has defined that term, so I feel it's veering into that "wellness industry" territory where it does an end-run around medical review processes while promising health benefits, so it's potentially a legal minefield. It could get the company sued for implied promises they can't really back up and with no standardized definition, you may not have a leg to stand on in court.

In contrast, if you use existing standardized definitions and properly meet those standards, you only need to prove you are following the rules and not your problem if some whack job decides halal means "should cure my cancer!" or some nonsense.

You can and should get things reviewed and properly certified as halal and kosher because those have strict definitions that don't make implicit or explicit hand-wavy promises of improved health with nothing to really back it up. 

People are lazy and health is complicated. I'm someone who has made a lot of dietary and lifestyle changes to improve my health and I feel like it's dangerous territory to tell the general public "This is a way to eat HEALTHY!" when you aren't taking a medical history and aren't their physician.

Having said that, I've been known to buy kosher foods in part because I have a genetic disorder common in ethnic Jews and I've read up a bit on what it means to be kosher. I do eat pepperoni and bacon but generally eschew pork otherwise and I agree with keeping beef and cheese separate which I understand is a kosher practice. (I do do because calcium and iron interfere with each other when consumed together and I'm prone to deficiencies.)

From what I've read, kosher and halal diets are a variation of clean eating. But people follow them for religious reasons, so getting those certifications helps people eat healthy while sidestepping potential law suits from people who buy your products, turn up sick anyway and want someone to blame.

If you are a consumer:

Vegan should work as a synonym for lactose free and you may wish to read a bit about kosher foods and kosher standards if you are looking for general ways to eat cleaner. 

You can also contact your favorite companies and suggest they label stuff lactose free or halal or whatever is your thing.

You may also be able to use some of the ideas above for helping you serve vegetarian friendly meals for family gatherings or business events or whatever.

I'm not aware of having a lot of food allergies personally. I do get itchy and can develop hives if I eat tomato products excessively regularly for too long, but it's not life threatening. I trend towards ordering light sauce on pizza if that's an option.

So sometimes just being aware of the peccadillos of the people in your social circle and sensitive to it can go a long way towards helping you be inclusive of people you want to include at events involving food.