Metro Inc., one of Canada’s largest food retailers, has offloaded MissFresh, a local meal-kit firm in which it first invested in two years ago, to another meal-delivery business.
The deal, for which terms were not disclosed, sees another meal-kit company based in Montreal, Cook It, acquire all MissFresh’s assets.
In a brief statement, Metro said: “This combination of two young complementary Montreal companies will consolidate Quebec’s expertise in ready-to-cook meals and allow it to continue to grow. Cook it will now serve both its current and MissFresh customers. Customers will be able to continue to pick up their ready-to-cook meals at participating Metro stores.”
In the summer of 2017, Metro announced it had struck a deal to acquire a majority stake in MissFresh.
At the time, Metro CFO François Thibault described Miss Fresh as “a promising concept that is already popular with consumers”. He added: “As an alternative solution to healthy eating that is easy to prepare and delivered to your door, MissFresh offers products that will be complementary to what we have in store, which will help us to better meet the needs of consumers.”
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MissFresh was set up in 2015 by Marie-Eve Prevost, Bernard Prevost, and Ritter Huang.
UK-based industry researchers The IGD said Metro’s investment in MissFresh “was made at the high point of the industry’s focus on subscription-based meal-kit programmes”, adding: “At the time, it was viewed as a good move for Metro, being relatively low risk, bringing in new capabilities into the organisation and enabling it to enter subscription-based e-commerce.”
Nevertheless, The IGD did point to “limitations to the subscription-based model”, where customer acquisition costs are “typically high”.
It said: “Several retailers have developed private-label ranges, making them available in-store and online through their grocery e-commerce services. In many cases, this has provided customers with more flexibility than the traditional subscription-based model. Last month, US-based Albertsons announced that it’s terminating the subscription service for its Plated meal kits range, choosing to build a stronger in-store presence for the brand.”
