Goodfood expands into grocery delivery

With an aim to offer consumers the “full grocery basket,” meal-kit company Goodfood has added private-label grocery staples to its product offering. There are currently around 100 SKUs, including oils, peanut butter, pasta, condiments, coffee, juices, breads, fresh-cut fruits and vegetables, meats and more—delivered to consumers’ doors along with their meal-kit orders.

Goodfood, which has meal kits for breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus ready-to-eat options, plans to have 2,000 to 4,000 private label SKUs in the medium to long term, says Roslane Aouameur, director of investor relations at Goodfood.

“In reality, meal kits are a form of grocery,” he says. 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.”

Aouameur says the vision for the five-year-old company was always to provide a grocery solution, and the timing is now right. “First, the industry in Canada hasn’t really been able to make a dent in shifting the grocery market online,” he says. “That gave us an interesting opportunity given we have a decent amount of subscribers <230,000> we can work with, and also expand into different households that are looking for more grocery-type products.”

Consumer feedback also helped propel the move into grocery. “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.”

Currently, the grocery items are only available to Goodfood members, who add them on to their meal-kit subscription. The plan is to make the grocery items available to anyone in the near future.