Sun Basket is one of several companies that deliver meals ready to cook. The basic concept is that subscribers choose from a selection of menus that change weekly. In Sun Basket’s business model, three meals a week are included in the plans, priced at about $75 for two people and $140 for four people. The ingredients are shipped weekly in refrigerated boxes. You receive the correct ingredients in the correct amounts for either two or four people, along with the recipe and instructions for preparing the meal. You save the time you’d otherwise spend making up a menu, creating a shopping list, going shopping to as many stores as needed, and then transporting everything home. Cooking is still up to you.
Other companies such as Blue Apron, Plated, and vegan-only Purple Carrot are competitors, but Sun Basket’s value-add is that all of the ingredients shipped are organic. For example, the company claims only to source “grass-fed, antibiotic-free pastured meats and sustainable seafood from ranchers and fishermen we trust.” Sun Basket also says it delivers ingredients from source to end customer three times faster than conventional grocery stores, so its customers receive fresher, higher-quality food.
Example recipes sound like those you’d see in a cooking magazine but then wonder where you would have to go to find some of the less-common ingredients, particularly if you demanded that everything was organic. One of the meal choices for the first week of August is Burmese tomato-chickpea soup with lemongrass and pan-seared sausages with sweet peppers and polenta. Other menu choices are cod steamed in banana leaves with kaffir lime or an orange-almond smoothie with a summer frittata. Those choices underscore that if you’re a Sun Basket customer, you’re likely to learn a lot about new ingredients and combinations as well as new ways to prepare food.
With distribution centers currently in California and New Jersey, a Sun Basket spokesperson said it serves 80 percent of the U.S. population. The recent $15 million funding will be used to open a third distribution center at an unspecified location that will enable the company to ship to 98 percent of Americans.
“Sun Basket’s mission is to become America’s favorite way to cook healthy meals, which is a multi-billion dollar opportunity,” said Sun Basket CEO and founder Adam Zbar. “By disrupting the $600 billion grocery market with a more efficient, direct-to-consumer model, we’re providing customers with the freshest organic ingredients, which when combined with quick, delicious recipes from our chef, Justine Kelly, creates a more convenient and healthy way for busy working people to cook at home.”
