Their promotional cards regularly inhabit my mailbox: up to twenty-one free meals, Chef’s Plate tells me. Seven free meals and more than eight hours saved, Factor proclaims—even Blue Jays infielder Ernie Clement endorses the product. So how are these meal kit companies doing? Not so well, as it turns out.
When the world shut down in 2020, millions of Canadians turned to their kitchens. Everyone, it seemed, was making bread, exchanging recipes, and cooking. Meal kits were primed for the new crop of pandemic-era home cooks. The already burgeoning industry offered the pleasures of cooking without the struggles of meal planning, food prep, and grocery shopping. It wasn’t long before large boxes of groceries, perfectly portioned and packaged into insulated boxes with reusable ice packs, began arriving with increasing frequency on the doorsteps of thousands of Canadians, alongside step-by-step recipe instructions. Nearly one in four Canadian households ordered a meal kit in 2020, market research firm NPD Group (now Circana) estimated. It was a scene playing out across the United States and beyond as well.
Almost as quickly, however, the meal kit bubble popped.
The recent collapse of Montreal-based Goodfood, one of the biggest meal kit companies in Canada, combined with a string of bad news from other businesses, accentuates the challenges of a sluggish market.
Goodfood began in a small Montreal apartment in 2014, the brainchild of two former investment bankers, Jonathan Ferrari and Neil Cuggy. The website’s feel-good origin story touted qualities that were supposed to set them apart—“exciting” recipes good enough for a foodie city like Montreal, industry-leading sustainable practices, and fresh local ingredients. It went public in 2017 and, by 2019, cornered some 40 to 45 percent of the meal kit market, according to the Montreal Gazette. In early 2021, near the tail end of COVID-19’s second deadly wave, 319,000 Canadians were active weekly subscribers (this includes accounts that skipped orders some weeks). Business was booming, even as the company operated at a loss.
But cracks began appearing, and by August 2025, Ferrari left. Cuggy followed in January 2026 and, in April, so did their head of finance. His replacement and the new chief executive officer have since quit too. In June 2026, Goodfood had 48,000 active customers (described as a customer who has placed an order within the last three months), according to its 2026 third quarter results.
In August, Goodfood filed for—and was granted—creditor protection by a Quebec court as it looks toward restructuring and possibly even a sale. Once reportedly worth $1 billion with a share price of $13, it is now a penny stock with a market cap of just $3 million. It owes nearly $49.7 million to creditors, according to court filings.
Costly strategic missteps specific to Goodfood contributed to its woes, but the company’s difficulties also reflect the broader challenges of the meal kit business, especially how to keep customers from leaving.
Meal kits originated in Europe some twenty years ago and arrived in North America in 2012. In the US, the market had grown from around a dozen players in 2013 to 382 by 2023, according to a Wall Street Journal report, with German-based HelloFresh dominating the landscape as the world’s largest meal kit business. Along with its various subsidiaries, HelloFresh accounts for roughly 78 percent of the American market. It is also the biggest player in Canada and owns Toronto-based Chef’s Plate, which it bought in 2018 for an undisclosed sum. Goodfood and Fresh Prep are two of its biggest domestic rivals. But the market in which these companies compete appears stagnant; estimates vary, but between 8.5 percent and 12 percent of Canadians are regular customers.
Globally, even market leader HelloFresh has had to grapple with a steep fall in sales. It was forced to pull out of Spain and Italy this year, amid substantial declines in demand. Shares have plunged 97 percent since peaking in 2021. Still, recent results exceeded expectations following a shift in strategy that prioritizes customer loyalty, a potentially more reliable long-term indicator.
Meanwhile, in the US, Blue Apron and Marley Spoon have dealt with their own PR nightmare following the bankruptcy of a key supplier. The disastrous transition to a new one forced them to issue a mea culpa on their Instagram pages, but replies were filled with fed-up customers: deliveries arrived days late or not at all, boxes arrived with a substantial or a majority of ingredients missing or damaged, customer service was “nowhere to be found.” Loyal, decade-long subscribers threatened to leave or announced their cancellation.
It’s not hard to see why meal kits are appealing. Salmon and shrimp in lemon-caper cream sauce and bistro truffle-butter striploin steak sound delicious and sophisticated. The efficiency that comes with not having to plan out these meals, having all the ingredients on hand and portioned out, can be invaluable too. Many felt they were wasting less food too.
But these enticements come at a price. A Goodfood subscription for two people twice a week can cost $73.07 a week, or $15.52 per person, plus delivery. Three meals a week for a family of four costs $13.45 per person, or a weekly price of $172.39, including a $10.99 delivery fee. This is where all those coupons come in.
HelloFresh’s regular price is slightly less at $154.87 ($143.88 plus $10.99 shipping), but free shipping and a 50 percent discount applied automatically on the first box slashes the total to $71.94. (For some comparison, the average weekly grocery bill per household was $166.52, according to 2023 figures from Statistics Canada.)
There are multiple factors underpinning the meal kit struggles, but cost has always been among the biggest obstacles for prospective customers even before COVID-19, industry watchers say. Surveys found that the vast majority of customers who gave meal kits a try ended up cancelling within a year, particularly after the initial promotional offer expired.
The pandemic boom was an outlier. Within months of restrictions lifting, subscribers were leaving by the tens of thousands, companies reported. For many, the disposable income that people had few places to spend during the pandemic could once again go toward eating out, attending events, and travel. At the same time, the rising cost of food over the last six years means consumers want to cut their food bill wherever they can, and meal kits can be easy targets.
Cost isn’t the only deterrent, however.
Excessive packaging is another factor alienating some customers, according to surveys by Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab. In addition to the box and ice packs, meal kit ingredients often come individually packaged in plastic. That’s where British Columbia–based Fresh Prep says it is different, claiming to be the only meal kit company that offers zero-waste kits: the coolers are reused, prepped ingredients come in reusable trays, and everything is picked up during deliveries.
Meal kits are also facing competition from companies like Factor, also owned by HelloFresh and a key part of its growth strategy. Factor offers freshly prepared heat-and serve meals that eliminate the cooking part altogether. The demise of Freshly, Inc. in 2023, however, suggests uncertainty in that space too.
At the same time, grocers are also encroaching on the meal kit business model on multiple fronts, with some also offering their own meal kits as well as ready-to-serve meals, plus reliable grocery delivery services, all without the commitment of a subscription. More generally, grocery stores typically experience much higher customer loyalty, according to NielsenIQ, with the majority returning for more online purchases.
If traditional competition isn’t enough, meal planning apps are also cropping up. Whether those can truly disrupt the industry, however, remains to be seen.
Reports have been speculating about the meal kits’ decline for years. And yet, many are still around. Some have consolidated, while others appear to be thriving in their niche market. Projections vary, but one estimate by Grand View Research forecasts sales will hit $28.57 billion in the US and $4.4 billion in Canada by 2033, despite what current corporate results and stock prices say.
The mail ads will likely keep coming—free meals, the promise to save time, solve dinner for good. But while it’s premature to declare any kind of demise, it’s clear that by and large they are not exactly flourishing either.
Some customers gave it a try and were underwhelmed, while others felt the meals were more complicated to make than advertised. One company’s recipe instructions were often described as confusing and disorganized. Many were hooked for years before quitting them altogether when fatigue set in from repetition. “We ordered them every week for three years before burning out on them,” a friend told me. By then, meal kits had also taught them how to cook—so they no longer needed the box at all.
