Home Chef

[retailfanmitchell019]

The ghost of Tesco’s £2 billion Fresh & Easy failure lives on via Home Chef. If you were to type in freshandeasy.com, it redirects to to a page that says: “Sign up today to try Home Chef’s Fresh and Easy plan”.
I wonder if Kroger paid Yucaipa for the Fresh & Easy trademark/domain name.

Also, Home Chef is delivering kids meals, well meal kits with a Bluey theme, with toys in each meal kit. For those without kids (I don’t have kids, but my disabled sister is into that show), Bluey is an Australian cartoon about a Blue Heeler dog, it’s a show with very strong ratings.
Being Kroger, I’m surprised there aren’t toys of those weird Kroger cartoon emojis in those meal kits instead of Bluey figures.
https://comicbook.com/irl/news/home-che ... -meal-kit/

[storewanderer]

If only the products of "Home Chef" tasted better...

[rwsandiego]

If only the products of "Home Chef" tasted better...

The only things that looked more tired than Fry's stores were the Home Chef meals.

[storewanderer]

If only the products of "Home Chef" tasted better...

The only things that looked more tired than Fry's stores were the Home Chef meals.

The Harris Teeter program "Fresh Foods Market" looked a lot better than Home Chef... tasted better at Harris Teeter too (not excellent, but better).

The Safeway Ready Meals program doesn't look any better than Home Chef but it has way more SKUs and appears to have far more waste. Then again they are divesting that brand to C&S so they must realize that.

These programs failed in the 90's and will fail again.

[retailfanmitchell019]

The Harris Teeter program "Fresh Foods Market" looked a lot better than Home Chef... tasted better at Harris Teeter too (not excellent, but better).

The Safeway Ready Meals program doesn't look any better than Home Chef but it has way more SKUs and appears to have far more waste. Then again they are divesting that brand to C&S so they must realize that.

These programs failed in the 90's and will fail again.

Albertsons definitely failed with the Plated meal kits, those only lasted two years.

[storewanderer]

The Harris Teeter program "Fresh Foods Market" looked a lot better than Home Chef... tasted better at Harris Teeter too (not excellent, but better).

The Safeway Ready Meals program doesn't look any better than Home Chef but it has way more SKUs and appears to have far more waste. Then again they are divesting that brand to C&S so they must realize that.

These programs failed in the 90's and will fail again.

Albertsons definitely failed with the Plated meal kits, those only lasted two years.

It is strange Safeway launched Ready Meals instead of trying to re-launch Plated.

I'm not sure when these stores will give up on these programs and quit tolerating the shrink. When they work at all it is always in a very limited number of stores.

Smiths where I shop in one store has a little 4 foot or so cooler of Home Chef ready to heat refrigerated foods (look like frozen meals). These items actually sort of kind of sell, and I don't see them marked down much. The other Smiths locations I go into, I am not sure if they even carry those items at all; if they do, it is very few, and I don't notice them.

The "meal kits" are largely gone.

[veteran+]

The Harris Teeter program "Fresh Foods Market" looked a lot better than Home Chef... tasted better at Harris Teeter too (not excellent, but better).

The Safeway Ready Meals program doesn't look any better than Home Chef but it has way more SKUs and appears to have far more waste. Then again they are divesting that brand to C&S so they must realize that.

These programs failed in the 90's and will fail again.

Albertsons definitely failed with the Plated meal kits, those only lasted two years.

It is strange Safeway launched Ready Meals instead of trying to re-launch Plated.

I'm not sure when these stores will give up on these programs and quit tolerating the shrink. When they work at all it is always in a very limited number of stores.

Smiths where I shop in one store has a little 4 foot or so cooler of Home Chef ready to heat refrigerated foods (look like frozen meals). These items actually sort of kind of sell, and I don't see them marked down much. The other Smiths locations I go into, I am not sure if they even carry those items at all; if they do, it is very few, and I don't notice them.

The "meal kits" are largely gone.

I must say that F&E had ready to heat refrigerated meals that sold like hotcakes. Customers seemed to really love them.

[ClownLoach]

Albertsons definitely failed with the Plated meal kits, those only lasted two years.

It is strange Safeway launched Ready Meals instead of trying to re-launch Plated.

I'm not sure when these stores will give up on these programs and quit tolerating the shrink. When they work at all it is always in a very limited number of stores.

Smiths where I shop in one store has a little 4 foot or so cooler of Home Chef ready to heat refrigerated foods (look like frozen meals). These items actually sort of kind of sell, and I don't see them marked down much. The other Smiths locations I go into, I am not sure if they even carry those items at all; if they do, it is very few, and I don't notice them.

The "meal kits" are largely gone.

I must say that F&E had ready to heat refrigerated meals that sold like hotcakes. Customers seemed to really love them.

F&E did a great job with those. That was what kept me going to the stores.

[SamSpade]

I must say that F&E had ready to heat refrigerated meals that sold like hotcakes. Customers seemed to really love them.

A close friend of mine that claims he can't even boil water, this was why he went to F&E in Arizona all the time. He now largely subsists off microwave fare from Target or other stores where click and collect is offered (too lazy to try the Trader Joe's stuff that requires a little bit of hand holding/in-store shopping).

[rwsandiego]

...I'm not sure when these stores will give up on these programs and quit tolerating the shrink. When they work at all it is always in a very limited number of stores...

My nearby Safeway, located on the fringe of Downtown Phoenix where several affluent neighborhoods meet along a major, well-traveled, east-west arterial street (McDowell Rd) just north of the principal freeway (I-10), has ready-to-cook entrees, pre-cut vegetables/vegetable kits (think a sprig of rosemary, some garlic, and some squash), and the occasional ready-to-cook complete meal. They sell well. Well enough, in fact, that the hot wing bar was removed in favor of a large display of these things. They aren't branded, just prepared ingredients in heavy-duty foil-like trays, much like the ready-to-cook Publix main courses. They are prepared in-store (like Publix), are very good and generally sell out by 7:00 PM.

The other local Safeways don't carry them (or carry a very limited quantity) because they didn't sell. Just depends on the store.