‘Rapid growth’ for meals on wheels despite cost of living pressures

Time poor parents are continuing to choose convenience over cost, despite rising inflation and hiked up interest rates, giving kid-friendly ready meal company Go! Kidz’s expansion plans a big thumbs up.

The Sydney-based company announced its partnership with one of Australia’s largest food manufacturers, Kitchen Food Company, early last month, as the ready meal sector continues to boom post lockdown. Data from Ibisworld shows that the sector has grown at an average of 3.3 per cent a year over the past decade.

Founder of Go! Kidz, Jeremy Crooks, said it was his experience as a parent trying to get his kids to eat more vegetables that prompted the former Google head of commerce to start exploring healthy child-friendly options in the sector.

“I really thought it was the responsibility of food producers to ensure that the food they’re making has at least some degree of nourishment for customers.”

Since its launch in April 2020, the company currently delivers to over 3,000 customers and is stocked in 80 independent supermarkets. Crooks says that on average, customers order around 15 to 20 dishes at a time, which can last between one and three weeks.

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“We are still a relatively small business … [the partnership] allows us to take advantage of [Kitchen Food’s supply chain and cost structure] so we can try to keep our endpoint to the customer as low as we can,” Crooks said of the recent partnership.

Kitchen Food has factories in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland and claims to produce an excess of 300,000 fresh food units per week.

“We naturally believe in the convenience space in general, and we think that Go! Kidz business has something to offer that is relatively unique in market,” said Daniel Borenstein, co-CEO of Kitchen Foods Group.