Make a virtue of necessity. The coronavirus is forcing millions and millions of restaurant operators around the world to do this: reinvent themselves, somehow save what can be saved. And so, while anxiously awaiting the possibility of finally reopening the premises to the public (albeit with a thousand worries about reorganizing the spaces, giving up part of the expected turnover), in recent weeks there was a boom in home delivery of food: pizzas, as usual, ethnic restaurants, but also ice cream shops and neighborhood delicatessens thanks to the phenomenon of ghost kitchens, ie restaurants used exclusively for the preparation of fresh dishes to be delivered at home. But now we go further: here the meal kits, or otherwise called food boxes.
In fact, the quarantine, in addition to preventing us from going to the restaurant, has also awakened in many of us the passion for cooking at home. Not for everyone, therefore, the alternative to dining out is to order the same things but have them brought home. Some establishments have understood this and have launched a hybrid formula: home delivery is not a ready dish but precisely a kit of ready-to-use semi-finished products, from gravies to ready-to-eat sauces, from meatballs to vegetable creams, with quick solutions to bring to the table for those who are not too familiar with cooking but still want to try their hand. A sort of evolution of online shopping, if you will: targeted, with products that have a precise destination but which are not already prepared and whose consumption can be staggered over time.
A particularly interesting formula to solve not only the single meal but, if desired, the planning of the whole week, always forced to stay at home and maybe running out of ideas and ingredients to cover all the lunches and dinners. Delivered products can generally be kept in the fridge for five days: these are generally dishes, gravies, sauces to be sautéed in a pan or heated in the microwave, which together make up balanced and complete dishes, available in variable packages. For example, the Off Lunch restaurant in Milan offers from 12 portions of the single kit (49 euros) to 20 portions of the Big Family (75 euros). Or the Blue Apron phenomenon has exploded in America, a meal kit delivery company that has even become a financial case: listed since 2017, in mid-March the value of its shares increased by 600%.
