If I were to do a start up right now, I think I would do a meal kit start up (not that I actually know what I’m doing). There’s still a market for it—people really like the kits—it’s the business model that’s the problem. I think the delivery part is where they go wrong. It’s too expensive to cold pack these things every day and deliver them to individual addresses.
I’d try to partner with restaurants to prepare the meal kits. Restaurants have a staff that’s trained to handle food, plus a kitchen to do it safely, and time during the day when they’re not busy. Oh, and they already received regular large food deliveries. Restaurants are well distributed enough that it’s easy enough for people to pick up a kit on the way home from work.
From the point of the startup, there’s not intense capital costs, you just have organize orders and pickups and ensure quality.