Goop Launches Meal Delivery Service In US

LOS ANGELES, United States — Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness lifestyle platform Goop has launched a healthy meal delivery service in Los Angeles, as the category continues to grow amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The virtual restaurant concept known as Goop Kitchen, is on a mission to “accelerate the clean food movement by proving, just as Paltrow did years ago, that whole, unprocessed meals can be both satisfying and convenient, this time brought right to your door with just a few clicks,” said the brand in a statement.

It is “the first of several Goop food concepts, and additional locations will be rolling out throughout the Los Angeles area in the next few months.”

Reflecting the values that have come to be synonymous with the Goop brand, Goop Kitchen’s menu serves up a selection of health-focused gluten-free, vegan-friendly and sustainably sourced dishes, which are all ‘Goop-Certified-Clean’ — meaning they contain no processed sugars, processed foods, gluten, soy, dairy, peanuts or preservatives.

Currently, meals range from $12.25 to $15.95 in price with dishes including a teriyaki chicken bowl, a spring salmon bowl, a chopped salad and a mushroom lettuce wrap, available to order directly from the brand’s website.

Speaking about the decision to expand into the meal delivery market, Noora Raj Brown, SVP of Communications & Brand Marketing at Goop, told Forbes that, “expanding into food delivery feels like a natural step forward” for the brand.

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Adding: “Nutritious, life-simplifying recipes have been a pillar of the Goop brand since Gwyneth Paltrow launched the first newsletter from her kitchen counter over twelve years ago. Since then, the demand for making satisfying, nutrient-dense food convenient has only grown. We are thrilled to launch Goop Kitchen in our hometown of Santa Monica and are looking forward to watching it grow.”

News of the launch follows a spike in growth for the meal delivery market, with the Coronavirus pandemic accelerating adoption across the globe and facilitating a surge in interest from investors.

Towards the close of 2020, Nestlé bet big on the direct-to-consumer recipe box and meal delivery sector, announcing it had scooped a majority stake in UK recipe box service Mindful Chef for an undisclosed fee. The deal closely followed the company’s acquisition of US meal delivery service Freshly in a whopping $1.5 billion deal, consolidating its previous Series C investment in 2017.

Meanwhile, brands including Farmdrop, Allplants, Purple Carrot and Daily Harvest, have seen their sales skyrocket, with UK-based meal delivery company Parsley Box citing this shift in consumer behaviour as fuel for its forthcoming IPO.

According to The Scotsman, the brand, which currently delivers approximately 900,000 products a month turned over £24.4 million in 2020, and as of January 2021, had around 154,000 active customers — a figure that increased by 188 percent from December 2019 to December 2020.

For Goop, its foray into the category follows a number of similar moves by the company that have enabled it to leverage high-growth wellness trends.

The business, which was valued at 250 million dollars in 2018, according to the New York Times, owes much of its success to its ability to tap into the dominant values and behaviours of its audience through what is known as contextual commerce.

“We call ourselves a contextual commerce business,” Paltrow recently told Fashion United.

“We are first and foremost in content, and we use that content to educate – almost like a service. We talk about things we love, we make things we love, and you can buy them on Goop or from other places.”

By creating content, story and resonance around specific markers of wellness, in recent years it has managed to anchor itself within various emerging wellness sectors to generate additional revenue streams — and Goop Kitchen is likely to be no different.