True Food Innovations, based in Newport Beach, California, is launching new products under both its True Chef and Chef’d branded lines of retail meal kits. The new offerings feature fresh, clean label, preservative-free recipes with 55 days of shelf life.
“We are setting the standard for the retail category through innovation, product development and technology; we listened to our retail partners and we developed products to solve their problem, shelf life,” Alan True, True Food founder and CEO.
All recipes in the lines can be prepped and cooked in 15 to 20 minutes. Both True Chef and Chef’d meal kits will be available for nationwide rollout this month, said True.
True Food says it identified shelf life as a key differentiator and absolute requirement for retail meal kits to be commercially viable for nationwide distribution. True Food tasked its R&D, food science and technology teams to develop retail meal kit products with long shelf lives.
True Food Innovations doubled down by recently completing the acquisition of Chef’d, previously valued at $160M.
“Our strategy is to provide retailers with a multi-brand offering with the ability to provide meal kit options based on price, demographics and geography; we have cracked the code that has limited large-scale retail rollouts of fresh meal kits,” said Robert Jones, president of True Food.
True Chef and Chef’d Meal Kits are free from all artificial colors, preservatives and artificial flavors. The kits get their long shelf life from patent-pending formulations and HPP processing which is recognized by both the FDA and USDA as a natural food processing technique.
True Chef and Chef’d Meal Kits are launching in stores nationally throughout 2019.
