MFB is a meal kit provider that assembles around 1.5 million food boxes per year, which are delivered to households in New Zealand.
MFB derives most of its operating revenues from the sale of delivered food boxes in New Zealand.
MFB sources vegetables, meat, dairy and other food products mostly from domestic suppliers that it then assembles and packages into boxes at one of its 3 leased warehouses and assembly centres in Auckland and Christchurch. Boxes are assembled on a weekly rotation and include a number of recipes and all of the required ingredients for the week, excluding pantry essentials. It sells its food boxes under a subscription model whereby customers can choose the number of meals they require for any given week and elect for deliveries on a weekly or fortnightly basis. MFB’s food boxes are delivered by its distribution partner, New Zealand Post, and are marketed and sold under four different brands each with meals differing in quality and ease-of-use:
Meal kit providers are often characterised as low margin and highly competitive with growing pressure from new entrants, changes in consumer preferences, and the adoption of alternative foods and technologies. Companies try to minimise these risks and increase customer revisitation by promoting new recipes and customer loyalty programs while carefully managing their delivered ingredient costs and inventory levels. Specifically, MFB has indicated its near-term focus is to: expand and adjust its food-based offerings to align with changing consumer trends; and leverage its My Food Bag brand into the broader online food and grocery market [1].
MFB competes with a range of other domestic and international meal kit providers such as Hello Fresh of Germany, Woop of New Zealand, and The Kai Box of New Zealand.
MFB has established a national presence and strong channels to market in New Zealand. Going forward, it should continue to benefit from increased sales and economies of scale through organic growth, expanding its product range and geographic presence, optimising its operations and supply chain as well as undertaking complementary and value-accretive acquisitions. Its possible downside commercial risks could include: an inability to adapt to changes in consumer trends; a broader economic slowdown that could affect the propensity of consumers to purchase discretionary food and groceries; erosion of market share and gross margins from other multinational and domestic competitors with greater economies of scale; loss of a key customer, supplier or employee; changes to the availability, quality and delivered price of products and third party supplier costs that are unhedged and cannot be passed on to customers through pricing increases; greater domestic health restrictions and regulations that may increase its compliance costs or prevent it from selling certain products; and any inheritance of undue liabilities or commercial risks through new product offerings, store openings, acquisitions and entrances into new markets.
2021: My Food Bag was founded in New Zealand 2013 as meal kit provider to households in the Wellington region. It soon expanded into other major cities across New Zealand as well as a brief foray into Australia, which proved unsuccessful given the competitiveness in the sector. The business was listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange in 2021 as My Food Bag Group (MFB.NZ), with the proceeds used to pay down debt and buy out existing shareholders. At the time, it was operating three assembly facilities in Auckland and Christchurch and delivering over 1.5 million food boxes per year. It had also launched four different brands, namely My Food Bag, Bargain Box, Fresh Start and MADE