Why are so many Meal prep companies like Dhaniyas on the rise?

Cooking is fun and many of us love to cook, but only some love to cook 3 meals a day, the rest enjoy cooking when they want to cook not when they HAVE to cook. So read it in this context.

Some background first, there are several hundred meal prep brands today and are fulfilling a essential part of our day to day need the home meal. Some companies provide pre-measured ingredient kits and ask you to cook, while others do the cooking and deliver the food.

Yes this is a food site, but I am going to give you a lesson on economics to better understand this trend. This is not new, we have seen these over and over and it’s called “specialization of trades”. Our ancestors were more self-sufficient than us, in terms of growing their food and cooking and building their own huts and much more. But fast forward today and how many of those do we do now on our own…. very few. A spoon of cereal (ready made) requires millions of people to specialize in what they do best, from farming, transporting, wholesaling, retailing to just list a few to get it to your table, so that you can specialize on what you are best at.

But most of the households still cook our own food, which requires planning a week, shopping groceries, cutting, cooking, storing excess, washing pots and by the time you are done its time for the next meal. So imagine the opportunity cost of all that time you spent doing the above instead of doing something you are best at and that’s where the need for home meals delivery comes. Millions of homes today are shifting to this trend and hence these hundreds of businesses like Dhaniyas are starting to fill the need.

As a global economy in whole this is a great trend as it allows us to increase productivity, which is a key ingredient of GDP.

If you are more interested read some articles or books like “The wealth of Nations”.

Quote: “a city with specialized occupations would be more prosperous than a community of self-sufficient individuals” – {Plato, in The republic}

Post comments and discussions, I don’t have all the answers but our fellow readers may.