Meal-kit platform founded by Hamilton man brings restaurant food to your table
A Hamilton man is bringing the freshness of restaurant food directly to your dinner table.
Chefdrop, a meal-kit platform with its roots in Hamilton, was founded a year ago with the goal to provide a new alternative to restaurants impacted by the pandemic and reach more customers across southern Ontario.
Adam Teolis, Chefdrop's founder and Hamilton resident, told The Spectator he noticed Toronto restaurant-goers were moving back to the suburbs and weren't able to access a lot of their favourite restaurants downtown.
Restaurants were really struggling to find new ways of growing their business or competing with all of the other options that people had for the delivery side. The best way for these people to get access (to the restaurants) was to find a solution where businesses could essentially get their product further," explained Teolis.
Chefdrop's plans for boosting their roster of Hamilton restaurants are in the works for this summer but customers already have the option of ordering locally with meal kits from Ray's Food and Liquor.
Our goal is that Hamilton restaurants can then be experienced across all of Ontario or even shipped nationwide," said Teolis.
Customers have the option to choose from a variety of meal kits prepared by popular chefs and restaurants across Toronto. From appetizers to full-course meals and worldwide cuisines. The meal package includes all the necessary ingredients and instructions, and promises to bring fun back to cooking.
Teolis told The Spectator that Chefdrop offers a product that doesn't sacrifice the integrity of the dish. One of the big differences with Chefdrop and other meal kits is that most of the food is actually prepped and already cooked, 70 per cent of the work is already done," he said.
The price depends on the restaurant and meal kit of choice. It can vary between $34 for vegetarian fresh rolls from Nuoc Mam that serves two to three people or up to $262 for a six-course meal from Real Sports, a game-day feast that serves seven to eight people.
Price point also tends to be a great factor. So rather than all the added fees, and delivery costs, if you meet certain kind of order thresholds, we include the delivery costs. There's no HST because meal kits aren't subject to it, which is another cost savings," said Teolis.
According to 2020 research from Agri-Food Analytics Lab (AAL) at Dalhousie University, more Canadians are getting food delivered to their homes, which grew the meal-kit industry by $400 million in that year alone.
Beatriz Baleeiro is a reporter at The Spectator. bbaleeiro@torstar.ca