The Good Kitchen is raising a Crowd SAFE at a $18 million valuation with a 15% discount. This price represents a roughly 4.4x revenue multiple from The Good Kitchen’s $4.06 million in 2020 revenues. That’s a fair revenue multiple, particularly given the additional value derived from The Good Kitchen’s partnership with Tom Brady’s TB12. The TB12 partnership is a major differentiator for The Good Kitchen, and Tom Brady’s star power is worth a good deal on top of The Good Kitchen’s traction. As a result, The Good Kitchen’s price rating is very strong. 

The US market for prepared meal delivery was valued at $7.65 billion last year, and it’s expected to nearly double to $15.6 billion by 2027. That market estimate includes both prepared meal delivery (like The Good Kitchen) and meal kit delivery like Blue Apron and HelloFresh. It’s difficult to estimate the market opportunity for prepared meals alone, but it’s worth noting that The Good Kitchen’s ready-made frozen meals could also take a slice of the frozen single-serve dinner market, which makes up an additional $1 billion.

The market for prepared meal delivery is only moderately sized at present, but it’s growing rapidly. As more Americans embrace the convenience of food delivery (a trend furthered by the COVID-19 pandemic), The Good Kitchen’s attractiveness as a healthy meal option will continue to grow. Therefore, the company’s market rating is above average. 

The Good Kitchen was founded by Amber Lewis, who spun the business out of a more localized meal delivery service started at her crossfit gym. Before entering the food industry, Lewis spent roughly a decade in various sales and business development roles at small businesses. She founded The Good Kitchen in 2011 and has since expanded and rebranded the business to prioritize a nationwide direct-to-consumer approach. 

The Good Kitchen team also includes CFO Cass Ward. Ward holds an MBA from Queens University of Charlotte and has 20 years of experience in financial management and entrepreneurship. However, Ward does not seem to be devoted to The Good Kitchen full time. He is the co-founder of a separate structural design business and doesn’t list The Good Kitchen on his LinkedIn profile. 

Beyond the C-suite, The Good Kitchen team includes Vice President (VP) of Operations Tammy Hall, VP of Brand Carter Lewis, and roughly six other mid- to junior-level team members. Hall’s experience prior to The Good Kitchen was mostly in sales. Her most recent position was VP of sales at a management consulting group. Carter Lewis is Amber Lewis’ husband and leverages his decade of advertising and art direction experience to lead marketing efforts for The Good Kitchen. 

The Good Kitchen team is relatively well-balanced across operations, finance, and marketing, but neither the company’s founder nor its key team members have deep or well-credentialed business experience. The team also lacks specific industry expertise in the food industry or direct-to-consumer delivery services. Therefore, The Good Kitchen’s team score is one of its lowest. 

The Good Kitchen is devoted to producing healthy, whole-food meals that are sustainable for both people and the planet. The company’s ambitious mission is to “change the way people think about food.” It intends to fulfill that mission by offering farm-to-table meals derived from environmentally friendly regenerative agriculture. The Good Kitchen is more focused on the mission of health than most other meal kits or prepared meal delivery services. 

However, this is an extremely crowded industry, and plenty of companies promote their health benefits to some degree. The entire point of most meal kit services is to help consumers eat healthier. HelloFresh, for instance, offers “pre-portioned ingredients straight from the farm.” Many consumers might not see a strong difference between The Good Kitchen’s positioning and that of more mainstream meal delivery services. Instead, they might notice more of a difference in price. The Good Kitchen meals are roughly $15 per serving, which is almost twice the cost of the bigger companies’ offerings. 

All in all, The Good Kitchen is not particularly differentiated from competitors. The company also lacks a strong competitive moat of intellectual property or intrinsic brand value. While The Good Kitchen’s partnership with Tom Brady’s TB12 is certainly unique, it doesn’t prevent consumers from finding similar meals at lower prices. As a result, The Good Kitchen’s differentiation rating is very low.

The Good Kitchen has been in business for almost 10 years, but the company has evolved significantly from its humble beginnings as a local meal delivery service. The company as it’s known today really started in 2016, when Amber Lewis’ local paleo meal prep service rebranded and relaunched with nationwide ambitions. Since then, The Good Kitchen has grown steadily. The company brought in roughly $3.45 million in revenue in 2019 and grew revenue by 17.6% year-over-year to hit $4.06 million in 2020. The business is still pre-profit.

Beyond revenue growth, The Good Kitchen shows several other positive signs of a stable, growing business. The company has raised $1.6 million from angel investors so far. It has also forged a distinctive partnership with Tom Brady’s TB12, a company focused on promoting high performance and healthy living. The superstar quarterback promotes TB12 constantly, and The Good Kitchen is TB12’s signature provider of prepared meals. “TB12 Performance Meals,” as they’re called, are sold directly from TB12’s website (in addition to The Good Kitchen’s own site). Thanks in part to this traction, The Good Kitchen has served more than one million meals in the last five years. 

The Good Kitchen boasts support from outside investors and a major partnership with Tom Brady. Add those successes to decent year-over-year revenue growth, and The Good Kitchen seems to be a relatively high-performing business. As such, the company’s performance rating is well above average.

An investment in The Good Kitchen isn’t incredibly risky, but there are some key areas of uncertainty that prospective investors should recognize. First, The Good Kitchen is carrying a good deal of debt in the form of loans (roughly $2 million in total). Gross margins in 2019 were very low, with the cost of goods sold almost equalling income. The Good Kitchen seems to have turned this around a bit in 2020, but gross margin still sits at just 29%. In addition, The Good Kitchen team isn’t particularly experienced. The company is also operating in a very competitive industry and a market that hasn’t hit maturity yet.

The meal delivery space is difficult to succeed in. Blue Apron has been a case study in the supply chain issues, high customer acquisition costs, and intense competition that plague companies delivering fresh meals. While The Good Kitchen has built a solid business thus far, some of the same issues don’t seem to be far off. The company plans to bring manufacturing in-house, stating that it’s had “quality issues with co-packers.” Growth is steady but not explosive, and The Good Kitchen might need to begin spending more just to bring in new customers. That’s a concern, given that the company’s gross profit margin is already pretty low. 

Some of these potential problems could be mitigated with a deeply experienced leadership team, but The Good Kitchen is led by a first-time entrepreneur without expertise in high-growth startups. As such, there’s reason to be concerned that The Good Kitchen’s growth will plateau, limiting return potential for investors. 

The Good Kitchen has strong traction, with more than one million meals served and more than $4 million in revenue last year. Customer reviews seem to be positive, and The Good Kitchen brand is clearly resonating with those seeking convenient, top-notch meals. 

The Good Kitchen’s partnership with Tom Brady’s TB12 is a big win. Tom Brady has spent years building his brand as a high-performance athlete who seemingly defies age, and his company is likely to continue growing (particularly when Brady retires and can devote more of his time to business). The fact that The Good Kitchen’s wagon is hooked to that buzzy brand with strong growth potential is a great sign. 

The best case for The Good Kitchen investors is for the company to get acquired, which isn’t unusual in the meal delivery space. Nestlé acquired Freshly in late 2020, around the same time that HelloFresh absorbed a competitor, Factor75. There are several potential acquirers for The Good Kitchen, from larger competitors to grocery chains and lifestyle brands (like TB12). The Good Kitchen investors stand to gain from an acquisition like this, particularly given the reasonable price of this raise. 

The Good Kitchen is a prepared meal delivery company offering high-quality, healthy meals sent straight to customers’ doors. The Good Kitchen prioritizes sustainable agriculture and transparent ingredient sourcing and offers meals intentionally designed for diets like paleo, Whole30, and more. Customers have enjoyed more than one million meals over the last five years, and The Good Kitchen raked in more than $4 million in revenue last year. The company is also the exclusive meal provider for Tom Brady’s TB12 performance brand. 

On the other hand, The Good Kitchen isn’t growing explosively and faces the same stiff competition that all meal delivery startups have navigated over the past several years. The Good Kitchen’s health-focused pitch isn’t very well differentiated from other companies. With its premium prices, the company might lose customers to less expensive alternatives from better-established brands. Therefore, The Good Kitchen has been rated a Neutral Deal. 

For questions regarding the KingsCrowd staff pick or ratings for this company, please reach out to support@kingscrowd.com.