With Marley Spoon, Martha Stewart Is Bringing Dinner To Your Doorstep

Image: Martha Stewart

The Queen of the Kitchen, otherwise known as Martha Stewart, is about to help make cooking dinner much easier. Sequential Brands Group Inc. (NASDAQ:SQBG) , the company that bought Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia last year, has struck up a partnership with fast-growing meal kit company Marley Spoon.

With the deal, Marley Spoon will be entirely rebranded under the Martha Stewart name, and will be called Martha & Marley Spoon. Now, all of the company’s portioned dinners for two or four people will be based on Stewart’s own recipes, which there are tens of thousands.

"Families are busier than ever, and it is incredibly important that everyone has the ability to cook wholesome dinners that can maximize family time together every night of the week," Stewart said in a statement.

Financial details of the partnership have yet to be disclosed.

Like other meal kit delivery companies, subscribers of the new Martha & Marley Spoon will get a box shipped to their home with one of Stewart’s recipes, containing pre-measured raw meat, fish, veggies, and even spices. Prep and cook time is less than 40 minutes, the company said. You also get to choose which recipes you would like to try out; each week, or 10 days before your delivery day, you’ll receive an email with meal choices.

Price-wise, Martha & Marley Spoon meals, depending on how many meals a customer chooses, are definitely not cheap. Despite the convenience, it is still cheaper to cook for yourself, even if that requires more time and effort. At Marley Spoon, a two-person box costs $10.25 per serving, or $61.50 per week; a family box—for two adults and two children—cost $8.90 per serving, or $106.80 per week.

According to ABC News, “Ready-to-cook meal kits have proliferated in recent years and have been popular with city folk who want to skip the supermarket and still whip up a meal at home. People around the world spent $1.5 billion on meal kits last year, with less than half of that coming from the U.S. [citing research group Technomic].” The industry is expected to grow by $6 billion over the next four years.

Stewart is just the latest famous name to enter the market. Marley Spoon’s rival HelloFresh tapped celebrity chef Jamie Oliver for its commercials, while cookbook author Mark Bittman partnered with vegan meal kit company Purple Carrot last year. Stewart’s name should help Marley Spoon stand out from the increasingly crowded meal kit crowd, which includes other competitors like Blue Apron, Plated, and even Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) .

Marley Spoon has been delivering meals in the U.S. for about a year now, and in Europe and Australia for the past 18 months. For now, though, the company will not be adding Stewart’s name to its international operations, but it is still a future possibility. "We're starting now here in the U.S. because everybody knows Martha," said Marley Spoon CEO Fabian Siegel. "But why not, in the future, try it out somewhere else? I think that's something we'll look at."