Going out and procuring your nuts, veggie, and fruit ingredients and then preparing them for your super-smoothies takes a whole lot of time and is not practical for the busy New Yorker. This inconvenience often gets the best of us and we often succumb to the quicker, less healthy option. Daily Harvest addresses this pain and does the dirty work for you. The smoothie ingredient subscription-service mails you the frozen ingredients to your doorstep or apartment step for you to blend in just seconds.
Today we sit down with the Daily Harvest team and learn more about the business and where the super-food industry is going.
Tell us about the product or service.
Daily Harvest is a subscription-based service that delivers whole, superfood-enriched smoothies to your freezer. Just open and blend. None of the prep, all of the victory. Daily Harvest offers 14 flavors developed by a chef and nutritionist team to create nearly effortless and maximally delicious nutrient-dense smoothies, ready in 30 seconds. Each cup includes all of the superfoods and whole fruits and vegetables you need for a tasty and nutritious blend, making it possible to enjoy organic, whole food nutrition as an integral part of your daily lifestyle, without all the work and waste. All produce is picked at the peak of ripeness and farm-frozen, ensuring optimal nutrient preservation.
How is it different?
They currently offer 14 delicious superfood-enriched options developed by their Michelin-trained chef and nutrition team. Each cup includes all of the flash frozen organic superfoods and whole fruits and vegetables you need for a tasty and nutritious smoothie. Daily Harvest makes it possible to enjoy organic, whole food nutrition as an integral part of your daily lifestyle, without all the work and waste.
Daily Harvest is not just another meal delivery company. The smoothie subscription service is on a mission to disrupt the frozen food category. It’s no secret that frozen foods and meals are heavily associated with processed ingredients and no-no preservatives. For most consumers, frozen equates to unhealthy convenience. However, what most people do not know is that unprocessed frozen fruits and vegetables are actually higher in nutrients than most of the fresh produce available in grocery stores and even farmers’ markets. Daily Harvest uses a “farm-frozen” process, where all produce is picked at the peak of ripeness and frozen immediately, ensuring optimal nutrient preservation.
What market are you attacking and how big is it?
Daily Harvest is going after a number of markets, including the make-at-home smoothie and juice category. The overall smoothie market is estimated to be a $2.8B market and growing double digits annually. The majority of this market is making smoothies at home, which is time consuming and requires planning, prepping, skill and can often be wasteful. We deliver a solution that provides true convenience in a superior nutritional format. Consumers currently have limited choices when it comes to making smoothies at home. Similarly, in the workplace, they see an opportunity to provide a nutritionally sound alternative to traditional break room snacks that result in a 4pm slump.
As it is a food delivery service, Daily Harvest is a contender in the food tech space, one that is becoming more and more saturated with different services looking to make grocery shopping and meal-making easier, but not always with high quality ingredients or simple sign-up/delivery models. Daily Harvest is the genius life hack for the uncompromising consumer, providing flexible subscription service, and the easiest and most delicious smoothie you never made.
What is the business model?
Daily Harvest is a direct to consumer subscription business delivering nutrient-dense super food smoothies right to freezers.
What inspired the business?
Founder Rachel Drori is a busy New Yorker, marketing executive, and mom, who founded the company in fall 2015 after realizing the difficulty in finding time to shop, chop, prep and create nutrient-dense and delicious foods. She layered on the pricey must-have superfood of the moment and the bunches of wilted kale sitting unused in her refrigerator, and knew there had to be an easier way to get her daily dose of good. Never one to compromise on nutrition for herself and her family, Rachel set out to create Daily Harvest.
Is smoothie delivery a large enough of a market to built a business around?
Absolutely! Daily Harvest has hit the market at an opportune time. The LOHAS (lifestyles of health & sustainability) market is $130B and growing 13% annually. The functional Superfood market is also a $130B market growing rapidly. Furthermore the online food and beverage market is growing at 21% annual and is estimated to reach $18B in 2018. Daily Harvest sits at the intersection of these three rapidly expanding markets.
What are the milestones that you plan to achieve within six months?
Building upon our existing momentum, we plan to quadruple our business by the end of the year. With that comes a rapid scaling of our production, a build out of our team, and national expansion.
What is the one piece of startup advice that you never got?
The best piece of advice I’ve ever received was from Scott Belsky. I wish he had told me this instead of having to stumble across it on his Instagram feed.
Why did you launch in New York?
I’m a New Yorker and NY is the largest smoothie market in the US.
Where is your favorite bar in the city for an after work drink?
I always defer to Jessica Young, our resident trend spotter and Michelin-trained chef. Our favorite right now is the garden at the Ludlow Hotel.
