How to Grow Your Customer Base Through Meal Prep Business Marketing?

Preparing delicious meals and delivering them to customers is a whole other experience. Meal prep businesses don’t just delight customers with home-styled food, but also satisfy their souls when serving healthy meals. There are a lot of meal prep companies and with time, they are increasing in number as customers have started ordering food through a meal prep delivery service.

A survey by Hunter shows that 54% of consumers in the US cooked more food than before, and 22% went for prepared meal kits more often. The reason why more people have started turning toward pre-cooked meals is the availability of homemade food in just a few clicks instead of wasting time and money at a restaurant. Many millennials prefer to cook or order healthy food at home rather than go for unhealthy food served at restaurants. A meal prep company is all they need in order to enjoy fresh food delivered to their doorstep.  

So, if you already have such a business, but don’t know how to grow your customer base through meal prep business marketing, this blog will help you get started!

Why Should You Have a Marketing Plan for Your Meal Prep Business?

The significant growth seen in the meal prep industry has brought people with an online meal prep business to the forefront of marketing their services. As per a Statista report, the worldwide revenue of meal kit delivery services is expected to reach USD 7.6 billion in 2024. 

So having a marketing strategy in place will help you ride the wave of food delivery business trends of 2024. When you have a business model that works on the necessary areas of customer satisfaction, it can turn potential customers into loyal ones. 

Let’s look at a few reasons why marketing is important when providing meal prep services online.

• Covering specific demographics

  A crucial point in increasing your customer base is understanding the demographics you can cater to or expand towards. Knowing the regions from where people order meal kits through a meal prep business online will help you grow beyond the locality you’re currently serving. A meal prep website and marketing strategy will help you understand this. 

• Attracting new customers 

  

  Although people are done with meal planning and wish to save time by ordering them through a meal prep business, they are always curious about what differentiates you from another prep business. The more you promote your business, the more target customers you attract. 

• Tough competition

  As you know, more and more meal prep businesses are making their way into the market. So you need a business idea that can make you stand out. While traditional methods may work a little, marketing strategies when executed properly will shoot up your business growth like never before.

How to Get More Customers for Your Meal Prep Delivery Business

In a world of digitization and growing competition, an actionable plan is key for you to stand out and deliver an incredible customer experience. Moreover; it shouldn’t be a static plan that you make once. You need to regularly update it by analyzing the areas of improvement and needs of your ideal clients.

If you are stuck with low order volume and wondering how to market a meal prep delivery business, you may need to dig into all the details. While you may have a website developed, a meal prep software, or a specialized app to take online orders, you still need to work on the below factors to really grow your meal prep business:

• Conduct a situational analysis

  

  Doing a SWOT analysis, i.e., finding out the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, can help you pinpoint the areas you need to work on. 

  It allows you to identify your competitors and gives insights into their strengths, weaknesses, and operations. This analysis will help you determine what’s making them grow and give your meal prep business a competitive edge.

• Create a profile to understand your target market

  As we saw earlier, knowing your potential customers’ needs and demographics can go a long way toward understanding them. Check out things like the restaurants and the type of cuisine they like to eat along with characteristics like their age, profession, and income level. This will help you plan the menu and price list accordingly. 

• Buying Motivation

  It is crucial to know why customers prefer to buy meals online rather than preparing themselves. Are they occupied with busy routines, looking for healthy lifestyle menus, checking out promotional offers, or wanting to savor a scrumptious meal? Based on the answers, you can design your menu that fits everything in one place. 

5 Essential Tips to Take Your Meal Prep Business to the Next Level

Now that you have everything in place and are ready to deliver mouth-watering meals to your customers, let’s get into “Show-time.” 

Here are the tips that’ll multiply your orders and bring your meal prep business into the Spotlight:

1. Referral reward

   The moment someone suggests your meal prep services to a friend, family member, or colleague; it automatically targets those people. So utilize this opportunity by offering a great experience along with a reward or a discount they can avail for referring you. You can also ask your relatives and friends to spread awareness of your business through social media platforms.

2. Google search optimization

   

   Let’s say you have added your services to Google, but your name isn’t appearing when people search for a meal prep service on it. This means that your page isn’t correctly optimized in the search engine. To get visibility across your target customers, ensure that your SEO techniques are well-applied. 

3. Social media marketing 

   People spend a lot of time searching for offers and discounts on Facebook and Instagram. So, it is crucial that you have a page on these social media channels. Along with engaging with your customers, you can also place advertisements to reach your target customers. Showcasing yourself through regular updates, offers, and behind-the-scenes posts is a good way to build trust. 

4. Email marketing 

   

   The main purpose of this age-old strategy is to target customers based on their email IDs collected while they sign up or register for your services. You would have seen many websites asking for emails to register and get discounts for first-time visitors. A perfect way to fetch customer data for sending promotional emails!

   While email marketing, focus on what would make them open the email so that it doesn’t go into the SPAM folder. An eye-catchy subject line and a message that generates an undeniable motivation to order from you would be a great way to go.

5. Marketing with text or WhatsApp messages 

   This one may seem to be going nowhere, but when it comes to marketing, why leave an option? These texts are a way to be “seen” by customers, given that you are sending crisp messages that are adding some value. Along with text messages, businesses are also using WhatsApp marketing to generate more revenue. The more channels you use to market your business, the more possibility of conversion. 

Make Time-sensitive Meal-kit deliveries with Routes Optimized through Upper

As a meal prep business owner, it is extremely important to provide the best food ordering experience to your buyers. The hassle of focusing on your business when you have a tonne of buyers waiting for their orders can be frustrating. 

With Upper, you can schedule unlimited deliveries and find optimized routes with less time and effort. No matter what the number of food deliveries is, it directs your drivers to the most efficient routes.

Here’s how Upper maximizes food deliveries and customer experience:

1. Optimizes routes instantly

   You don’t need to waste time in manual work when you have a way to find cost-effective routes in a few seconds. In case of a driver’s unavailability, it lets you auto-assign routes to another one instantly. With only a few clicks, you can organize route plans in advance and leave the back-office workload to rest.

2. Sends real-time notifications to meal-kit buyers

   Why keep your customers waiting or be doubtful about their deliveries? With this feature, you can alert your customers with automated notifications so they can be prepared to receive their orders. The customers will receive notifications through email or text as per their preference. 

3. Collects electronic proof of delivery for successful orders

   You can always rest assured that your customers are getting timely deliveries. Drivers can make notes, collect e-signatures, click photos and even add their notes for every order they deliver. It boosts customer experience and accountability as everyone remains informed about the parcel. 

Explore more about how Upper can reduce the paperwork by signing up for a 7 days free trial today!

Conclusion

Being a delivery business owner that satisfies customers with healthy and tasty meals, you want to make sure you are making use of the time efficiently. It doesn’t just take a freshly prepared meal with a garnished and well-packed parcel for a meal prep business to succeed. And if you haven’t already started with this exciting and delightful food delivery business, this may be the right time to start. 

With Upper by your side, you can relax about the route planning and dispatch of meal kit orders as it makes managing deliveries buttery smooth! It will simplify your daily delivery operations, reduce costs, and enable a rich experience for both your delivery drivers and customers. Take the 7 days free trial of Upper Route Planner to make deliveries on time and start planning routes on the go.