Recipe Box Market Report

What is this Recipe Box Market performance report about?

In an age where spare time is in short supply and convenience is key, food and recipe subscription boxes are becoming increasingly popular. Recipe boxes is a service which provides all the ingredients to make a certain meal delivered to your door, meaning all you need to do is cook it. Minimal planning and preparation required but all the benefits of a well-balanced, nutritious diet. For those who can afford it, this service can shave off hours in the week spent shopping and wondering what to have for dinner.

We’ve looked at the top five sites in this small market to see what they’re doing well and how they could improve. Our dataset does go further than this, so if you’d like to discuss your own metrics, please get in touch.

Organic growth for the Recipe Box Market

This market has grown 18% year on year overall for organic visibility. Visibility across the market is predominantly low, but the improvements seen across the sites shows that there has been increased attention towards SEO in the industry.

The outlook has been mostly positive for the top five recipe subscription box sites:

• abelandcole.co.uk (+152%)
• gousto.co.uk (-2%)
• riverford.co.uk (+18%)
• hellofresh.co.uk (-18%)
• simplycook.com (+64%)

Abel & Cole has done a fantastic job going from 4^th to 1^st place for visibility this year.

Recipe Box Winners

Across the board we saw some amazing wins but also some pretty big losses for visibility:

Winners:

Recipe Box Losers

Losers:

Google Trends

The term ‘recipe box’ (search volume, 3,600) has had a 50% increase in searches over the last 5 years. Peaks tend to happen in January which is unsurprising considering the ‘new year, new me’ mentality that people often adopt towards foods and dieting as their new year’s resolution.

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Vegetable boxes are also becoming more popular, with ‘veg box’ gaining around 2,400 searches a month and ‘veg box delivery’ getting 1,000.

Wonky veg boxes were all over the news when Asda launched theirs in February 2016. This caused a huge spike in searches.

With sustainability, fair trade and a more prominent consciousness about where our food is coming from, we could also see an increase in ‘organic’ searches over the coming years. Searches for ‘organic veg box’ (search volume, 880) have increased by just over 10% in the last 12 months. Again, this peaked between 30^th December and 5^th January – new year’s resolution time.

Social – a recipe for success

Subscription box services, regardless of what they deliver, exist solely online. So, it’s more important for these companies to have a strong online presence.

Social media is the perfect place to build an audience, shout about what you do and utilise customer testimonials to prove you’re as good as you say you are.

Compared to some industries, it looks as though these recipe box subscription suppliers understand the importance of social which is reflected in their number of brand searches per month and owned social scores.

HelloFresh is smashing social. Their feeds are packed with tips on how to make certain foods, including the ingredients for different sauces, as well as loads of mouth-watering pictures and are definitely one to keep an eye on.

They make great use of their Instagram story highlights which has different sections including ‘Blog’, ‘Menu’ and ‘Inspiration’ to tailor to an individual’s intent. They also have a section called ‘Suppliers’ which helps customers to see where they source their products from – a huge trust signal to users so they know that they are getting high quality food.

They do have a personalised hashtag, #HelloFreshSnaps, but they don’t seem to post many pictures from their customers. Including more customer pictures not only encourages people to engage but also proves that people are happy with the service.

Gousto is next on the social list. They post similarly appetising pictures, but they also go further in promoting their service with special offers such as ‘invite a friend’ schemes where you’ll both save money.

They also repost influencer images and videos which opens up Gousto to thousands, potentially millions more followers. Collaborating with influencers can be a fantastic way of getting your name out there and promoting your service.

Whatever your approach to social, always remember to keep your brand tone of voice consistent, provide unique content, utilise influencer influence and use this space to show testimonials from real customers.

Speedy meals, speedier sites

If your site is slow, nobody will want to stick around. Page speed has emerged as one of the most important site metrics and, therefore, should be a big priority for recipe box subscription sites.

We tested our top five sites for page speed on desktop and mobile. You can see the comparison in the full report, but here is the top five overall:

1. abelandcole.co.uk
2. simplycook.com
3. hellofresh.co.uk
4. riverford.co.uk
5. gousto.co.uk

Improving your page speed can improve rankings across your site, which can increase click-through rate and, in turn, sales.

How much does this report cost?

Just like all of our reports – this report is free! We aim to provide competitive analysis to brands so they can make their own marketing decisions. Feel free to fill out the form at the top of this page so that you can claim your free recipe box market report today.

Where is my brand?

Don’t worry if you can’t find your brand, get in touch with us and we can send a custom recipe box market report just for you!

To speak to us about page speed, keywords, visibility or anything else, contact us today. Alternatively, start a live chat.