New year, new goals

What meal kit brands are rethinking about cold chain protection

The start of a new year often brings a reset moment for meal kit businesses.

Peak trading has passed. Promotional intensity eases. Teams finally have space to look back at what worked, what creaked, and where pressure showed up behind the scenes.

For many meal kit operators, that reflection lands in a familiar place. Cold chain performance.

When everything runs smoothly, thermal packaging barely gets a mention. Boxes arrive on time. Ingredients stay fresh. Customers stay happy.

When it does not, the impact is immediate. Complaints rise. Refunds follow. Trust is harder to win back.

That is why the new year has become a natural point for reviewing thermal protection strategies.

Fresh food leaves very little room for error

Meal kits operate in a narrow window.

Ingredients are perishable. Delivery timelines are tight. Ambient conditions are unpredictable. There is no buffer for extended delays or temperature drift.

In practice, that means cold chain performance has to be consistent rather than impressive on paper.

Many meal kit brands discover that their challenges are not about insulation or box design alone. They sit in the behaviour of the gel packs inside. How they release energy. How long they hold temperature during the last mile. How they cope when deliveries arrive later than planned.

Small variations can have an outsized effect on freshness.

When growth exposes hidden weaknesses

As meal kit businesses scale, distribution patterns change.

More delivery routes. Wider geographic reach. Higher order density. Different courier partners. Different delivery windows.

Thermal packaging choices that worked well at one scale can start to feel stretched at another. Not because they were wrong, but because the operating environment has shifted.

The new year is often when teams realise that what supported last year’s volumes may not support this year’s ambitions.

That is when questions start to surface.

Are we confident our gel packs perform the same way every time?
Do they cope with longer transit times?
Are we seeing seasonal variation in complaints?
Do we have enough data to explain what happens when deliveries run late?

These are not theoretical concerns. They are directly linked to customer experience and margin protection.

Cost control without compromising freshness

Meal kit margins are under constant pressure.

Packaging is a visible cost. Gel packs are often treated as an easy place to economise. But the true cost of cold chain failure rarely sits on a procurement spreadsheet.

It shows up in refunds, reships, wasted product, and increased customer service workload. It shows up in churn.

As brands head into a new year with ambitious retention and growth targets, many are reframing how they view thermal packaging.

Less as a consumable. More as a safeguard.

Consistency, predictability, and reliability become more valuable than chasing the lowest unit price.

What leading meal kit teams are prioritising this year

Across the sector, there is a noticeable shift in focus.

Meal kit operators are spending more time understanding how gel packs behave in real conditions, not just controlled testing. How they perform during delivery delays. How they interact with different ingredient mixes. How they respond to warmer or colder weeks.

They are also looking for suppliers who understand food distribution realities, not just thermal theory.

Suppliers who can talk openly about trade-offs. Who can support trials. Who can help align packaging performance with operational reality rather than selling a generic solution.

A calmer way to approach change

Not every review leads to a full overhaul.

For many meal kit brands, the most valuable outcome of a new year review is clarity. Confirming that the current solution still fits. Identifying small adjustments that reduce risk. Gaining better visibility into where margins are being quietly eroded.

At Thergis, we work with meal kit teams who want fewer surprises during the year ahead. That usually starts with understanding how boxes actually move, not how they are supposed to.

Sometimes the answer is refinement. Sometimes it is reassurance. Occasionally, it is a different approach.

All of those outcomes support stronger planning.

Setting the tone for the year ahead

The new year is not about chasing perfection. It is about setting realistic goals and building systems that support them.

For meal kit brands, that often means fewer customer complaints, less waste, more predictable delivery outcomes, and greater confidence during seasonal spikes.

Cold chain protection plays a quiet but central role in all of that.

Getting it right does not guarantee success. But getting it wrong can undermine everything else.

As meal kit businesses set their goals for the year ahead, many are choosing to start with the fundamentals. Freshness. Consistency. Reliability.

And making sure the cold chain is ready for whatever the year brings.