Dinner with your newspaper, NYT dines out

MAY 6, 2016
AAP
The New York Times, which has delivered newspapers for decades, now wants to deliver food to reader’s door steps.
The newspaper publisher has partnered with Chef’d, a meal kit delivery company, to ship boxes of uncooked food based on recipes from The New York Times Cooking site and app.
Customers cook up the meals on their own, using step-by-step recipes that come in the boxes.
The New York Times, which is licensing its brand to Chef’d, said the meals will go on sale this summer.
Customers will be able to order meal kits anytime they want, or subscribe to receive weekly boxes. A box that can make meals for two people typically costs around $US30 ($A40) on Chef’d.
The deal is another way for The New York Times to boost revenue outside of its print business.
The New York company also sells tickets to its conferences and hawks posters, maps and jewellery online.
Revenue from those types of endeavours rose 6.3 per cent to $US95 million last year, while revenue from advertising fell 3.6 per cent to $US638.7 million. Circulation revenue rose 1 per cent to $US845.5 million.
Meal kits have exploded in recent years as competition heats up.
People around the world spent $US1.5 billion on meal kits last year, with less than half of that coming from the US, according to research group Technomic. The US market is expected to grow to as much as $US6 billion by 2020, Technomic said.
Chef’d, based in El Segundo, California, was founded a year ago. It has similar deals with other publishers, including fitness magazine Men’s Health.