Would you be interested in mail order sous vide ready food?

[Reezer]

I've been cooking sous vide at home for a few years now and find it hugely convenient to prepare/cook things in large batches and freeze them in sous vide bags ready to cook from frozen when I want them.

Probably my favorite is burgers. I cook off the onions or shallots (if using) and leave to cool. Mix the meat, garlic powder, salt, sometimes some spices if i feel like then add the cold onions in. Make into huge neat burgers using egg rings and put in sous vide bags. I leave in the freezer for 5 hours or so then fully vacuum seal the now hardish burgers.

Chuck them in the water bath at 57 for 2+ hours and there you go, perfect medium rare, tender as anything tasty tasty burgers. I either blowtorch or chuck in a cast iron pan of bubbling butter to crisp up the outsides.

Anywho, I was wondering if people would be interested in ordering boxes of ready bagged frozen sous vide food...?

Cost wise, my rough calculations indicate I could do quarter pounders for around 70p at supermarket ingredient prices, so probably a fair bit less if I got stuff at the cash and carry. On top of that, sous vide bags, poly boxes, ice and postage would add up to about £10 per order for a 5kg box, add £2 per extra 5kg.

What do people thing of this idea? Would you use a service like this (assuming the food was tasty and arrived in good condition...)?

Thanks

 

[monkeyspank]

it costs me about £8 plus VAT to send anything bigger than a shoebox on a next day service with interlink, and I use them a lot. You might want to check your costings.....add a styrofoam box, dry ice bags, other packaging etc.

good idea though - apart from maybe the fact that people who sous vide would rather prepare stuff themselves - it is hardly convenience food.. I'm sure people would be interested, but it would obviously be a premium service.

 

[Reezer]

The polyboxes I was looking at were < £2 each and claim to keep frozen food well within safe temperatures for 72 hours so I was costing based on the 2 day service but if I do end up needing next day you are right, that will be an additional cost.

Regarding premium quality, I was thinking I could offer organic/grass fed/specialty stuff as long as I can source it with a reasonable turn around. I'd guess organic grass fed welsh black beef would command quite a premium!

Thanks

 

[D.P.]

The problem is as mentioned, people who sous will want to prepare the stuff them selves and most likely not use cheap supermarket meat.

The cost of shipping next day will automatically make things difficult economically.

You will also have sourcing issue, e.g. if you want to do grass fed beef then you would need to acquire fresh and not frozen, so you would need a factory setup that can take a large delivery of fresh butchered meat that is reasonably close to the abattoir and process the lot into packets promptly before freezing. You can't just buy in frozen beef, defrost it, prepare it, refreeze it and ship it out.


Which raises the next issue. You are dealing with food so you will need fairly robust insurance and do all appropriate food hygiene courses and get certificated.This is especially important giving the cooking method which is extremely prone to food poisoning.


And then there is the fact I just cannot imagine anyway who does sous vide would want things like per-frozen burgers, or anything like that.


Then there is the issue that sous vide cooking is extremely rare so your market is increvily small.

Much easier ways to make money if you ask me, e.g. just set up a shop selling sous vide machines, supplies, books, recipes. With the proper marketing you will most likely find yourself with functional business model. If that becomes successful then you could look at prepacked foods.

 

[Johno please?]

Frozen burgers? pffft.

Theres a reason Mcdonalds are not doing as well as they used to, people want fresh ingredients these days, just look at places like Five Guys a year ago they had one place in england.... now, I dunno 20?

 

[Reezer]

Have you ever tried sous vide from frozen? I suspect not if you immediately pfft it. I'm very picky about my burgers and meat in general and I've tested the same batches of meat fresh and frozen at various temperatures and with sous vide it makes no difference. I wouldn't do it for a fine fillet steak but nice fatty burger meat, chicken and tough cuts are perfect.

I suspect your reaction to the idea is fairly typical though so that'll be a challenge to get people to even consider the idea.

Re: the supermarket stuff - I was using supermarket as a price comparison only, I won't eat Tesco meat most of the time, it's been disgusting recently. The meat I've bought from the local wholesaler has always been of very high quality - they have a butcher on site.

 

[Rotty]

If you are talking of selling your own stuff on here the sorry but that would not be allowed

 

[Martynt74]

I think it was Glaucus on here that had looked into selling his own marinades and sauces but found it was generally much more work than benefit when factoring in all the regulations involved.

 

[Glaucus]

I have indeed. And still want to.
It is perfectly possible. But you need to own the house and have spare space.
Its perfectly possible to get certification.
But you cant mix fridge/freezer with personal stuff.
Walls have to be washable to the ceiling.
Need anti fly stuff.
Things like that.

You then food food h&s which irc is like 2days at collage so easy enough.

You have to comply with labeling laws. This is either easy or expensive depending on category. If you need it testing to get break down, is about £110 per test.

Then you have to think about vat on product and tax on wages. Again this is dependent on circumstances and what you are doing.

So it is perfectly possible, but its not as straight forward as you think.

I have a great idea where I can charge a premium. I just need to buy a house, ideally with spare room.

If you email the council. You can get the safety officers number. And ny local one was more than happy to speak to me about roughly what I needed to do. When you book them to cone inspect then it was about £50 but that was about 4years ago.

Then as others have said, Imo you're looking at a pretty much non existent market.
I don't even own a sous vide machine and those that do, are extremely unlikely to want to order pre made stuff.

As for postage, many compays shipping meat do it for £10 -£15 so its probably possible. Maybe its a discout as they always leave it at adress so no redeliveries.

 

[FrenchTart]

I think randomshenans was looking into it too? Or have I imagined that?

 

[Kimi]

I personally wouldn't buy it premade

Ive never sous vide from frozen burger before, i usually have it fresh, bag it then cook it.

Out of interest, how long do you cook frozen chicken for at what temp? would be interested in trying that.

 

[D.P.]

I had a little think last night and I definitely think there is far more viable business model in simply being a supplier of Sous vide equipment and supplies.

You can rent storage lockers cheaply to place large orders in. First step would be to contact manufacturers and European suppliers to see about buying the gear in bulk. Get a snazzy website sorted, pay for some decent marketing and ff you go.

if you think there is a market for pre-packaged meat then there is a much bigger market for the equipment and supplies and that stuff is far easier to store, purchase and ship and will likely have bigger profit margins, and you aren't going to give someone food poisoning compared to if you mishandled chicken say.

 

[Glaucus]

There's already plenty of sous vide suppliers, so I don't see a big market here.
And other new companies have cornered the cheap end though starting in kickstarter.

 

[Raymond Lin]

I wouldn't. Because if I want good food that I am confident of both its origin and cooking method, I would cook it myself. If I am letting someone else to cook it then I might as well go to a nice place where they cook it for me. Buying nice pre-cooked food feels no different than buying a nice pre-cooked food (or processed) from Waitrose.

 

[D.P.]

There's already plenty of sous vide suppliers, so I don't see a big market here.
And other new companies have cornered the cheap end though starting in kickstarter.

That just means you need differentiation. Competitors just indicates that their is a viable business model there, lack of competition is often a very bad thing.

 

[Glaucus]

What it means is for a single person with little investment extremely hard to break into.
You dodn't have the ability to offer what others do.

There's two main parts to the market
Restraints which is the biggest, but you can't offer the support you'll need
Home which why buy off you rather than from anova or similar

A tiny amount of home users with lots of money will buy proper machines but much more likely to trust a big company.

It's just not a good market.
Far better looking at things which are hard to get in the auk. Off which there are plenty if you have the capital to get first Shipment and storage.
Hot automatic composters for the kitchen are next to impossible to find in the uk, yet easy to find in the states,

 

[Reezer]

But you cant mix fridge/freezer with personal stuff.
Need anti fly stuff.

We have a spare fridge but yea, the freezer would be a bit of a pain. One option I've seen mentioned is coming to an arrangement with a local pub to use their kitchen when they are closed - as long as you have done a food certification and have your own insurance they aren't taking on any extra risk. I haven't looked into this but there are quite a few small pubs locally that might be open to the idea.

You have to comply with labeling laws. This is either easy or expensive depending on category. If you need it testing to get break down, is about £110 per test.

This is something I haven't looked into at all, thanks for mentioning it. Because I'm mostly mixing raw ingredients and repackaging them I was planning to work out the nutritional info based off the ingredients rather than testing, I'll have a look into if this is a valid way of doing it.

Then as others have said, Imo you're looking at a pretty much non existent market.
I don't even own a sous vide machine and those that do, are extremely unlikely to want to order pre made stuff.

Yea, I was half hoping it's the kind of thing that might get popular... get in ahead of the rush. When I discovered it and took the plunge a few years ago I couldn't believe how little attention it's gotten; It's not hugely expensive to get into and is basically an idiot proof way of getting extremely tender and delicious meats. It's also sooooo convenient for dinner parties and big meals - get your meat cooked ahead of time and hold it till your are ready to brown and serve it, brilliant.

Out of interest, how long do you cook frozen chicken for at what temp? would be interested in trying that.

I typically add an hour just to be on the safe side. I cook it at the same temp I would from fresh, so 60C for chicken. If you don't like the softer texture add a degree or two (my sisters won't eat it unless I do, they say it reminds them of raw chicken). One key to cooking from frozen is to get the bath up to temp before adding the frozen item - this way it stays in the danger zone for as little time as possible. I forget where I read it but someone probed some chicken and defrosted it several ways (counter, fridge, microwave and sous vide iirc) and sous vide from frozen resulted in the food was one of the safest ways to do it. This page says adding 30 mins is sufficient - I'd be happy with that if whatever I was making was < 1.5 inches thick I think.

I did a whole lamb leg from frozen once, 16 hours at 75C and it came out very nicely.

Domestically, it's still a very niche thing. Hardly anyone knows what sous vide is/the fact it's common in restaurants/etc. You'd be fighting against that inertia, and that's hard.

Yes, this is definitely true. I've had friends refuse to try it because it sounds weird. I'm kinda hoping some TV chef or cooking program will popularize it.

I had a little think last night and I definitely think there is far more viable business model in simply being a supplier of Sous vide equipment and supplies.

You might be right with the sous vide supply stuff - I've struggled to find good supplies at decent prices from trustworthy sites before. A one stop shop with professional reviews, recipes, etc would be quite cool.
However, I don't have the capital to set something like this up really.
I guess I could get a business loan/grant but if I was going to go that route I think I'd set up a software dev company (since that's my real background.)

 

[D.P.]

What it means is for a single person with little investment extremely hard to break into.
You dodn't have the ability to offer what others do.

There's two main parts to the market
Restraints which is the biggest, but you can't offer the support you'll need
Home which why buy off you rather than from anova or similar

A tiny amount of home users with lots of money will buy proper machines but much more likely to trust a big company.

It's just not a good market.
Far better looking at things which are hard to get in the auk. Off which there are plenty if you have the capital to get first Shipment and storage.
Hot automatic composters for the kitchen are next to impossible to find in the uk, yet easy to find in the states,

If you don't have the investment then any market is hard to get into. Which is why you have to do your research and remortgage the house, as well as go after investors.


2 minutes of google and I can't find a company that sells differ brands of cookers, vacum sealers, the plastic, recipe books, and all associates supplies and paraphernalia.

Sure you can buy an anova sous vide machine from the anova website but you can't browse different machines at different price point.
You can go on amazon and get much of the choice of item I talked , but that is similar to anything else. You can buy coffe machines from specialized retailers for example.

What you want to do is tap into that market so people go to your website to buy a new machine or buy supplied and get caught up in all the choices and marketing and buy more than they intended. You need the company website to be reccomended to friends who will go there and not amazon, since they can find everything they need in a convenient single store.


Selling meat produce and indeed most foods from home would be an absolute nightmare bussiness model.

 

[Glaucus]

So you can't fond places like this https://www.sousvidetools.com/ first link.


And that's not the type of investment I', talking about. If you have to go after restraunt market, then you need far more investment as you need to offer decent support.

It is just a terrible business idea and I just can't see why you think it is a good idea. The market is tiny and plenty of places big and small already offer machines and everything else.



As to getting into the market early, I don't think the market will massively expand, I can't see it becoming a in most kitchen gadget, regardless of how cheapo they get. It's kind of the opposite of what most people want.

 

[D.P.]

So you can't fond places like this https://www.sousvidetools.com/ first link.


And that's not the type of investment I', talking about. If you have to go after restraunt market, then you need far more investment as you need to offer decent support.

It is just a terrible business idea and I just can't see why you think it is a good idea. The market is tiny and plenty of places big and small already offer machines and everything else.



As to getting into the market early, I don't think the market will massively expand, I can't see it becoming a in most kitchen gadget, regardless of how cheapo they get. It's kind of the opposite of what most people want.

Nope, didn't come up on my google search. That link just verifies that the business idea has some merit. Remember, competition is merely verification that there is business potential. One would just have to find market differentiators to sousvidetools

And even if it isn't a good idea idea it is a damn site better than selling frozen vacuum packed supermarket burgers.