Forget, or at least put aside for a moment, the restaurants with the perfectly set tables, the dining room staff and the maître d’, the kitchen team. In fact, meal kits are becoming increasingly popular. Literally “meal kits” or “food boxes”, they are packages that arrive at home with everything needed to prepare a dish inside gourmet: weighed ingredients, calibrated sauces, portioned vegetables, spices in mini-bags and recipe cards that are more detailed and exhaustive than ever.
They are dishes, from first courses to pizza, to be cooked without having to worry about having made the shopping list first and, consequently, the purchase at the supermarket. That’s enough buy them online or in a physical store, by purchasing them for yourself or given as gifts via gift card. In fact, meal kits represent the last frontier of deliveryhome delivery which recorded a real boom during the pandemic emergency.
According to the platform’s estimates Statesmanthe Italian meal kit market was already worth over 6 million euros in 2024, with an estimated growth rate of over 14 percent in 2025. Numbers that demonstrate the curiosity towards this option which, it is worth repeating, does not include ready-to-use dishes. Indeed, like the very young chef Alfredo Linguini, protagonist of the animated film Ratatouille (2007) written and directed by Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava, here the call to the kitchen is a must.
Starry dinners at home
This is the case of Carlo Cracco, Michelin star chef, who “signed” the “L’oro di Milano” luxury meal kit for the startup’s e-commerce Brothers Desires. “In this package you will find all the ingredients measured and selected to cook like a great chef”, explains the former MasterChef judge. A “luxury” reinterpretation of the Milanese risotto where, we read in the description, “a unique preparation of meat broth, handcrafted following a secret recipe from the early 1900s, delicately envelops all the flavors of the dish”.
The price of the experience – for four people – is 54 euros in total. But on the site there are offers that allow you to save up to 20 percent. We tasted it and it is a good risotto, albeit a little buttery. Of course, the South American cocoa nibs give it that extra touch. As well as the other ingredients, in particular the apple cider vinegar and the shallot brunoise. The savings are not small, if we think that Cracco’s famous yellow rice with saffron costs 50 euros per portion in his restaurant in the Galleria in Milan.
Add a seat at the table
In 2020, the collaboration with MasterChef Italia gave rise to the sale of the Mystery boxes, which replicated the well-known formula of the most famous cooking talent show, in which the contestants had to best assemble the “surprise ingredients” kept in a “mystery box”. In 2022 alone, the food tech company Fratelli Desideri, founded in 2017 in Cuneo, sold 40 thousand meal kits, generating revenues of 1.5 million euros; twelve months later, revenues grew to 1.8 million with 45 thousand kits sold.
From Piedmont to Lombardy, where for the first time a 100 percent made in Italy meal kit, that of the startup My Cooking Boxhas entered the most important organized distribution chain in the world: Walmart. With the motto “living and working every day in that atmosphere of conviviality that can be felt during family lunches or dinners with friends”, the Italian company that was the first to launch the meal kit business in our country was founded in 2015 from an idea by Chiara Rota, a management engineer.
Based in Milan, the startup is made up mainly of women and offers a wide range of boxes containing the recipe book and all the ingredients in the right doses to cook some Italian dishes: from rigatoni with red pesto and truffle to focaccia with cherry tomatoes and oregano (12.99 euros per pack). “Ingredients in the right doses to fight food waste and less plastic to protect the environment”, we read on the My Cooking Box website.
Goodbye guilt
“Diet is a crime”, stands out on the t-shirt of Paolo Belloli, one of the owners of Homebasegourmet shop with tasting in Treviglio (Bergamo). The project, born in 2015 in Madrid, “is constantly evolving, as is the selection of products we offer: a dynamic choice where we are always ready to insert novelties, but also new discoveries and stories”. So Belloli to Dossier The Vermilion, who then goes into detail about the gastronomic boxes, each containing a postcard with all the information on the products.
The boxes, which can be purchased in store or via the online shop, contain kits ranging from dto the “spicier pasta” (24 euros) to the amatriciana (28 euros). Among the proposals also the kit for preparing carbonara pasta (30 euros) and that of the “heretical” carbonara (32 euros). “In the latter case we replaced the pecorino romano with the pecorino Fiore Sardo protected by Slow Food”, Belloli points out. But would anyone born and/or living in the Eternal City ever purchase a kit of this type? “Of course, we have many Romans among our customers. There are no limits”, replies Belloli.
Then he adds: “We carry out a search for quality products without necessarily having to boast of having the best products of all. Of course, we try to have the good things, because ours are delicacies that then sell themselves. And the customer also likes the shop relationship that it establishes.” Could we sum it up with “low profile, high performance?”. The reply is ready: “I would say yes. We love our job, and as Italians we want to make people eat well. Pasta and pizza, above all, are two dishes that bring people together.”
The evolution of pizza
Moving a few kilometers from Casabase, there is the pastry shop “Paolo Riva“, which in its gastronomic offer ranges from the cafeteria to the ice cream shop, from the lunch service to the aperitif service. In particular, the restaurant has focused on the “Elevata” gourmet pizza, which can be enjoyed in the restaurant or at home. And many people buy it in a box with the pre-cooked base inside, the ingredients already portioned for the filling and the instructions for use. Here the motto is: “All that’s missing is your touch to complete the work”.
Paolo Riva, owner of the pastry shop of the same name, says: “This way of purchasing gourmet pizza is interesting for the customer. Maybe you have five or six guests, you order the pizza and then there are delays or unexpected events in delivery. The product remains around and risks losing its fragrance.”
Can we say that the beauty of this formula is that the customer only intervenes in the final phase? “Certainly, it is up to him to complete the topping of the pizza, put it in the oven for the last minutes of cooking and add the ingredients that need to be added afterwards, such as raw ham. Let’s imagine an evening at home: everyone prepares their own pizza. It can be a playful and convivial moment, without the quality of the craftsmanship being lost. Here the customer just has to put in that 10 percent that makes the difference.”
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