Could Daily Harvest Be Coming to Your Local Grocery?

Several job postings indicate that direct-to-consumer frozen meal company Daily Harvest will enter brick-and-mortar retail.

While Daily Harvest executives would not confirm if a launch was underway, a spokesperson indicated the company was in an “exploratory phase” regarding the new sales channel. “Daily Harvest is a customer centric brand,” she said. “[We are] constantly exploring ways to meet our customers where they are.”

Founded in 2015 by CEO Rachel Drori, Daily Harvest began with an array of frozen smoothie cups but later expanded into breakfast bowls, bites, pints of non-dairy ice cream as well as heat-and-eat lattes, entrees, flatbreads and meat alternatives. Now, it seems the frozen food line could be coming to a grocery store near you.

Last year the company raised an additional $77 million in funding, resulting in a valuation of over a billion dollars. At the time, Drori told NOSH the capital would be used to expand access to Daily Harvest’s products. Then, in April, the company quietly brought on former General Mills, Cora and Amplify sales executive Anne Streit as its new head of grocery. Then, earlier this month, it posted new job openings on its website for a director of grocery as well as for a sales strategy and retail operations lead.

Both job postings note that the company hopes to reach consumers “regardless of shopping method” and note the two employees will be responsible for undertaking or overseeing traditional sales duties including point of sale materials, sampling, merchandising, and monitoring the competitive landscape. The director position will also launch Daily Harvest “into new grocery spaces through successful launch tactics,” according to the posting, and “work to identify and secure targeted new grocery opportunities for Daily Harvest.” Though the post mentions “launch-partner exclusivity,” it does not allude to what channels of retail the frozen food company plans to target first.

Though this will mark the company’s first entrance into other retailers, it has dabbled with in-person sales before. In addition to previously testing The Refueling Station, a popup store in Los Angeles and New York City, in 2021 the company also opened its own store, The Tasting Room, in Chicago. Due to the pandemic the location opened with just an ordering window, but later expanded to a full storefront, with the potential for more locations to come online.

However, the storefront “experiment” ultimately was terminated, with a Daily Harvest spokesperson noting the closing was “another example of our continuous test-and-learn iterations to ensure we are listening to our members and meeting them where they are.”

Currently, customers in the Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, DC, Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia or New York markets are also able to order Daily Harvest delivery via partners such as Uber Eats, GrubHub or DoorDash.

After Daily Harvest saw success with its direct to consumer business, other frozen food brands such as Thrive! and LivMore tried to launch similar, single-serve smoothie products in retail to varying degrees of success. Frozen, premade, fruit bowls and smoothies from Sweet Nothings, KIND and Sambazon as well as a variety of multi-serve frozen smoothie cubes from brands including Dole and Seal the Seasons, have seen better results.