Sun Basket in the news

| Jun 19, 2020

These Last Minute Mother’s Day Gifts Deliver Instantly

Sun Basket says many of their meals can be prepped and cooked in less than 20 minutes. Want something even more convenient? Sun Basket now offers breakfast, lunch and healthy snacks too, that you can easily add to your meal plan or cart. 
What we like: there is no commitment with Sun Basket. You can skip a delivery or cancel anytime you want. See full menu and plans at SunBasket.com.

| May 27, 2020

Sun Basket’s CEO on how COVID-19 has transformed the meal kit industry

In times of rapid change, it is imperative that businesses listen to their customers and ask “How can we help you?” and “What other services and offerings can we provide for you?” Those businesses that truly consider and act on consumer feedback will see the most growth moving forward. The current crisis, though economically devastating for many, is pushing long-predicted changes for our company and the meal delivery industry; the crisis has expedited the evolution.

| May 13, 2020

17 Meal Subscription Boxes That Make Cooking at Home Easier Than Ever

If you’ve committed to a certain healthy-eating lifestyle, or if you’re vegetarian or pescatarian, Sun Basket can help. The company is not only committed to sending the cleanest ingredients in each meal kit, but it offers 10 different plans so that you can find one that fits your lifestyle. Start by selecting your meal plan, and each week you’ll choose two, three, or four meals for either two or four people.

| May 07, 2020

How to use Sun Basket's meal kit service to make delicious healthy meals at home

After testing Sun Basket with my family of four, we couldn't be happier with our experience. Each week, the ingredients arrive at our doorstep, the recipes are easy to follow, and the meals we make using the kit are healthy and taste great. There are also usually leftovers for us to have for lunch the next day.

| May 02, 2020

Meal Kits Thrive During Coronavirus Lockdown

Six-year-old Sun Basket Inc. said weekly sales have almost doubled weekly, as regular customers placed orders more often and for more meals, said Chief Executive Don Barnett. The San Francisco company has narrowed its recipe offerings to keep up with demand. One hallmark of the meal-kit boom era was heavy discounting to add new customers. In the pandemic, those promotions aren’t necessary, Mr. Barnett notes, adding that Sun Basket plans to retain new customers via stronger engagement on text, email and social media.

| Mar 11, 2020

Nope, You Really Shouldn't Eat The Same Foods Every Day — Here's Why

You may eat a well-balanced plate of sauteed kale, salmon, and quinoa for dinner, which at a glance is incredibly healthy," says Lindsey Kane, Sun Basket's in-house registered dietitian and director of nutrition. "But, if you eat this same meal each and every night, you'll wind up supplying your body with the same nutrition profile, one that may be a strong source of certain vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients, but consistently misses out on other critical nutrients, which, in some cases, can turn into nutrient deficiencies.

| Jan 06, 2020

The 13 New Year’s Resolutions Nutritionists Are Making for 2020

New Year, new resolutions—and if you’re like most people, it will include some goals for getting healthier. But 80 percent of resolutions fail by February, and it’s not just you and I that fall short; even the pros have a hard time sticking to their resolutions. What gives? A goal without a plan is just a wish, says Lindsey Kane, MS, a registered dietitian nutritionist and director of nutrition at Sun Basket. “The good news is, there are some tried-and-true strategies for making good habits, the key to keeping your resolutions,” she explains.

A Rare Disease Won’t Keep This Mountain Man Off the Trails

He and his wife have a Sun Basket membership. The meal-delivery service ships ingredients and recipes that they prepare for dinner. Frequent meals include rainbow trout with a vegetable stir fry or salmon with sautéed kale. Mr. LeNail also enjoys cooking soups and quiches. His weakness is goat cheese.

If Food Is Medicine, Then Sun Basket Wants To Be The Prescription

When he founded Sun Basket, Zbar, who’s the son of a cancer researcher, “focused on healthy lifestyles, like ‘I want to eat Paleo, I want to eat gluten-free.’ For us there was no such thing as a bad healthy lifestyle as long as the actual nutrients in the food were healthy. But then the next thing we started thinking about was how can we approach more than just lifestyles, but health states...we did partnerships with The American Heart Association, The American Diabetes Association and the American Cancer Society.”

That wasn’t enough for Zbar. He wondered if Sun Basket could impact more people’s lives. So, he asked the dietitians on his team who they respected most in their field. Pretty soon, he and Dr. David Katz of Yale University, The American College of Lifestyle Medicine and The True Health Initiative met and hit it off. The rest might be history.

21 Subscription Boxes That'll Make Your Life a Million Times Easier

"Why we’re into it: I tried Sun Basket one time, and that’s all it took to get me totally hooked. The produce in each shipment is organic, the meat is antibiotic-free, and the seafood is wild-caught and sustainable, which is right up my alley. (All deliveries arrive in packaging that's 100 percent recyclable and compostable, too.) The meal kit delivery service offers a wide variety of meal plan options, including paleo, vegan, vegetarian, and pescatarian. Offerings range from classics like chicken milanese and bucatini carbonara, to fun new combinations like farro risotto and roasted shrimp with ajo blanco sauce. Price varies depending on which meal plan you choose—either classic or family style-sized servings—as well as the number of weekly recipes sent (up to four per week under the family style plan), or number of people being served (either two or four under the classic plan)."

The Best Meal Kit Delivery Services of 2018

"Best for Vegetarians

While not an entirely vegetarian service, Sun Basket offers a huge variety of quick, flavorful plant-based meals that will satisfy vegetarians and omnivores alike. Their ingredients are largely organic, and their recipes are some of the fastest we tested."

The Messy Business of Selling Meal Kits

“Building a perishable-food business is not something you do quickly or lightly,’ said Don Barnett, Sun Basket Inc.’s chief operating officer, who began his career at Dole Food Co. and has 25 years of experience with perishable food, including roles as a cofounder and CFO at organicgirl, a packaged salad company.

To help keep a lid on costs, Sun Basket, whose meal kits target health-conscious consumers, has gone so far as to set up a Midwestern distribution center in a converted limestone cave—a cheaper way to keep its products cold than spending millions to convert a conventional warehouse in the region for refrigeration. The temperature inside the underground facility remains stable regardless of whether it’s hot or cold outside, so the company spends less on electricity.”

Why Sun Basket Is Going After the Healthy Lifestyle Market

“The meal-kit delivery service specializes in specific diets from Paleo to gluten-free to Mediterranean, which is how it differentiates itself in the space. “We’re not trying to be all things to all people,” says CEO Adam Zbar.”

Sun Basket Launches Diabetes-Friendly Meal Plan

“The San Francisco-based healthy meal kit delivery service has launched a Diabetes-Friendly Meal Plan for those with diabetes.  All of the meals have been chosen in collaboration with the American Diabetes Association® (ADA).”

Meal kit service Sun Basket tries to reach a new audience: 30 million people with diabetes

“Sun Basket told CNBC it has created recipes with the help of the American Diabetes Association that are high in fiber and low in sugar and sodium, to better assist diabetics manage their blood glucose levels without sacrificing flavor.”

A Meal Subscription Box That’s Seasonal And Earth Friendly

“There’s really nothing like a delicious cooked meal in the comfort of our own home after a long exhaustive day at work. This is where a meal delivery service comes into play. Having healthy, organic ingredients delivered right to your door can save you time and help pave the way for a more healthy lifestyle. Sun Basket, a meal delivery company that delivers dietitian-approved meal plans that offer organic, gluten-free, vegan, vegetarian and Paleo, aims to make your cooking easier and healthier.”

I Tried Every Popular Meal Kit Delivery Service—and This Is the Best One

“Sun Basket has definitely taken the meal kit game up a notch. The company has made the most concessions for people who are serious about healthy eating and has the most choices for different types of diets. For example, while I try to stick to a Paleo/Whole30 lifestyle for 90 percent of the week, I wasn’t always able to do that on many of the other meal kits. However, with Sun Basket, not only was I able to stick to my eating regimen, but I also I enjoyed some pretty great meals too, including a poached salmon salad with tahini goddess dressing and lettuce-wrapped turkey sliders.”

Healthy Cooking Made Easy

“There is a lot of money to be made in the meal-kit business. Adam Zbar, CEO of Sun Basket, explains how he is disrupting the grocery industry.”

Meal kit company Sun Basket bought a cave, and it’s helping them beat Blue Apron

“You see, Sun Basket owns a cave — and it saves the company thousands of dollars in utilities every month.

The San Francisco-based company is well aware that the meal kit industry’s sustainability has come into question in the last year, but it’s not too worried. While other companies such as Blue Apron have suffered from distribution issues, Sun Basket’s facilities are running smoothly and growing bigger.”

Here’s Why Sun Basket Just Got $58M, Even As Meal Kits Like Blue Apron Are Flailing

“Meal kits are having a tough time retaining customers, but health-focused Sun Basket has something its competitors don’t.”

How To Make Plant-Based Eating Easier This Year

“Meal planning with Sun Basket keeps you on track with your plant-eating goals AND helps to reduce food waste–something we should all be conscious of.”

Sun Basket Launches Heart-Healthy Meal Delivery Service

“Sun Basket is the first meal kit service to obtain the American Heart Association’s Heart-Check certification…recipes in the [Lean & Clean Meal Plan] have undergone meticulous evaluation to ensure they abide by the AHA’s strict nutrition guidelines.”

Meal Kits May Be Winning Us Over - And Unilever Wants A Seat At The Table

“The packaged-goods giant’s new investment in Sun Basket shows the allure of niche food markets.”

Exclusive: Unilever is Investing in the Red-Hot Meal Kit Space

“Over a relatively short period of time, Sun Basket has built a clear leadership position as the best healthy, organic meals service platform.”

Sun Basket Meal Delivery Service

“Sun Basket offers some of the most delicious food we’ve encountered in our meal-kit-delivery-service reviewing, and the packaging is sensible and mostly recyclable, which isn’t the case with most competing services.”

Sun Basket Cooks Up Another $15 million for gluten-free and paleo meal kits

“We like that they use a very data-driven approach. Data guides everything they do from ingredient selections to the logistics of delivering hundreds of thousands of meals to homes.”`

5 Ways to Add Some Zen to Your Life

“[Sun Basket’s] food was packaged beautifully in individual brown paper bags, everything came out delicious and was ridiculously easy to prepare.”

6 New Healthy Meal-Delivery Programs to Kick Off the New Year

“Focusing on detoxifying and anti-inflammatory ingredients, Sun Basket’s latest program lasting the month of January, Lean & Clean, is designed to cleanse the body and take the hassle out of shopping for and preparing dinners.”

Top 10 sustainable packaging stories of 2016

“10. Video: Meal-kit company debuts first 100% recyclable and compostable packaging

San Francisco-based Sun Basket aims to divert more than 5 million pounds of waste from municipal landfills in the first year of using new recyclable, compostable packaging.”

Curious about meal kits like Blue Apron or Purple Carrot? These six sites deliver the goods

“Sun Basket makes a strong showing in this round up of six meal kit services. Added bonus: Sun Basket is the lead image with a killer caption: “Sun Basket is the only service that offers all-organic and non-GMO ingredients for its recipes, like this one-pan shakshuka.”

We Tried Meal Kits That Are Supposedly Healthier Than Blue Apron – Here’s How They Rank We have a new meal kit champion

“Sun Basket wins because the food is just that good. I actually gave it a higher rating than Peach Dish, the winner of my first article testing and comparing meal kits. They’re priced about the same, as well. But Sun Basket was simply the most delicious, and I really appreciate how often it deviated from dishes like pasta and meat-with-a-veggie, which seem to be staples of the subscription meal service industry.”

The shocking amount of food American’s throw out

“An average American throws away over 80K worth of food in their lifetime…the average adult [throws away] $26 of leftovers every week.”

These Food Kit Options Are Not Only Healthy, But Cut Down Your Kitchen Time In A Major Way

“This organic, nutritionist-customized food delivery service can be adjusted for vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, and Paleo eaters. But that’s not all: Unlike anything else out there—including, yes, Blue Apron—it is the only meal delivery service to cover breakfast as well as lunch and dinner.”

I Tried 2 Thanksgiving Meal Delivery Services, and Here’s What Happened

“Sun Basket’s offerings had a chef-y angle to them, kale and leek gratin with gruyère being my favorite. It’s like a fancy take on spinach casserole.”

7 Easy Thanksgiving Meal Kits to Save Your Holiday

“Healthy meal kit company Sun Basket leaves the turkey to you and focuses its box on everyone’s favorite part of the meal: the sides.”

Williams-Sonoma Enters Meal-Kit Market

“For the two San Francisco Bay Area companies the marriage of their brands seemed like a natural match. ‘We saw it as a great partnerships with both of us focused on making cooking easy and delicious and promoting the Northern California value system,’ said Adam Zbar, CEO, Sun Basket.”

An unlikely company is building a Blue Apron killer in the $5 billion battle for your dinner

“Williams-Sonoma is getting into the meal-kit business.

The cookware company is partnering with San Francisco startup Sun Basket to offer organic, non-GMO meal kits bundled with Williams-Sonoma kitchen tools.

‘It’s a really exciting partnership for us,’ [said Sun Basket CEO Adam Zbar] in an interview with Business Insider. ‘It helps elevate our brand and take it to a national audience.’”

Williams-Sonoma Hops on the Meal Kit Bandwagon

Published Nov 1, 2016

“Williams-Sonoma — the high-end kitchen-supply store — is the latest company to start slinging boxes of pre-measured and packaged raw foods ready for cooking. The company has announced a partnership with Sun Basket, a company that specializes in organic and non-GMO meal kits, on a line of co-branded boxed kits.”

Everything but the Bird

“There are very few things that can improve upon perfectly roasted brussels sprouts, particularly when the outer leaves are crunchy and golden brown. But Sun Basket chef Justine Kelly has done them one better with the addition of hazelnuts, currants, and roasted delicata squash.”

“And while you have to put the (completely organic) dish together yourself, Sun Basket makes it easy.”

The 5 Best Ways to Get Healthy Food Delivered

“Using 100-percent recycled products is a huge plus, considering how much waste these services can accumulate. Sun Basket is also the first kit to offer a breakfast option and lets you swap a dinner for two morning meals. Fingers crossed other services follow suit with this idea.”

Fierce meal kit competition sparks sustainable innovations

“We went from 10 employees to now 400 employees,” says Sun Basket’s Zbar. “We’ve grown hugely.”

100 Percent Recyclable Meal Kit Packaging Is Here

“When Sun Basket’s head of user experience, Tyler MacNiven, found out that ‘90 percent of Sun Basket’s packaging was not being returned and was ending up in a landfill,’ he knew he had to do something about it. The company wanted to offer an easy way for customers to recycle and compost the products at home without sacrificing freshness and quality of food.”

Sun Basket Raises $15M Up Round as Overall Food Delivery Market Cools

“We started this [Sun Basket] focusing on meal-kits and how we provide an easier more delicious solution,” said Adam Zbar, founder and CEO, Sun Basket. “What we have realized is that we have a built a pretty radical solution in terms of how to create a better more efficient way to bring organic food to people in the U.S.”

Sun Basket—The Newest Addition to San Jose’s On-Demand Economy Creates Jobs

“You may be wondering how these on-demand services are shaping our local economy. San Jose’s newest addition, Sun Basket, has created 225 new full-time jobs with full benefits, and is on track to grow to 300 jobs in the near term. Sun Basket is an e-commerce meal kit subscription service that delivers chef-created recipes with pre- proportioned fresh ingredients to their online subscribers.”

Do Meal Kits Provide Great Taste Along With Convenience?

“I tried the Salmon in Chraime with Mint couscous and really loved the vibrant flavors. The fish was Wild Alaskan salmon and the sauce was made from pureed tomatoes with a touch of spice, couscous with fresh mint, and a lemon-spiked yogurt sauce with dried sumac sprinkled on top. It was incredibly fresh tasting Moroccan-style food, and introduced me to some new flavor profiles. I was impressed with the quality of the fish and all the ingredients.” - Kathy Gunst (NPR’s Here & Now) 

Listen to the audio review here!

13 Gift Ideas to Spoil the New (and Likely Tired) Mom in Your Life This Mother’s Day

“Set up a delivery from Sun Basket and your new parents will have fresh, organic ingredients delivered to their door.”

Here’s What It’s Like to Actually Cook All The Meal Delivery Kits

Buzz Feed rates Sun Basket the #1 meal kit delivery service with a 10/10 rating - "They nailed it.”

10 Life-Changing Things To Try in April

“To save time, I’ve been trying out meal-in-a-box kits (or what a colleague of mine calls “Lego recipes”). There are a ton of options (Blue Apron, Plated, Purple Carrot, and HelloFresh, to name a few), and most of them suffer the same pitfall: insane amounts of packaging, which makes my Earth-loving heart hurt.My favorite box so far is Sun Basket because a) it comes with a return label for you to ship back the box, ice packs, and insulation for reuse; b) it’s an SF-based company that sources produce from West Coast farms (the others are based in NY); and c) the veggie recipes are actually filling, healthy, and INSANELY good.”

It’s Dinner in a Box. But Are Meal Delivery Kits Cooking?

“Devotees of the culinary sensibilities of Northern California can join Sun Basket, where one of its owners, Justine Kelly, the former chef de cuisine at Charles Phan’s Slanted Door in San Francisco, develops the recipes.

She wrote 450 recipes last year, and each month sends out about 150,000 meals like lemongrass- and coriander-crusted pork loin and coconut-almond breakfast smoothies. The price works out to about $11.49 a meal, which she admitted makes it a luxury item for some. But Ms. Kelly said she has friends who aren’t wealthy who use it because the time-cost ratio works in their favor. “Honestly, especially in the Bay Area, it can be cheaper to do a meal kit than shop,” she said.”

7 Ways To Make Healthy Cooking Easier, So You Can Eat Well At Home Too

“Roasting vegetables is a great way to get a lot of fiber with lots of rich, caramelized flavor, and it’s so easy,” says Chef Justine.

A Roasted Salmon Dish That’s So Good It’s “Upsetting” | Home Made Simple

10 Food Delivery Services For Every Personality

“For Farm-to-Table Fanatics // Strengths: Offering Paleo, gluten-free, and/or vegetarian options, Sun Basket prides itself on using the freshest, non-GMO produce, sustainably sourced seafood, and pastured meats. The quality of the ingredients truly impressed us! Better yet, the recipes are incredibly flavorful even though they only take 30 minutes. To top it all off, the box comes with a return delivery sticker, so all of the packaging can be returned to the company via USPS. Hooray for offsetting waste!”

Six healthy meal-delivery services in the Bay Area

“Another meal kit, this one from former Slanted Door chef Justine Kelly. A few great things about this one: You can customize your meals, first within a category (Paleo, gluten-free, vegetarian, etc.) and then the actual meals. You don’t just get what you get, as is the case with many other meal kits. I opted for baked eggs with tomatoes and pistou, turkey sausage with beet apple salad and walnut vinaigrette, and shrimp with blood orange-jicama salad with salsa verde. “Clean” or not, this is the kind of food I want to be eating. Also great: Each meal’s ingredients come in a paper bag, so there aren’t a million ingredients and individual bags, meaning there’s less waste. And there’s a paid shipping label so you can send back all of the ridiculous packaging that keeps everything fresh and cold. Overall, at $11.50/serving, it’s a winner — possibly my favorite so far of the meal kits I’ve tried. www.sunbasket.com”

How Losing 50 Pounds Inspired This Entrepreneur to Start a Successful Startup

“'Do you want your 40’s to be good or bad?' Adam Zbar’s doctor asked pointedly. These words pierced his heart when the doctor told him that all his blood pressure and heart rate were going in the wrong direction. He had just sold his first company, Tap11, to the founders of YouTube. Zbar should be celebrating life instead of fearing it. He had a simple choice to alter the trajectory of his life–change his diet.”

6 healthy food trends for 2016

“People want to cook fun and delicious meals at home, but many don’t want to spend time searching for recipes and shopping for ingredients. Thanks to this, meal kit services like Blue Apron and Plated saw huge growth last year and 2016 will see it continue to expand. Look for new services that offer solutions for every type of diet, including vegan and paleo, and cater to millennial tastes. New delivery services include the Mark Bittman-curated Purple Carrot, Hello Fresh, One Potato, Sun Basket and Peach Dish, offering Southern-inspired dishes. Phil Lempert, the guru of food predictions, says that 2016 will bring celeb chef-driven meal kits and we’ll see some brands consolidate to create the Amazon of meal kits.”

"If you’re a busy professional, if you’re a busy working mom, busy working dad, busy couple, it’s just the type of thing where you can have the experience where we’re almost like a farmers market in the sky, curated by a great chef,” said Adam Zbar, CEO of meal kit delivery company, Sun Basket."

Farm-to-Table Meal Service Raises $4.5MM

“Meal delivery service Sun Basket combines two markets — the demand for fresh, non-GMO groceries and the delivery system to provide these items to a customer’s door."

Sun Basket Gobbles Up $4.5MM in Funding

“Founded by Adam Zbar and Justine Kelly, the former head chef of the James Beard Award-winning restaurant, Slanted Door, Sun Basket began with the mission to bring Northern California’s healthy food sensibilities to the rest of the country via easy-to-prepare recipes and sustainably sourced, organic ingredients… “We really want this to be something that is easy and enjoyable,” said Zbar. “The beauty of doing farm-to-table is less ingredients is more, and it really focuses on the flavor profile of each one of those ingredients.”

Workout Buddies and Work Colleagues

Learn how Sun Basket CEO Adam Zbar stays healthy and keeps the spirt of competition alive in the office. Fun fact: The name Sun Basket was inspired by Adam and Tyler’s early-morning “Sun Runs”!

“Last fall Mr. Zbar and Sun Basket’s head of branding and user experience, Tyler MacNiven, began Friday sunrise workouts. Mr. MacNiven, 35, won the TV show “The Amazing Race” in 2006. [They] meet at the Miwok trailhead in the Marin Headlands at 5 a.m. with the goal of reaching the top just as the sun is rising… Mr. Zbar and his fiancée cook Sun Basket meals three times a week. They subscribe to Sun Basket’s Paleo meal plan… Portion control and smarter food choices have led Mr. Zbar to drop to 177 pounds.”

Healthy Dinner Recipes from Sun Basket Delivery

“I was so excited to have something to make for dinner that was healthy but still tasty.  I would order this service over and over just to try new recipes and to solve the boredom of weeknight meals.”

My Review of Sun Basket

Video review and unboxing of Sun Basket organic meal service

Test Driving (and Cooking) Sun Basket

“When I was invited to try out a free delivery by San Francisco’s Sun Basket, I was swayed to do so by a couple of factors.

First, the recipes for the cooking kits were developed by Justine Kelly, former executive chef at The Slanted Door in San Francisco. Second, the quality of ingredients is impressive. The kits include organic, seasonal ingredients from highly regarded purveyors such as Dirty Girl, Far West Funghi, Water 2 Table, and Marin Sun.”

San Francisco Startup Cooks Up Service that Brings Healthy Food to Your Door

“There’s a new player in the subscription delivery game that’s combining the convenience with a broader mission: helping people learn to eat and cook healthy, sustainable food.”