There’s a new meal-kit delivery service in Jakarta. I gave it a try.

Black Garlic is a meal-kit delivery service. It sends pre-packaged groceries in a box. All ingredients are portioned and labeled, and there’s a step-by-step guide for each dish. The idea is to mix convenience with the joy of cooking.

The target audience for this startup’s product is arguably narrow. It’s a product for busy urban folks who don’t want to miss out on the experience of a healthy, home-cooked meal. In short: people like myself!

When I met Black Garlic co-founder and CEO Michael Saputra to talk about his startup, he offered to send me a box so I could try it out. It arrived today:

The box contains three meals for two and costs IDR 325,000 (US$24). That makes roughly US$4 per individual meal. Delivery is free. The price is comparable to what one would pay for one meal at a mid-range restaurant in Indonesia.

I’ll tell you more about the cooking experience later.

Demand for LOHAS in Jakarta?

To some, it may seem like meal-kit deliveries take convenience one step too far – or not far enough. Are you really too lazy to chop your own vegetables? If you earn enough, why not eat out or order ready-to-eat food in?

Despite this contradiction, the concept has caught on in the US. Blue Apron is perhaps the most well-known startup in the category. Since its launch in 2012, the company has raised about US$200 million in funding and was recently valued at US$2 billion. It claims to deliver three million meals a month.

Blue Apron’s success rides on the back of a growing consumer segment market researchers call LOHAS. The acronym stands for Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability. The LOHAS segment is affluent, well-educated, values a balanced lifestyle, and cares about the origin of products. A 2013 report of the Natural Marketing Institute estimated the number of LOHAS adults in the US to be at about 50 million.

Saputra believes there are signs of a similar consumer segment developing in Indonesia, although it may be a few years down the line. He says urbanization, an increasing number of Indonesians living in apartments, and more demand for organically-grown food indicate the emergence of LOHAS in Indonesian cities. “I know it’s early now, but we want to be the first to capture the market,” he says.

How it works

Saputra and co-founder Willy Haryanto, who’s the CTO, have known each other for years. They even built another startup together: a food delivery service called Klick Eat, which was recently acquired by Japanese company Yume no Machi. Saputra and Haryanto were supposed to continue leading Klick Eat within the Japanese corporation. But the pair decided to hand over operations so that they could start something new.

Blue Apron’s business model fascinated them and they believed that, with the right partners and localization, they could replicate the model to work in Indonesia. Saputra got Olivia Wongso on board. She is the daughter of William Wongso, an Indonesian TV chef and culinary consultant to big industry names like Indonesia’s national airline, Garuda.

The experience

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