Few understand food service like Kat Cole, the former COO and President of Focus Brands. Where she goes, people follow. Where she is, the masses typically flock. The “coffee-loving chronic learner” and prolific investor recently posted a video to Twitter that highlighted her “direct-to-consumer freezer”, sparking a discussion around the resurgence of interest in frozen foods. Her freezer is indicative of a shift in how the food category is perceived. Frozen foods have evolved past the middle-class TV dinner and gone upscale, as food quality has improved, new preservation technologies have emerged, the trend of the modern consumer/remote worker persists, and the appeal has grown. In short, it’s cool to heat up your food today.

Think of the pandemic restrictions required to shop in a grocery store. The lines are longer, you’re more uncomfortable, aisles are emptier than usual, and labor is shorthanded. The simple function of shopping for goods and services is no longer efficient in many places. Now, multiply this inefficiency by 1,000 and you have the global shipping crisis in need of a long-term solution.

A one-time unicorn, Casper is now trading at a valuation of $210 million (Eight Sleep just raised at a $500 million valuation). As TechCrunch reported, a DTC founder anonymously speculated that the Apple iOS 14.5 update, which cracked down on apps’ ability to track user data without permission, has cut Casper’s marketing returns and customer acquisition off at the knees. This anon is inaccurate at best, Casper’s problems or more likely to be attributed to three separate issues: