eDiets.com, now owned by As Seen On TV, Inc., Clearwater, FL, has agreed to sell its assets related to its fresh and frozen meal delivery business for approximately $1.1 million, to Chef’s Diet National Co., LLC, a private company based in new York. The transaction is expected to close by Sept. 30. Sounds like a bargain price for Chef’s Diet. The last data we have for eDiets’ meal delivery business is that they had sales of $11.4 million for the 6-month period from Jan. 1 to June 30, 2012.
As Seen On TV’s new management wants to return eDiets to its original roots – the sale of digital weight loss program subscriptions. The meal delivery business has much lower profit margins than online diet programs and was a major departure from its core business. It never really gained traction and was a failed attempt to jump on the once high growth meal delivery segment. The problem was mainly bad timing, since the economy was entering recession when they entered the market, and business remained soft over the past four years since then.