Jenny Craig to Get New Life as eCommerce Brand

Bankrupt weight-loss company Jenny Craig is getting a new lease on life.

As CNBC reported Wednesday (July 5), rival weight-loss meal firm Wellful has purchased Jenny Craig’s assets and will revive it as an eCommerce company.

“People that have known the Jenny brand — the core aspects around the great food, the coaching, the overall program and the success they previously had — they can expect again,” Wellful CEO Brandon Adcock said in an interview with CNBC.

According to the report, Jenny Craig promoted a reboot on its website in recent weeks, saying it “will be coming to your home this fall.”

Adcock told CNBC all former Jenny Craig customers have been contacted by email and in the brand’s Facebook groups about the relaunch.

“Our goal is just treat them as best we can to win back their business,” he said.

Jenny Craig announced in May it had shut down in North America following weeks of reports about its struggles.

“You may have heard the unfortunate news that Jenny Craig USA and Canada have closed and now filed for bankruptcy,” the company said on its Facebook page.

As PYMNTS noted at the time, that announcement was followed by a news release from Nutrisystem saying that news of Jenny Craig’s closure “had brought the conversation of brick-and-mortar versus online operations to the forefront yet again.”

Nutrisystem President Stephen Mikulak added in that release, “Today’s consumers want products delivered quickly and easily to their door, especially when it comes to helping achieve their health and wellness goals.”

Consumers want a range of products delivered these days, per recent research and reporting by PYMNTS.

For example, Constellation Brands, parent company of a range of alcohol brands such as Modelo, Corona and Svedka, noted on an earnings call last months that shoppers are beginning to adopt its direct-to-consumer (D2C) digital channels.

“[Our] omnichannel focus has provided additional pillars of consumer-led growth, such as international and direct to consumer, the latter of which grew the channel’s net sales 13% in Q1 — and in fact, the eCommerce and customer loyalty portions of DTC business were up over 40% in Q1,” Constellation President and CEO Bill Newlands said.

And consumers’ overall eCommerce adoption for food and beverage purchases is on the upswing. Research from PYMNTS’ study “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Catching the Coming eCommerce Wave,” created in collaboration with Amazon Web Services, showed that 32% of shoppers said they are very or extremely likely to increase their online grocery purchases in the next year.