These companies are going to get absolutely destroyed when the big supermarkets come on tap.
Several are working on identical services where you pick up, curbside, the ingredients and instructions in a bag, and pay significantly less for doing so.
Why have your ingredients mailed to you when a supermarket on your way home will offer the same thing for 50% cheaper?
While I don't disagree, people said the same thing about Amazon.
The supermarkets have changed very little about the way they've done business in the last half-century, and as such I have a difficult time imagining them doing a good job executing on something like this.
I've also tested the majority of the meal and food delivery services out there, and my experience meshes well with the above: the local supermarket chain in some ways provides a better offering than anyone (as they should–you're absolutely right about that), but for a few years now they've persisted in making sure the actual execution is the worst I've experienced of any service. I can't see that changing until they completely overhaul their hiring practices and put sufficient processes in place to ensure good execution.
(For the record, Blue Apron strikes me as a pretty mediocre product at a pretty uninteresting price, executed in a pretty bad manner.)
> The supermarkets have changed very little about the way they've done business in the last half-century, and as such I have a difficult time imagining them doing a good job executing on something like this.
I don't get what you mean by "ensure good execution" because it takes so little for grocers to successfully move into a market like Blue Apron's.
20 years ago, grocers destroyed the "fast casual roasted chicken" restaurants (Boston Market, Kenny Rogers Roasters) by simply buying chicken roaster machines and adding hot prepared food to the deli counter... and charging about a third the price. I'd hazard a guess that Safeway's chicken isn't as yummy[1] as Kenny Rogers' Roasters but that didn't stop anything.
So what about their execution is required here beyond "cheap and available where you already shop"? No one can use Blue Apron without a regular grocer in their routine already. Grocers successfully tapping into this higher margin product line seems inevitable, even if done with lower quality (is that what you mean?)
>> While I don't disagree, people said the same thing about Amazon.
just to play devil's avocado, Amazon's advantage was not having the overhead of stores, now they just purchased whole foods. Seems as if they are moving towards being a supermarket
A store in my area (Fred Meyer) that sells about everything, recently started pushing this service where you shop online and then pull into this special parking space where someone brings you your stuff and loads it into your trunk. I thought it was a great idea, so at about 3 I loaded everything I needed for dinner into my online shopping cart and went to check out. Turns out the earliest they could have it ready for me was the next day. I wasn't even expecting to have to pick a time frame at all. I figured I would just see some message about it being ready in 30 minutes, or some other short time frame.
You'd be amazed at how good entrenched companies are at completely failing to understand what their competitive advantage even is, let alone using it.
"The supermarkets have changed very little about the way they've done business in the last half-century"
UK supermarkets seem to have made huge changes, online shopping and delivery is really common, self scanning (which I always use), loyalty points used across multiple vendors (e.g. getting points for paying utility bills), "metro" urban stores etc.
> While I don't disagree, people said the same thing about Amazon.
The difference to me is that Amazon competed aggressively on price and selection. You could get books or items which you just couldn't get in a local Borders. You could also get the same item significantly cheaper than a Borders or Barnes and Noble.
Blue Aprons value lies in the recipe and the convenience of having all the ingredients picked out for you, but charges a significant premium. I would like this as a way to try new recipes or expand my range (e.g. I don't stock ingredients/spices etc at home for Chinese food), but not as my go-to option for daily meals.
It may not be as easy for someone like whole-foods or Safeway to generate recipes, efficiently package/put-together ingredients etc, but I also feel the value addition is much less than someone like Amazon's was: More items and much cheaper.
I'll add to what others have said that, for anyone vaguely interested in quality and variety of food, a grocery store of 50 years ago would be this ocean of poor quality produce, canned food, Wonder bread, etc. A lot of that is the transformation of US food supply chains but grocery stores are part of that.
Do you have any recommendations on similar services? We tried Blue Apron and found that their only shipping options were FedEx Home (consistently arrives after 10PM) and OnTrac (consistently isn't delivered at all).
One of the differences is that Supermarkets don't have the freedom of operation that Blue Apron does. Years of tight margins and increasingly complex stocking and merchandising restrictions in exchange for incentives has created something of a quagmire there. You're locally owned small market, sure. But don't look at Safeway or Krogers to be able to jump onto this trend either quickly or cost effectively.
Those constraints would seem to be the only reason another startup, curbside, continues to exist :-)
Publix, a regional chain that OWNS the South East and was recently ranked by Consumer Reports as the most loved grocery store in the US, is already doing this. They don't advertise it very well, but they started offering it a few weeks ago.
EDIT: including some extra deets about their size (since that was your primary argument against it happening) -> $34B in Revenue (2016), Operating Income $2.94B (2016), Assets of $17.46B, and 200,000+ employees.
Kroger is currently running trials of meal kits in select Cincinnati-area stores (their home turf). They cost $14 for the same amount of food as a $20 Blue Apron 2-serving recipe, and most of the ingredients are pre-chopped. The recipes are less "exotic" than BA though.
More details can be found here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpearson/2017/05/17/krogers...
At least one big supermarket already has. Costco has a great selection of prepared, near-prepared (stick in oven), and frozen foods that are tastier and cheaper than Blue Apron. If meal kits become a huge market, I expect Costco will enter.
> Why have your ingredients mailed to you when a supermarket on your way home will offer the same thing for 50% cheaper?
Because, based on supermarket prices for similarly sized packages, it won't be 50% of the cost, and because the additional time for a supermarket stop takes up enough time to basically make it a wash, considering the money value of time, for people in the target market even if it was 50%.
I started using one of these services a couple of months ago and the biggest thing for me is simply having one less thing to have to think about. Both myself and my partner have struggled with depression, and one of the few things which reliably makes a difference for me is cooking. The issue is that when you feel like the world is crumbling around you and you struggle to make it out of bed, let alone out of the house, I'm simply unable to plan through what supplies I need, obtain them and cook.
Obviously I'm incredibly privileged in the sense that I am in a comfortable financial position and can afford to use these services.
Edit: I should probably also add that neither myself or my partner can drive, so getting groceries is a bus ride / hoping that the small shops in walking distance have what you need (reasonable for salt/pepper/cooking oil/pasta/rice, not so much for anything more 'exotic').
I think there is a lot of consumer psychology at play here. What you said will work very well in a country such as Singapore where people predominantly stop at a mall/supermarket after work. Beyond 7 PM all the roast chicken from the supermarket shelves are gone.
In the US, I don't see this as a practice. I mean you just drive home from work or these days use ride sharing. In either case stopping by is a hassle. Am assuming a supermarket can mimic BA's recipe and packaging.
What bothers me about BA is not the supermarkets but the management's unacceptable ways of hiding actual customer acquisition costs.
> Beyond 7 PM all the roast chicken from the supermarket shelves are gone. In the US, I don't see this as a practice
Think it depends where you live. My nearby grocery store makes/serves fresh pizza, take out dinners (different each night), the usual rotisserie chickens (that are all gone by 7), in store made sushi (to order if you're there at the right time), has an asian and american hot bar, and provides a drive through grocery pick up service.
I did BA some in the past, but now I have a bunch of recipes and just order the ingredients online and pick them up at a drive through on the way home. It's cheaper, and almost as convenient. The store will also deliver, but I'm okay saving the fee since it's so easy to pick up.
Part of the Blue Apron sell is you get to cook with 'fancy' ingredients that most grocers might not carry.
Whole Foods 365, for example, is an attempt to move the industry in the opposite direction by carrying far less than a standard market. You can certainly make delicious meals from the 365 inventory but can't necessarily fulfill a given recipe with the inventory at 365 or even a standard grocer. This is a common problem when 'cooking to the recipe'.
(though I'd agree this probably isn't enough on it's own to save blue apron)
Blockbuster and Netflix did not sell perishable goods.
Now I could buy the argument that the supermarket chains just won't be able to attract the appropriate talent to deliver an experience rivaling that of Blue Apron (or Amazon, if they decided to get into this market tomorrow via Whole Foods).
> Several are working on identical services where you pick up, curbside, the ingredients and instructions in a bag, and pay significantly less for doing so.
Is there anything here that would get in the way of supermarkets usual model? All I can think of is that a package of ingredients would have to have a sell by date of the item that goes out of date the quickest and they would require staff for preparation (e.g. adding only one clove of garlic, packaging up a tablespoon of soy sauce).
Publix started offering this service a few weeks ago. I haven't tried it yet (probably never will, for the same reasons I'd never try Blue Apron), BUT they put it in plastic containers with a label for each of the individual items and the instructions. The contents appear to be in individual wrapped vacuum sealed bags. Not sure much beyond that.
Maybe it's just Houston, but many of the ingredients are available in every supermarket. You can get higher quality recipes sent to your home whether you live in a Whole Foods neighborhood or a beer-and-weenies neighborhood. I would probably drive across town to find what I needed, but many people won't.
> These companies are going to get absolutely destroyed when the big supermarkets come on tap.
While I agree they're in trouble, i really don't think it'll be supermarkets that hurt them. Supermarkets are about as likely to rise up as Blackberry is about to destroy Apple.
An iPhone is a fundamentally different device from a old-generation BlackBerry.
As far as I can tell, these services sell you the same head of lettuce as the grocery, at a large markup. Just because you think that Safeway, QFC, and Costco won't figure out this business doesn't mean that some other grocery chain won't.
Grocery stores have a fundamental advantage in this game - they have a location where people who don't want to pay for delivery can pick up. They can absolutely compete on price, without sacrificing any quality. On the other hand, it doesn't matter how much a BlackBerry costs - it was not an iPhone.
The difference between companies like Blue Apron and Amazon is that one is created with a "I think I want to do a startup, any startup that's in vogue nowadays. I know people who can take me to IPO" mindset and the other "there is a clear business opportunity in bringing efficiencies in the retail books business. The time is right since all the underlying infrastructure (PCs, wide internet access, Credit cards, USPS/UPS, etc.) needed for such an opportunity to succeed are present; all it needs is a strong execution path and leadership to have a go at it" mindset.
Edit: possibly not my own thought, for whatever that means. I just don't want to accidentally suggest to others that I steal thoughts. See child comments.
oh really? you sure it's you and not Paul Graham that calls it that? like don't you realize you're literally on a site started by the guy that coined that phrase: everyone here is already familiar with it and the correct attribution.
I used it for almost two years for a variety of reasons - primarily it forces you to be a better cook and cook a much larger range of recipes than you would select on your own.
Eventually I had a stockpile of recipes from them to pull off of and we moved right across the street from a grocery store so was pretty ridiculous to keep using it.
I don't regret it at all - I'm a much better cook and I can cook a much larger variety of stuff now than prior to using the service. These services don't seem like they are able to sustain people for long periods of time. If people are like me you'd use it for a while then eventually find it unnecessary. Seems like the model is short-lived propagation than long-term use but I could be an anomaly.
Also used a few others in that time - Blue Apron was the most consistent.
If you're an anomaly, then my wife and I are, too: that was exactly our experience. We were already pretty decent cooks, but in a bit of a rut. We used Blue Apron as a way to push ourselves to try new ingredients and new recipes. Once we felt like we'd been exposed to most of their repertoire and settled on which sorts of dishes worked for us and which didn't, we stopped.
We used it a lot when they just started. For a while the quality was very good: chefs did a good job providing variety of choices, packaging was good. But after a year or so they started to cut the cost and shifted to low-quality selection which felt like fast food. We moved to Home Chef: it's pricier, but they provide what Blue Apron was when they started.
I canceled when I couldn't tell them to stop sending me sweet potato. They sent me an email saying they'd changed some stuff based on my recommendation but when I rejoined they still sent me two sweet potatoes and a bag of kale with every box.
Funny you say that. I get Home Chef delivered at least twice a month now after converting from Blue Apron as well, and I've been doing for long enough now that it feels like I can detect the pattern to their recipes. Always a chicken breast dish with some sort of sauce/coating and vegetable side... some form of meat in lettuce wraps... pork medallions in some kind of sauce with vegetables...
Not to say I'm not a fan, but there are definitely patters I'm starting to notice with Home Chef's offerings.
Cities are responsible for garbage and many are aggressively trying to reduce waste. Many cities are looking strongly at business regulation as a way to do this. Fees on plastic bags is just one example of this.
Blue Apron may eventually run into conflict with cities if their packaging is excessive and not compostable.
This is such a shame as they offer a really, really easy recycling service for their boxes. The only caveat is that you have to have the stuff from at least 2-3 deliveries before you can send it back for recycling, but it's easily separated and costs nothing.
Yes! Per recommendation from my sister in law. My wife and I cook for two and are generally quite satisfied:
- generally right-sized portions and ingredients pared down to 2 people
- excellent variety of ingredients and cuisines, including many things I had never seen before, and some things you'd have to go to an international market to try ro find
- nice rotation of seasonal recipes
- generally great flavors – they know how to coax fledgling chefs into enough seasoning! Frequently recipes come with a nice spicy kick.
- preparation is somewhat chef'ed up but not overly fussy
- recipes encourage mise en place and are generally easy to follow
- simple and functional mobile app, as well as fairly active and occasionally helpful forums
- cheaper than eating out, at least at this level of cuisine. More expensive thab a market probably but you don't have to plan and shop and worry so much about leftovers
Downsides:
- 6 day advance notice to cancel a delivery – you need to keep on top of your game!
- ingredient selection tends towards the inexpensive
- not feeling the return of packaging via mail – I miss the days of Webvan, and still have an old plastic crate of theirs poking around somewhere I think!
- prep can be deceptively involved for these recipes – for me total prep time is 2-3x what the recipe states for cooking time
I've found their prep times are only accurate if you've made the dish before. If you're reading and following as you go, it definitely takes longer. But I've kept my recipe cards, and remade a few things at the suggested timeframes.
We did briefly, but it wasn't that great. And then we were an unwilling customer for 3 months because they kept charging our bank account and refusing to close the account.
In the last big Blue Apron thread I participated in, I found it a bit suspicious how many people were just rabid about the company, the product, and the service and how it was "simply gourmet and such better food than [insert fast casual chain]" and "how dare you compare the quality!", etc.
I'm not so paranoid to think that the whole crowd were interested/biased parties, but I can't help wonder if they've convinced themselves that the absurd cost is actually worth it. I've tried it and I don't find the quality to even as good than that of say, Modern Market or some other slightly-upscale eatery.
Blue Apron seems to inspire surprisingly passionate discussions here. Detractors tend to be very negative and even a bit hostile, and I suspect that maybe puts fans of the service on the defensive or makes them feel like they have to praise it more than it really deserves. So far this thread is very civil though.
I've tried it and enjoyed it. I found it to be a high-quality service. Negative points were (1) trash; (2) I didn't like most of the vegetarian meals, and I'm trending towards a more vegetarian diet; (3) I prefer to cook simple meals at home that generate leftovers (so that I don't have to cook every night), but BA meals tend to be complex, messy to prepare, and do not create any leftovers. These three points were easily sufficient to stop me from using it long-term.
(1) is a topic of a lot of argument. Some insist BA creates mass amounts of waste compared to normal grocery shopping. Others contend the difference is much smaller or even nonexistent when looking at "average" grocery shoppers. I'm in the middle. I think the waste is exaggerated, but still greater than what the average shopper would produce.
They popped up on so many talk radio shows with each host himself voicing first-person experience ads (even John Batchelor), it turned me off right away.
Lifelock, Proflowers, and that beet company use the same strategy. That advertising just has a snake-oil feel to it.
One of my friends uses something like it (not sure of the name, could be Blue Apron?).
When they told me that is how they make their dinners, I thought they were joking.
They were incredibly wealthy and well cared for as a child, so much so that apparently they never learned how to prepare a meal themselves.
They have never bought the ingredients, followed a recipe, and made their own meal in their entire life. So it did make sense that they would use this service when I thought about it.
The total addressable market for that consumer group (people who never learned how to cook for themselves due to an upper class lifestyle) is small. But they likely have deep pockets.
I did for a few weeks but didn't really enjoy the vegeterian options. They weren't bad, but weren't good either. However when I lived in a large apartment several of my neighbors had them. I also had a vegetarian coworker who enjoyed their service, so YMMV.
I used them for a few months, but then just got tired of the meal cycle and didn't want to waste any of the food I didn't feel like cooking. I totally agree that they really need to do more to prevent the monotony of the weekly meal box schedule. I also really wanted them to add desserts to their boxes, but they added wine instead... I don't drink wine so that did nothing for me. I also always had anxiety that I would have to contact customer service if any of the food didn't arrive in editable condition. They always backed up their product, but I don't like feeling like I have to be a part of their quality assurance team every time I open one of their boxes.
I used it for the better part of 3 years. Made me a pretty good cook. I probably wouldn't use it again now that I feel a lot more confident in the kitchen.
I tried it out for 2 weeks. It was fun to just throw stuff together, and cooking things I normally wouldn't have tried. Although I don't regret those 2 weeks, I doubt I'd try it again.
It's probably built into their marketing costs. Some people will go into it thinking they'll cancel after the trial, but actually end up converting once they come to enjoy the convenience. Those are the customers who make the initial subsidies worth it, obviously. But more of what I've read in other comments here -- still anecdotal -- is people "graduate" after a certain amount time once they feel like proficient cooks. It's like Blue Apron is empowering their customers with good cooking skills a little too well.
Are these roughly the same 1MM people who used them the prior week? I haven't looked through their filings but wonder what the repeat customer %/churn is.
I found it more annoying than buying my own groceries. There are too many ingredients and far too much cutting. I want simple meals that I can prepare quickly. Many of the meals were tasty, but not worth ~1-1.5h of prep time.
If it's taking you 1.5h to prep a meal you got from Blue Apron, then you're doing something seriously wrong. Prep time is usually no more than 10 minutes and cook time is never longer than 35 minutes unless you're putting something in the oven to set it on a timer.
I find it interesting that none of the discussion here has been around CSAs. Are these less of a thing, even in other cities? In the D.C. area there are tons of them. They provide really great variety and I suspect many also include recipie ideas with each box (the one my wife and I used did). Most will deliver to nearby farmers markets and in our case they had enough customers in our apartment building to deliver there directly. We learned so much about different types and combinations of ingredients in that time. It was a lot of fun and made for some delicious meals.
> I find it interesting that none of the discussion here has been around CSAs. Are these less of a thing, even in other cities? In the D.C. area there are tons of them.
They are definitely a thing; Farm Fresh To You, specifically, seems to be big in Northern California; they aren't really, though, directly competing with meal kits. (I see them more as complementary.)
It could be that there's no discussion of CSAs because nobody here knows what they are. I certainly don't. Can you explain? Searching, I get Client-Server Architecture, Community Supported Agriculture, Compliance Safety & Accountability, and more. I assume it's the second one? What does it involve?
Adding to undersuit's response, here's a wapo article about the CSA scene in the D.C. area (in 2015): http://wapo.st/1AlQgSF
Basically you pay a set amount directly to the farm ahead of the harvest season and get weekly boxes of a variety of different veggies (and some bigger ones will also do meats and cheeses). Typical they cost around $30-40/week in this area, but can also be considerably more than that. Usually pick up at a local farmers' market is necessary. We lucked out with delivery to our door so some added value in that case for people in larger cities.
Community Supported Agriculture, the community buys directly from farmers. A big organizer I know of is Bountiful Baskets, they cover a number of US states(though I bet there are a number of arguments that they aren't a CSA).
Readit News
Several are working on identical services where you pick up, curbside, the ingredients and instructions in a bag, and pay significantly less for doing so.
Why have your ingredients mailed to you when a supermarket on your way home will offer the same thing for 50% cheaper?
The supermarkets have changed very little about the way they've done business in the last half-century, and as such I have a difficult time imagining them doing a good job executing on something like this.
I've also tested the majority of the meal and food delivery services out there, and my experience meshes well with the above: the local supermarket chain in some ways provides a better offering than anyone (as they should–you're absolutely right about that), but for a few years now they've persisted in making sure the actual execution is the worst I've experienced of any service. I can't see that changing until they completely overhaul their hiring practices and put sufficient processes in place to ensure good execution.
(For the record, Blue Apron strikes me as a pretty mediocre product at a pretty uninteresting price, executed in a pretty bad manner.)
I don't get what you mean by "ensure good execution" because it takes so little for grocers to successfully move into a market like Blue Apron's.
20 years ago, grocers destroyed the "fast casual roasted chicken" restaurants (Boston Market, Kenny Rogers Roasters) by simply buying chicken roaster machines and adding hot prepared food to the deli counter... and charging about a third the price. I'd hazard a guess that Safeway's chicken isn't as yummy[1] as Kenny Rogers' Roasters but that didn't stop anything.
So what about their execution is required here beyond "cheap and available where you already shop"? No one can use Blue Apron without a regular grocer in their routine already. Grocers successfully tapping into this higher margin product line seems inevitable, even if done with lower quality (is that what you mean?)
[1] - Or their neon sign as bright
just to play devil's avocado, Amazon's advantage was not having the overhead of stores, now they just purchased whole foods. Seems as if they are moving towards being a supermarket
You'd be amazed at how good entrenched companies are at completely failing to understand what their competitive advantage even is, let alone using it.
UK supermarkets seem to have made huge changes, online shopping and delivery is really common, self scanning (which I always use), loyalty points used across multiple vendors (e.g. getting points for paying utility bills), "metro" urban stores etc.
The difference to me is that Amazon competed aggressively on price and selection. You could get books or items which you just couldn't get in a local Borders. You could also get the same item significantly cheaper than a Borders or Barnes and Noble.
Blue Aprons value lies in the recipe and the convenience of having all the ingredients picked out for you, but charges a significant premium. I would like this as a way to try new recipes or expand my range (e.g. I don't stock ingredients/spices etc at home for Chinese food), but not as my go-to option for daily meals.
It may not be as easy for someone like whole-foods or Safeway to generate recipes, efficiently package/put-together ingredients etc, but I also feel the value addition is much less than someone like Amazon's was: More items and much cheaper.
You really should visit a Wegmans.
Those constraints would seem to be the only reason another startup, curbside, continues to exist :-)
EDIT: including some extra deets about their size (since that was your primary argument against it happening) -> $34B in Revenue (2016), Operating Income $2.94B (2016), Assets of $17.46B, and 200,000+ employees.
[0] https://www.ica.se/handla-online/ica-matkassen/ https://www.coop.se/handla-online/matkasse/ https://www.citygross.se/mat/matkasse/klassisk-matkasse/ https://www.hemkop.se/matkassar
1) Here and there they have recipes involving ingredients not easily found in local stores 2) They deliver it to me
If I have to go to the store anyways, and presumably using ingredients they have there already, it has no value to me.
Because, based on supermarket prices for similarly sized packages, it won't be 50% of the cost, and because the additional time for a supermarket stop takes up enough time to basically make it a wash, considering the money value of time, for people in the target market even if it was 50%.
Obviously I'm incredibly privileged in the sense that I am in a comfortable financial position and can afford to use these services.
Edit: I should probably also add that neither myself or my partner can drive, so getting groceries is a bus ride / hoping that the small shops in walking distance have what you need (reasonable for salt/pepper/cooking oil/pasta/rice, not so much for anything more 'exotic').
Think it depends where you live. My nearby grocery store makes/serves fresh pizza, take out dinners (different each night), the usual rotisserie chickens (that are all gone by 7), in store made sushi (to order if you're there at the right time), has an asian and american hot bar, and provides a drive through grocery pick up service.
I did BA some in the past, but now I have a bunch of recipes and just order the ingredients online and pick them up at a drive through on the way home. It's cheaper, and almost as convenient. The store will also deliver, but I'm okay saving the fee since it's so easy to pick up.
Whole Foods 365, for example, is an attempt to move the industry in the opposite direction by carrying far less than a standard market. You can certainly make delicious meals from the 365 inventory but can't necessarily fulfill a given recipe with the inventory at 365 or even a standard grocer. This is a common problem when 'cooking to the recipe'.
(though I'd agree this probably isn't enough on it's own to save blue apron)
[Edit: But FWIW, I do buy that Blue Apron is fucked.. competition just isn't the reason]
Now I could buy the argument that the supermarket chains just won't be able to attract the appropriate talent to deliver an experience rivaling that of Blue Apron (or Amazon, if they decided to get into this market tomorrow via Whole Foods).
Consider, for instance, the logistics for someone who doesn't own a car.
Is there anything here that would get in the way of supermarkets usual model? All I can think of is that a package of ingredients would have to have a sell by date of the item that goes out of date the quickest and they would require staff for preparation (e.g. adding only one clove of garlic, packaging up a tablespoon of soy sauce).
While I agree they're in trouble, i really don't think it'll be supermarkets that hurt them. Supermarkets are about as likely to rise up as Blackberry is about to destroy Apple.
As far as I can tell, these services sell you the same head of lettuce as the grocery, at a large markup. Just because you think that Safeway, QFC, and Costco won't figure out this business doesn't mean that some other grocery chain won't.
Grocery stores have a fundamental advantage in this game - they have a location where people who don't want to pay for delivery can pick up. They can absolutely compete on price, without sacrificing any quality. On the other hand, it doesn't matter how much a BlackBerry costs - it was not an iPhone.
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Edit: possibly not my own thought, for whatever that means. I just don't want to accidentally suggest to others that I steal thoughts. See child comments.
I canceled when I couldn't tell them to stop sending me sweet potato. They sent me an email saying they'd changed some stuff based on my recommendation but when I rejoined they still sent me two sweet potatoes and a bag of kale with every box.
I haven't had any urge to join back up.
Not to say I'm not a fan, but there are definitely patters I'm starting to notice with Home Chef's offerings.
So much garbage.
Blue Apron may eventually run into conflict with cities if their packaging is excessive and not compostable.
- generally right-sized portions and ingredients pared down to 2 people
- excellent variety of ingredients and cuisines, including many things I had never seen before, and some things you'd have to go to an international market to try ro find
- nice rotation of seasonal recipes
- generally great flavors – they know how to coax fledgling chefs into enough seasoning! Frequently recipes come with a nice spicy kick.
- preparation is somewhat chef'ed up but not overly fussy
- recipes encourage mise en place and are generally easy to follow
- simple and functional mobile app, as well as fairly active and occasionally helpful forums
- cheaper than eating out, at least at this level of cuisine. More expensive thab a market probably but you don't have to plan and shop and worry so much about leftovers
Downsides:
- 6 day advance notice to cancel a delivery – you need to keep on top of your game!
- ingredient selection tends towards the inexpensive
- not feeling the return of packaging via mail – I miss the days of Webvan, and still have an old plastic crate of theirs poking around somewhere I think!
- prep can be deceptively involved for these recipes – for me total prep time is 2-3x what the recipe states for cooking time
Dead Comment
I'm not so paranoid to think that the whole crowd were interested/biased parties, but I can't help wonder if they've convinced themselves that the absurd cost is actually worth it. I've tried it and I don't find the quality to even as good than that of say, Modern Market or some other slightly-upscale eatery.
I've tried it and enjoyed it. I found it to be a high-quality service. Negative points were (1) trash; (2) I didn't like most of the vegetarian meals, and I'm trending towards a more vegetarian diet; (3) I prefer to cook simple meals at home that generate leftovers (so that I don't have to cook every night), but BA meals tend to be complex, messy to prepare, and do not create any leftovers. These three points were easily sufficient to stop me from using it long-term.
(1) is a topic of a lot of argument. Some insist BA creates mass amounts of waste compared to normal grocery shopping. Others contend the difference is much smaller or even nonexistent when looking at "average" grocery shoppers. I'm in the middle. I think the waste is exaggerated, but still greater than what the average shopper would produce.
Lifelock, Proflowers, and that beet company use the same strategy. That advertising just has a snake-oil feel to it.
When they told me that is how they make their dinners, I thought they were joking.
They were incredibly wealthy and well cared for as a child, so much so that apparently they never learned how to prepare a meal themselves.
They have never bought the ingredients, followed a recipe, and made their own meal in their entire life. So it did make sense that they would use this service when I thought about it.
That's the big flaw I see in their product model - it's inherently self-limiting.
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Podcast hosts.
Either commit to the format and get rid of the '/s', or just speak sincerely.
They are definitely a thing; Farm Fresh To You, specifically, seems to be big in Northern California; they aren't really, though, directly competing with meal kits. (I see them more as complementary.)
Basically you pay a set amount directly to the farm ahead of the harvest season and get weekly boxes of a variety of different veggies (and some bigger ones will also do meats and cheeses). Typical they cost around $30-40/week in this area, but can also be considerably more than that. Usually pick up at a local farmers' market is necessary. We lucked out with delivery to our door so some added value in that case for people in larger cities.
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