Tried it once, and wanted to like it, but it felt like it was stuck in the middle of things:
- Cheaper than eating out for a "nice" meal, but much more expensive per meal than my usual grocery shopping, or even other decent, low-cost eating out options.
- Nice to have stuff show up, but still need to go to the grocery store, anyway-- didn't feel like I was saving a trip.
- Food wasn't hard to prepare, but it was much more cumbersome than most of the things I make in a hurry, like they wanted you to prove to yourself that you could cook something "fancy". It actually added stress (may not be true for many folks).
- Food was reasonably healthy, but not as healthy (or at least as suited to me) as my own groceries.
- Most importantly, the food didn't taste bad, but it didn't taste great, either. (You can always add your own sriracha, garlic, etc, but it kind of defeats the point if you have to make your own sauce.)
Seems like a great fit for folks who want to start cooking and haven't got in the routine yet, but it seems hard to imagine lots of people staying on the plan long term.
That was my experience with Plated as well a couple years ago. I'm sure I'm bias because I don't really mind grocery shopping and I enjoy cooking. That said I didn't enjoy cooking the Plated meals as much as I do one from a recipe I find online. I completely agree on the "Food wasn't hard to prepare, but it was much more cumbersome than most of the things I make in a hurry". I'm not looking for 3 step recipes but a lot of it felt unnecessarily complex for the sake of being complex.
Honestly if you want to up your cooking game by spending money buy a nice recipe app like Paprika (I'm in love with this app) and plan your meals out before you go to the store. It takes me at most 20 minutes to find new or pick existing recipes and make my shopping list for the week. Then a quick trip to the store to grab it all (<30min in store as long as I go alone + 15-20min total driving). Call it just over an hour. Yes I could bill for an hour for more money than I save with groceries vs plated but grocery trips are unavoidable so really we are talking about 20min. And the end result is I make much healthier meals than Plated/Blue Apron/etc and I make what I like.
Agreed 100% on these points. My traditional behavior now is to stop all shipments, if there is a new type of meal/technique in one of the weeks then I order there. Typically get about 1 shipment every 4-5 weeks instead of weekly.
>>> In 2014, 2015, and 2016, we generated $77.8 million, $340.8 million, and $795.4 million in net revenue, respectively, representing growth of 338% from 2014 to 2015 and growth of 133% from 2015 to 2016. In the three months ended March 31, 2016 and March 31, 2017, we generated $172.1 million and $244.8 million in net revenue, respectively, representing growth of 42%. In the years ended December 31, 2014, 2015, and 2016, we incurred net losses of $(30.8) million, $(47.0) million, and $(54.9) million, respectively, and in the three months ended March 31, 2016 and March 31, 2017, we generated net income of $3.0 million and incurred net losses of $(52.2) million, respectively.
Edit: there is a page break in between, added the rest of the sentence
You're missing some important net losses, notably, they've lost almost as much 1/4 of this year than all of last year (continuing from where you stopped):
$(47.0) million, and $(54.9) million, respectively, and in the three months ended March 31, 2016 and March 31, 2017, we generated net income of $3.0 million and incurred net losses of $(52.2) million,
Many of my friends have tried Blue Apron, and not many still use them. As a strictly amateur chef myself, find the business model pretty strange. At some point the customers are going to realize they can get all of these ingredients from the supermarket. And not long after that, they're going to realize that they already have most of these ingredients sitting in their fridge.
My wife and I cook. We look up a random recipe that sounds tasty, make a list of ingredients we don't already have, pick those up at the store, and follow the instructions. It's not much harder than paint-by-numbers, which is what I expect almost every Blue Apron customer to realize at some point.
I don't mean to say Blue Apron is a bad thing - it's training wheels for cooking, which is great! But when the training wheels come off, so does the subscription. At what point do they hit the saturation point and the customer base tops out?
> they already have most of these ingredients sitting in their fridge
That's exactly the issue - I don't have ingredients sitting in my fridge. I don't conveniently live near a large supermarket. I don't own a car. I cook mostly for myself, and very occasionally a few friends. When I come home from work late, the last thing I want to think about is spending almost an hour going to the store, browsing and buying stuff, coming back.
To do that, first I also have to decide what exactly to cook, which is a big enough ordeal. I don't want to cook something fancy, because that means I have to get many ingredients that I'll half-use and never touch again until they go bad. Usually the simple stuff is OK but gets repetitive after a while, and leftover ingredients are still a problem.
Meal delivery fixes all that - healthy, fresh and tasty meals by default, no thought or effort required.
I guess if there was an app that decided on a meal schedule and pre-filled an instacart order, I'd do that, but again it's hard to optimize leftover ingredients and costs per meal.
The time and effort services like Blue Apron save in terms of not traveling to the super market, not having to think about what to cook, etc is the product.
My father was an accomplished chef, my wife is a fantastic cook, our kids from 0-6 years sucked up so much time and energy however. Blue Apron was a godsend.
Blue Apron is not cooking by numbers, it's convenience without the guilt/cost of eating out. The whole cooking your own meal part is a little faux feel good marketing.
Shopping is mind numbingly tedious. Getting the best quality food for the least cost can take a couple hours. Why do that when a company, for a nominal fee, can do that for you? My only reservation is portions. I tend to eat more than the average person. So I will continue to waste time in the market shopping.
What would you consider a nominal fee? Blue Apron costs about $10 per person per meal for modest portions, I can easily buy ingredients for half, if not a third of that.
This is based on their podcast ads I'm always hearing; I didn't research it.
> What would you consider a nominal fee? Blue Apron costs about $10 per person per meal for modest portions, I can easily buy ingredients for half, if not a third of that.
This is excellent logic! However, it's possible that it only really works ideally if you consider shopping to not be a cost or do it for zero time. When shopping is both a time and complexity sink, some people choose to consider the option of spending money instead of time and effort.
Sure we can get into the details of it if you like, my point was just that it's not a trivial cost. It saves you the effort of shopping.
If you shop for groceries once a week, and make, say, 10 meals at home for an average of $4 each, then you're paying Blue Apron $60. It takes me about an hour to go shopping, but I live near the grocery store and enjoy being able to pick things out. Others might be in a different situation and be willing to pay a hefty fee to not bother.
Don't forget to include prep time, which can vary depending on the recipe and the number of ingredients. I'm assuming Blue Apron takes care of most of the prep?
How much is your time spent shopping (including round trip travel time, gas or taxi/bus fare) worth? What's the quality on their ingredients like? It's not a simple comparison between the receipt price of the raw ingredients.
I must be lucky, but for me walking 10 minutes to Aldi each way. Ingredients are probably £3-5 ($4-6) for two people. Makes these delivery things really expensive
I hear a lot of my friends trying Blue Apron, but then canceling because of the 1) excessive packaging 2) excessive salt/sodium content 3) sudden inspiration to just go to a grocery store and learn more about cooking in general. For those of you on HN who have done BA for more than a year, what are your experiences? How do you balance it with other food sources (groceries, delivery food, going out, other services)?
I just do it once a month. I really wish they would have an option to do that, instead of forcing me to go on the website once a month and cancel everything except one week.
I like it because it's a good way to cook things I might not decide to make otherwise.
Complaint #2 makes no sense to me. You add all your own salt. If they want less salt, add less salt.
One of the recipes I tried listed "Add salt and pepper to taste" after basically every intermediate step, so I could certainly understand why someone might end up with too much salt if they're not paying too much attention or don't know how much salt is typical.
I wouldn't say after each step. It would be foolish to add salt to a sauce I'm reducing for instance. You taste your food always before adding salt. And you generally hold of seasoning until whatever you're doing is reasonably stable.
So imagine I want to cook some chicken breasts. I'm going to dry them and the season them and let them sit for awhile. Then I will cook them and finish them. If I want to make a sauce from the nice remains of the pan they were cooked in I'd remove the chicken and excess oil perhaps and begin that process. And that process has many steps from adding shallots and garlic to deglazing with wine perhaps and reducing that and then adding stock and reducing and then mixing in some butter. The very last thing I'd do is season.
If I'm going to put the sauce on the plate and there is a starch there's a good chance I won't have to season those much at all as the sauce will carry that.
New cooks tend to over season. They forget that if everything you're cooking has salt on it when someone eats one thing there will be salt left on their tongue and in their mouth. This will help the next they thing eat and it won't need as much salt.
In general anything like a stew or a sauce should be seasons as late as possible even if there are many steps in creating it. Meat should be seasoned early and left to rest so excess moisture can be taken out of the surface areas of the meat to help form a better surface texture and flavor.
You might add a little salt in intermediary steps because the sodium will play a role in the cooking process. But those aren't "to taste" and usually you'd only need very little.
I'd probably subscribe if they had a single purchase option. It would be nice to try some of the recipes that use ingredients that I've never tried before. Or as training wheels for my partner on days that I get home too late to cook.
I've been a consistent Blue Apron customer since 2012 getting probably 45 weekly boxes a year. I like it a whole lot. Both my wife and I have busy careers and when it came to dinners were ordering in way too much. Blue Apron is an easy way to get exactly what I need for 3 pretty good dinners a week. I like the variety, I like that they're pretty straight forward to make, and I like that I don't have to think about it. The box just shows up every Tuesday.
I totally get that it's not for everyone but honestly for me it's been a pretty huge life improvement. They have one of my absolute favorite products.
I'm honestly a pretty big fanboy. Happy to chat. Also happy to hand out free weeks to anyone who wants to try it out. Just DM me your email + real name on twitter.
Welcome! It's a good podcast, too - Within the Wires, excellent serial fiction and just well done in general. Gave me more strongly to think, and to feel, than much fiction in the last decade or more has done.
It's really a convenience thing for me. Yeah I could go to the store on my own. But by the time I come up with new/interesting recipes for the week, plan out all of the ingredients I need to buy, then actually go buy them, I've spent a ton of time and really not saved that much money.
My wife and I have been using Blue Apron for about a year now, and we still absolutely love it, we don't see ever cancelling unless something major changes.
We have a small child so restaurants can be challenging, but to us it feels like the time and effort spent preparing and cleaning up are comparable to the whole restaurant ordeal, and only a little bit more intensive than the take-away process. It's more "work" but the shared meal preparation ritual is a time honored tradition that really does feel like it promotes bonding in a positive way.
The main advantage over shopping for ingredients is that we get reasonable variation and good portion sizes without spending any time planning or shopping. We've also learned a number of new techniques for rounding out meals and balancing flavors from the Blue Apron patterns that help when cooking "freestyle."
I would probably even pay a little more (but probably not much) for a more localized version that produced less trash and minimized how far my food traveled to my plate, but it would have to be just as convenient and "everything included" as Blue Apron is.
I've been using BA for a while with my family (wife and son). We love it. We still buy a meal or two for the weekend at the grocery store (or Prime Now), along with the other household staples, but the meal planning is much easier now, and we really like how much less food we end up throwing away (e.g. unused produce). The other "waste" that is non-recyclable is negligible (little squirt packets of liquid), everything else is recyclable--boxes, ice packs, liquid bottles, veggie bags, etc.
The only thing we wish it had is support for dietary restrictions--my wife has celiac's and we have to work around that sometimes.
We occasionally (3x per month?) use BA or gobble (lately more gobble) - there are others we plan on trying soon too. For us, it mostly provides a change of pace and tends to inspire our own cooking. We often add additional ingredients to what they send us. I would agree with the concerns of excessive packaging. While these services save me a trip to the grocery store, I still need to cook it and it always takes me longer than what they say.
There is a lot of hate for this company on HN. They are trying to help people cook healthy food, they are doing a good thing, and have an actual product. Good for them! And I hope the engineers / common workers get some money too :)
Doesn't mean they're worth investing in, or have prospects to match the valuation (I don't have an opinion either way on that personally, but I enjoy reading others' opinions).
I've subscribed to Blue Apron before and, regarding waste, it doesn't seem much different from going to the grocery store. Meat ingredients like chicken breast, salmon, and beef are individually wrapped exactly like they are in the store. Blue Apron doesn't wrap all their produce (but they do wrap some of it); most people I know use a lot of plastic bags for produce when going to the grocery, so that's a small difference in favor of Blue Apron. The cardboard box it comes in is of course recyclable.
Miscellaneous knick knacks for the recipes come in small recyclable paper bags which certainly are made of less material than large grocery store bags.
The only other things I can think of are very small plastic containers for fluids like soy sauce and the ice packs.
Overall I wouldn't be surprised if Blue Apron is slightly more wasteful than going to the store, but it's a small difference at best, at least as far as basic packaging goes.
The first post that popped up on Blue Apron and waste[1] has a picture of the wrapped up ingredients of three meals[2]. It looks a bit random to me -- a few veggies come without (extra) packaging, but then there's a single individually wrapped carrot.
When I buy carrots, there's usually zero packaging; at most there's a thin plastic back for a bunch of carrots. I also don't buy a single leaf of Kale, and another single leaf of a different variety of Kale. Based on that picture, I'd say the amount of packaging is about twice as much as normal -- just in terms of food packaging, another picture shows the total waste[3], which is two or three times again as much. I think that's pretty significant.
I don't feel like I'm trying very hard, either, and -- even though virtually all of it is theoretically recyclable here by law -- I'm still appaled at how much garbage remains. We should strive to do better, not worse. It's not easy, though, since larger serving sizes tend to lead to spoiled food, which is the worst result of all.
And it's probably a drop in the bucket compared to the footprint of micro-grocery delivery compared to the most efficient alternatives.
I don't remember receiving any dry ice or styrofoam. The ice pack is recyclable. You just have to let it melt and empty out the water. There's a foil liner which is also recyclable. If there's no recycling option near you, you can even send the recyclable materials back to Blue Apron and they'll recycle it.
I can only speak for myself, but I did recycle whatever I could from the leftover materials when I was subscribed. My apartment complex made it very easy to do so.
Either way, needing to recycle is not unique to Blue Apron at all. You can easily go to the grocery store and come back with dozens of bags and packages and wrappings. Plenty of folks don't recycle in those circumstances either.
Fair enough--that wasn't a trap question, I was honestly curious. I usually go the butcher's-and-farmer's-market route and the amount of waste I end up with is very low, usually paper products and the like, so my view of that stuff is a little different. (If I hit a supermarket, I usually have my big ol' backpack.)
It's not as simple as a straight comparison of what you bring back from from the grocery store and what's left over from your meal kit box. Grocery stores also have waste from the packaging that food comes in.
Disclaimer: I work for one of Blue Apron's competitors, Green Chef.
I agree, but the same applies to a lot of materials accumulated from grocery store shopping. Like I said, I do think Blue Apron ends up being more wasteful in the end, but it doesn't strike me as an "astounding" difference.
I actually don't recall any negative experience when I cancelled my account. It might be because I'd already opted out the future deliveries, but closed the account with no issues.
I think going into a dirty sewer is uncomfortable, but there are sewer inspectors, and paving a hot road in the summer is uncomfortable, but there are road pavers.
I don't really see it as a lot of hate. I agree with everything you said about them, but that still doesn't mean I think their multi-billion dollar valuation is in any way supported by their financials or their business model.
I used them for several months. They had a great site, good service and pretty tasty meals. While expensive, that is relative, and found it a good value considering I love following directions but am at a loss grocery shopping for a week of season meals.
That being said, I left them because I didn't consider them, "healthy food". Now compared to eating out, or fast food or anything yes, they are certainly healthy. But compared to shopping yourself, or healthy food places, they are not healthy. The sodium levels and calories and everything are all very high. This is mostly because healthy doesn't typically taste as good, and there is a larger market for people who want tasty over healthy.
They may eventually offer recipes tailored to low sodium, lower calories, and all like some competitors at which time I'd love to try them again.
Juicero is doing a good thing with an actual product too!
"Our connected Press itself is critical to delivering a consistent, high quality and food safe product because it provides:
The first closed loop food safety system that allows us to remotely disable Produce Packs if there is, for example, a spinach recall. In these scenarios, we’re able to protect our consumers in real-time.
Consistent pressing of our Produce Packs calibrated by flavor to deliver the best combination of taste and nutrition every time.
Connected data so we can manage a very tight supply chain, because our product is live, raw produce, and has a limited lifespan of about 8 days."
I think services like this are fantastic for teaching people how to cook and meal plan, ideally for young adults living on their own for the first time. Outside of the foundational argument, I don't really understand the benefit.
To go a little off topic, what bothers me about groups like this, whole foods, and others, is the amount of needless packaging. For me, I buy all of my animal proteins at one of three butchers and most of my veg and bread at one of two farm markets (or a farm itself). At least around Vancouver, this is not difficult process to emulate.
These groups seem to justify their packaging by saying it's recyclable -- but that's just not good enough.
Whenever possible I try to get friends into the butcher / farm market system and away from those overly priced supermarkets. For me, I can make a fairly substantial dinner, braised chicken with plenty of veg in a madras curry sauce on rice with naan bread (from a local indian restaurant since its $2) for about $12 total. The main expense is the chicken, but even that comes to about $7 or so. This meal can easily feed four adults.
Getting these ingredients from a typical supermarket (not Whole Foods) would easily surpass $30.
If you find some time, take a cooking class or two. With some basic skills and some planning, you can easily do most of your prep in advance (sort of like /r/MealPrepSunday, but for the next few days' recipes). For me, I prefer to shop daily since I find it extremely relaxing, but most veg will last quite a long time in the right conditions[1].
Growing up, my mother was a horrible cook (still is), so I was in the same boat as you. There are lots of ways to get into cooking, but, if you're interested, one really easy method is to cook your way through Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution [2]. Don't worry about buying the bigger kitchen tools like a food processor or anything, just make sure you have a good knife and some basic pans. I believe there's a list in the front of the book.
Definitely. Even outside of the animal proteins, shopping at farm markets and such is remarkably cheaper.
One of the main hurdles for some friends has been purchasing less than picturesque veg. I challenge them to find the ugliest ones (without bruising, etc), which does help the conversion :)
oh yeah! Not a farmers market. Those are $$$. Find a farm market where a lot of immigrants shop. They're typically smaller buildings with lots of stuff crammed in. Often the produce is stored on homemade wooden racks.
The one I go to is called Persian Market, but there are a few other Italian ones that are almost as good. Dig around Yelp for farm markets under a single dollar sign.
From what I recall when we had it, it was a lot less trash than going to the store and getting everything packaged individually. And I'm sure the shipping is less polluting than having all the customers drive around too.
Huh? The trash is a lot more than grocery shopping, because everything (except certain produce items) is still packages individually, and in much smaller containers for "pantry basics" that are used in small amounts in each recipe (vinegars, etc.), Plus there's the insulation and cold packs.
> And I'm sure the shipping is less polluting than having all the customers drive around too.
And there's a different kind of waste that is reduced by BA. Every week my wife and I would have to throw out unused produce that didn't divide evenly into our meals, and it is pretty significant unless you're an expert at meal planning. There is zero food waste with BA...
I see. Well moving the problem from individual homes to a larger organization probably does help, but it's important to be cognizant of the fact that waste is still happening somewhere.
Hm, it might actually be worse since they send a small package for each portion of spices etc. instead of me just buying one glass jar and using it for ages. I mean they once sent me a single egg in a big cardboard structure. https://goo.gl/photos/9xDYYQGtba6LPM1Y7 Very biodegradable in this case but still an interesting question.
You can imagine them eventually having an option for "i'll supply eggs, milk, flour" or whatnot, but I can definitely imagine that you'd have an awkward product experience when you figure out you actually don't have any
So what's the greater waste? The cardboard necessary to package one egg, or the other 5 to 11 eggs in your fridge that were thrown out because you didn't use them?
I hear this a lot from people. When I go grocery shopping I have bags and boxes for nearly everything I purchase. When I order items on Amazon I get boxes and tons of packing materials. What is a better alternative that does not generate tons of trash?
Blue Apron also does a good job at allowing you to send back the materials so they can recycle them. I just point this out as I think they get a lot of criticism for a company that I don't think generates more trash than a lot of alternatives and they give an option to recycle.
Trash is generally a byproduct of convenience, so I'm not surprised to hear this product generates a lot of trash. One can say the same thing about Keurigs, that hilarious Juicero thing, and many other services. I instinctively avoid this kind of thing now, not just because of the quality compromise but also this trash efficiency compromise. It's really short-sighted and lazy to consume in this fashion.
Go to a damn farmer's market and plan out your week, people!
* Lives in an area with a farmer's market in accessible range (i.e. they don't live in a food desert[1] like ~24 million Americans - and that's just any kinda real market)
* Spends as much or less at the market as on a service like this, factoring in all externalities such as food waste, travel time and expense, and so on
* Has the time to spend getting to the market and shopping
* Has the cash on hand (many farmers markets are cash only - anyone on SNAP, ~43M people[2], is now excluded since those benefits are usually on cards)
* Has a situation that allows "planning out their week"
> In 1961, more than 75% of London’s inner-city population lived within 1 kilometer of a supermarket, giving them easy access to a variety of foods, says principal investigator Jason Gilliland, who directs the university’s Urban Development Program. In 2005, he says, that number was less than 20%.
what's a single shipment typically composed of? Curious since I was thinking of trying it.
Do you mean like cardboard/plastic packaging? I was thinking materials would come in re-usable container. Not fancy, but even somewhat "cheapy" re-usable material.
I haven't used Blue Apron but used one of their competitors and you'd get the ingredients like this but they'd also be in a big styrofoam container (to help insulate against the elements). The other problem was if you had 2 recipes that each called for a cucumber you'd get 2 individually bagged cucumbers. I don't know if they're smarter about this but that was a big turn off when I tried it.
Lots of individual plastic bags, but they are recyclable in the giant plastic bag recycling box at the grocery store. We would just stuff them all into a larger bag for storage and drop it all off next time we actually went to the store.
While there is an obvious carbon footprint when shipping, don't forget that your box is on a truck with many other boxes. Inside your single returned box are 8-10 completely reusable gel packs from the last 4-5 weeks of meals. Ship back once a month.
Also keep in mind that many supermarket items travel farther than Blue Apron boxes, so if you're concerned about shipping emissions, you have to compare Blue Apron against that un-recycleable Purdue chicken package that probably traveled 3x as far.
The UK did a study about shipping recyclables to China for processing, and even that 10,000 mile journey for recycling had a better carbon footprint than landfilling and remanufacturing.
That's a perfectly valid point, above, which definitely should not have been downvoted.
This business about "just ship it back to us and we'll recycle it" is obviously suspect. If anything it sounds like a scheme they came up with so they could check some box in some policy subscription about "offering recycling opportunities at all stages in the supply chain", or something similar. Even though when you think about, it's obviously how wasteful that "recycling" route is.
It's not that obvious and not so much a loophole. Shipping is more efficient than you give credit for (eg shipping recyclables from UK to China is still net-beneficial as opposed to landfilling [0]), and most likely recycling back to them is advantageous. The gel packs are reusable, you ship them 10 at a time, and "Reuse" is better than "Recycle" in "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle".
shipping recyclables from UK to China is still net-beneficial as opposed to landfilling
That's shipping it from the local recycling plant, ton for ton. But the "net benefit" of shipping millions of box of crumbled aluminum and plastic wrappers back to Blue Apron (then unpacking and sorting them)? As if anyone has time for that, anyway (when most of us have time to do the dishes and put out the trash)? That's where things start to look suspect.
The gel packs are reusable,
Yeah, like all those soaps and mini-shampoo bottles we steal from hotels and intend to "use" someday, too.
But hey, it sure sounds nice enough as a little green checkbox on some "sustainability architect"'s slide presentation somewhere, I'm sure.
> Yeah, like all those soaps and mini-shampoo bottles we steal from hotels and intend to "use" someday, too.
No -- you ship the gel packs back to Blue Apron and they reuse them. Reuse >> recycling, BTW.
I just did a back of the envelope calc for the carbon footprint of shipping your gel packs back to them (assuming shipping by truck 2,000km). It's about 300 grams of CO2.
A gallon of gasoline puts about 10kg of CO2 in the air. If you were to drive to the supermarket a mile away, just your trip in the car puts 800g of CO2 in the air (assuming 25 mpg).
Something tells me a proper analysis of the net impact of their propose recycling scheme would be a bit more involved than the two numbers you came up with (and leaving aside such questions of how many customers will actually participate; and the fact that having all those gel packs that have been handled by N customers in the past be send in with my food shipments sounds, well, kind of gross).
That is, at the end of the day, it still sounds -- suspect.
Do you have evidence that a meal kit produces more "trash" than the packaging required to ship all of the included products to a store? Additionally, your argument is incomplete without addressing the efficiencies that meal kit companies gain by limiting food waste. The real question is what provides a more efficient food system, a grocery store or a meal kit?
I'd love to see a proper study as well. Every argument I've ever seen against these meals in a box services regarding trash, including the ones I've read in this thread, are entirely based on individual personal anecdotes.
Superficially I can see the appeal of arguing based on the packaging you receive, but this fails to account for recycling options, and ignores aspects like the avoidance of food wastage given the precisely measured amounts. There's clearly more to this problem than 'wow that's more cardboard and plastic than I expected'.
Ofc it's going to be anecdotal. But that doesn't mean it's not true. 12 eggs indivially wrapped vs a dozen. 1 green onion in a plastic bag instead of a few in a smaller grocery plastic bag. Individual plastic bottles to hold 3 tablespoons of vinegar.
I'm not arguing it isn't true at all - just saying that anecdotes alone aren't going to prove this one way or another, at least not to my satisfaction.
> Ofc it's going to be anecdotal
Not really. People link to studies/research here frequently in comments.
It's packed like an MRE! (Only less ready to eat, and probably much more appetizing.) This is the first I've heard of Blue Apron, but I'm really seeing where the accusations of excessive waste come from.
I agree that these recipe-as-a-service companies have too much packaging, but I wonder if there is more embedded energy in them than the alternatives.
For a lot of people, Blue Apron et al aren't replacing a weekly shopping run, where you grab everything you need for a week. It's replacing people buying fast food, which is also very heavy on packaging.
Sure, maybe it's not actually that much extra packaging compared to 1/12th of a normal egg carton, but it certainly felt ridiculous to receive in the mail...
Plus, a lot of the additional cost is literally the cost of the gas spent delivering individual meal boxes to your door (which is pointless individual pollution).
That's a little disingenuous, they have a minimum order size, and consolidate delivery dates in an area to maximize route efficiency.
A fully packed delivery truck in a densely subscribed area would be more efficient in terms of fuel than all of those individuals driving to the store. But yes, minimal customers, in a big area, buying few meals consecutively would be worse.
I dont buy that you can assume that delivery saves fuel. You're assuming everyone makes one full round trip from home to the grocery store every week, when most people incorporate it with their other errands, commute, etc.
My wife uses it all the time and we both know how to cook very well. She gets "shopping fatigue" which Blue Apron solves very well. No need to go to the store, make decisions on what to cook, and what to buy.
There are use cases like this that are not the strawmen that I keep seeing on Hacker News like "it's cooking with training wheels on" and "not worth it" and blah blah blah.
I ultimately cancelled Blue Apron because the recipes as written were awfully bland. I also found the prep times listed on the recipes to be absolute fabrications. I felt like I could make simpler meals with less prep and cook time that tasted better... so that's what I started doing.
I've never tried BA, but I have heard the ads for them on lots of podcasts. You can triangulate the sections they want/require the podcast to use exact wording, and their argument for using the service doesn't appeal to me. Now, much of this is personal preference but here are comments about things I learned about the service from the ads:
1) recipes aren't repeated for at least a year. Boo! If I found something I like, I'd want to reorder it. (I'm not the kind of person who is always looking for something new).
2) 'regenerative farming practices' might be appealing to me, but the lack of specificity makes me think this is only done in a fad-ish sense.
3) $10 per person per meal...and I am doing the cooking? Sounds expensive.
4) 'less food waste' that's great but it sounds like it is at the expense of lots of packaging waste. And as you get experience, you find no need for much food waste anyway. Leftover ingredients can often be added to other dishes even if the recipe wouldn't necessarily call for it and you're not using super specialty flavors (see #6).
5) They used to refer to using 'local farms' in the ads. Local to them maybe, but not me likely. And I doubt packing the ingredients up and shipping them individually to me is more efficient than the standard food supply channels which are very efficient.
6) fancy sounding ingredients (always mentioned in the ads) don't impress me.
It's not all bad IMO though. The 'training wheels for cooks' argument is appealing to me in that it might get more folks used to cooking.
Very surprising that they've gotten to the point of actually filing for an IPO. Their business model is overly complicated.
This company reminds me of Webvan during the 1st internet boom. They tried to do everything a market would do plus delivery. They soon found out it was too costly and went under.
What they need to do is partner with grocery stores so that customers can pick up the food or have it delivered without having to deal with UPS or FEDex. One big pain is all the packing. It gives the impression of waste. True or not it's not nice to see a bunch of packing stuff going in the trash.
I, for one,order and pick up a Thanksgiving meal every year from my local market. It's about $10 per head. If they can match that at my local market. I'd be happy to order it. It probably wouldn't be an everyday thing but I'd use it multiple times a week.
Trust me they're already looking at getting faster fulfillment and avoiding UPS and FedEx. That ice they package with is extremely expensive and their margins would improve drastically if they only needed to keep the box cool for ~12 hours instead of 24+ with the major carriers.
I gave up Blue Apron after trying for a week for the huge amount of waste it generated to cook one meal. Multiple dry ice packs, plastic packaging for each and every ingredient, a large cardboard box. So much environmental negligence for what ? Cook a meal ?
It seems irrational that people are hung up on the time spent shopping, but not time spent cooking.
When I tried Blue Apron, I spent an hour cooking a meal for two. That's 30 minutes of work per serving.
When I cook with my own ingredients, I spend an hour shopping and an hour cooking, then make 8 servings and refrigerate/freeze the leftovers. That's 15 minutes of work per serving, and it's significantly cheaper.
I agree that Blue Apron makes more sense if you don't have access to a good grocery store, or if you don't want to invest time in finding recipes.
Agree with all the commentary here but man that is some amazing growth. I haven't reviewed the S1 yet but I'd love to see their churn numbers. Great growth on a leaky bucket isn't good.
Seems waste has been covered well but I was curious about what people think about these services and how they relate to food deserts. I think there are at least a few interesting takes on this.
First, this helps a ton. Fresh food isn't available in a lot of areas and this makes it easier for both current residents and it reduces friction for people looking to move to these towns.
On the other hand, will a societal trend towards this lead to the creation of more food deserts? These services are not cheap, and food deserts tend to be in impoverished areas.
Untrue, if you're thinking about recently gentrified areas like Bayview/Hunter's Point in SF or East Palo Alto in the peninsula.
According to the internets, the walk score and bike score for my house is really high but most of the restaurants and grocery stores around don't have a lot of variety or organic products. If we didn't already have a good cooking culture and procurement habits, I might be tempted to use Blue Apron or a similar service.
Anyone can follow instructions - the real 'cooking' skillset is planning your own meals, economizing on ingredients, and improving/iterating on dishes. It's like a 'hunting' app that delivers a deer and a rifle to your door.
Are S1 filings required to look awful? More seriously, are there certain formatting rules/requirements? They always look like some intern slapped together copy and corporate stock images into a Word doc and then shipped it.
I just don't see them as that big of a time saver. The cooking and cleaning is still the same. Meal planning is a little easier though. I get recipe cards from them, red plate, etc. Then use kroger clicklist
I'm shocked to see an IPO for one of these delivery companies. Not because there doesn't seem to be a value proposition, but because I don't understand what sets them apart from the competition. They seem to be in a flooded market: Plated, HelloFresh, I think I've seen commercials for a few more, and they seem to barely add value on top of another flooded market, grocery delivery: instacart, uber has a service like this, probably Lyft does, and most grocers are getting in on it, too. HEB, Walmart, et al. And HEB isn't even a nationwide company. Why would the public invest in this company compared to others? Is it a strategy to put fear in the biggest competitors' minds as a setup for an acquisition?
I'd argue that they add a ton of value over grocery delivery. They're handling meal planning and portioning. That's a lot less wasted food and a lot less stress for anyone that isn't content to recycle the same few recipes week in week out.
I do agree that differentiating between competitors is tough though. On the surface all of these companies look about the same. They try to cater to different segments - health conscious, upscale, etc, but I'm not sure how effective this is.
For a while we ordered mostly takeout which was both expensive and unhealthy. We were able to start cooking for ourselves for a bit on our own, but eventually the weekly meal planning and shopping run got to be too much of a burden. That's where we found Blue Apron which had us eating healthy for another ~6 months. During this time we tried Plated too, but that week was guest recipes from some magazine and they were poorly timed and included practically inedible ingredients. After 6 months work situations changed and we just didn't have time for an hour of cooking 3 times a week. Since then we've been using Munchery which we're very happy with.
Exactly the same- we use Munchery and love it. I don't get why people want to fake-cook Blue Apron when you can just heat it up with Munchery... same quality!
That's interesting, but it sounds too simple. Surely any of the competitors could also IPO, and at that point, Blue Apron still needs to justify why the market is better off investing in their company. By contrast, prior to its acquisition by Google in October 2006, Youtube was one among many social video sites, and neither it nor any of its competitors IPO'd, ever (source: I searched for news relating to "video sharing IPO" and found nothing prior to 2010 -- I could still be wrong about this claim, though). However, the operating costs of such a massive site (65k new videos with 100MM views per day, a mere 1 year after launch[0]) are substantial. If an IPO is just a way to defeat the competition using sheer survival tactics, I would have expected Youtube (or one of its competitors) to IPO or start fielding an IPO early-on. Maybe Google just bought them too quickly, as they were acquired in October 2006?
Does it mean that Youtube competitors like Vimeo must be profitable private companies in order to stay in the market? Youtube's pockets are, at this point, effectively infinite, so my sense is that Youtube competitors are not directly competing with what Youtube offers, but similar niches peripheral to Youtube.
YouTube was bought really quickly, well before they had a revenue model. Post dot-com boom, you generally need at least revenue to have a decent chance of success on the public markets, even if you don't have profits.
A better analogy might be Groupon (IPO'd 2011) or GrubHub (IPO'd 2014). Both of those were in similarly indefensible industries - GrubHub even in food delivery - and they both IPO'd basically because having capital gave them a competitive advantage over competitors that didn't, because it let them not-die and continue attracting customers with subsidized prices. Neither was kind to public market investors, but it was absolutely the right choice for founders & early investors who got out (or in some cases, were forced out).
> Blue Apron, Inc. was incorporated in Delaware on December 5, 2011 under the name Petridish Media, Inc. and changed its name to Blue Apron, Inc. on August 29, 2012.
That's going to be a fun tidbit if they ever have an E. coli outbreak.
Yes, I have. (Now, admittedly, onions were a poorly chosen example, and with many other items you could get up to three layers—for meats that are shipped in the chilled section—layers of packaging. But regular onions were usually one layer, green/spring onions usually two.)
- Cheaper than eating out for a "nice" meal, but much more expensive per meal than my usual grocery shopping, or even other decent, low-cost eating out options.
- Nice to have stuff show up, but still need to go to the grocery store, anyway-- didn't feel like I was saving a trip.
- Food wasn't hard to prepare, but it was much more cumbersome than most of the things I make in a hurry, like they wanted you to prove to yourself that you could cook something "fancy". It actually added stress (may not be true for many folks).
- Food was reasonably healthy, but not as healthy (or at least as suited to me) as my own groceries.
- Most importantly, the food didn't taste bad, but it didn't taste great, either. (You can always add your own sriracha, garlic, etc, but it kind of defeats the point if you have to make your own sauce.)
Seems like a great fit for folks who want to start cooking and haven't got in the routine yet, but it seems hard to imagine lots of people staying on the plan long term.