5 ms·

Gobble (YC W14) Raises $10.75M for Its 10-Minute Dinner Kits

40 points by confiscate 11y ago

onedev 11y ago
I've got an idea. Step 1: Throw some rice in a rice cooker, add water, press button. Step 2: Cut up 2 sausages, throw it in the microwave for 2 minutes Step 3: Put one or two cups of frozen vegetables in a bowl, add water, and steam in the microwave for 4mins. Step 4: Throw the sausages and the vegetables on the rice, add Soy Sauce to taste. Optional: Feel free to make some eggs on a pan. Should only take 2-3mins. You can add that into the mix of Rice/Sausage/Veggies. Aaaaand that's dinner!
- Alex3917 11y ago
  You can also just cook any meat and vegetables in the rice cooker with the rice.
  - onedev 11y ago
    Wait what, are you serious. You might have just changed everything I thought I knew about life and cooking.... I'm gonna try this out.
    - chaosphere2112 11y ago
      Yup, Roger Ebert wrote a cookbook on it: http://www.amazon.com/The-Pot-How-Use-It/dp/0740791427 http://www.amazon.com/The-Pot-How-Use-It/dp/0740791427
    - Alex3917 11y ago
      Yeah. You're not going to get quite the same flavor as if you had fried the meat in butter or whatever, but it's still pretty good, especially if afterwards you add some rice seasoning or nutritional yeast.
pbreit 11y ago
I think Blue Apron has set the price ceiling on this sort of thing: $10/portion.
- notjustanymike 11y ago
  Blue doesn't do any prep work though. You gotta chop those onions yourself.
  - bmm6o 11y ago
    It's true, step 1 of a Blue Apron recipe can take 20 minutes. Green Chef does a lot of the prep and is only slightly more expensive.
  - pbreit 11y ago
    Well, Gobble's meals are "one pot" and generally have fewer ingredients.
masonhensley 11y ago
Serious question - Why don't grocery stores make and market these ready to cook fresh/healthy boxed meals? They already have the inventory & could use last mile uberRush type delivery services that are expanding. I know I'm over simplifying this - but if I was wanted to be in this space, I'd partner with grocery stores to build their tech, and charge the groceries incremental fees off each sale without taking on inventory / capital risk. I'm just not sure about Gobble, blue apron, hello fresh et all... how are they differentiating themselves operationally? (Besides throwing money at having their own refrigerated distribution centers) FedEx-ing food around seems like a gigantic waste of resources and seems at odds with "changing the world" for better. But that's just me. *I'm a "busy millennial" with a good tech job who enjoys cooking - so I guess I'm in their target market?
- rootedbox 11y ago
  They do have this at the grocery store.
  - masonhensley 11y ago
    Can you provide an example? Preferably one from a regional or national chain that's not exclusive to the Bay Area or NYC
    - josephjrobison 11y ago
      Whole Foods prepackaged meals + Instacart would be the best example I can think of that's spread throughout nationally.
    - Kluny 11y ago
      Bags of frozen prechopped veggies in sizes appropriate for a family of four for one meal, plus containers of fresh soup to go in the deli, plus a selection of fresh ready-to-heat entrees. A nice meal for two with enough leftover for someone's lunch would come to around $16 at my local Save-On. (veg $5, entree $7, soup $4).
orthoganol 11y ago
? At their $14/ meal price I can just order something healthy on SpoonRocket for a few bucks less, with almost instant delivery. Why wouldn't I do that?
- dogma1138 11y ago
  The price goes down the more meals you order their service is intended for people that would want to have "ready to cook" meals rather than an unplanned take-away. They can offer more verity in their menus over time and some people actually enjoy cooking even if the majority of the work was already been done. Their kits are also intended to be able to stored up to 5 days in refrigeration and up to 2 weeks if frozen which means you can use them on your own schedule which you can't do that easily with take-away or order-in. Another important fact is that when you are cooking you can adjust the recipe yourself add or remove ingredients, over cook or under cook the veggies depending on how you like them, add or replace seasoning etc. Oddly enough I don't understand why these types of kits aren't available in grocery stores I can go down to Marks and Spencer or Waitrose and get pre-cut veggies, meats, pre-cooked pasta/noodles and rice or whole premade meals including ready to cook steaks, fish, poultry, pasta dishes, pies, soups even deserts...
macNchz 11y ago
I've always been a bit curious about the market for these services, if you consider: - Price sensitive novices: likely realize fairly quickly that they can save quite a lot of money by shopping & chopping on their own. - Price insensitive novices: likely find that the meals push the limits of their cooking skill, take longer and have more cleanup than they expect, and will either learn enough cooking skills to make the meal packages feel restrictive, or just go back to takeout. - Price sensitive with cooking experience: likely realize how much cost is added for something that is not a big hassle if you have a little experience (i.e. basic knife skills and knowing where to find things quickly in the supermarket). - Price insensitive with cooking experience: likely feel restricted by the ingredients and menus, and can get halfway there with grocery delivery. A former roommate of mine (price insensitive novice) had a Blue Apron subscription for some time and I was always shocked at how incredibly much packaging there was, from individual foam wrappers around vegetables and tiny baggies with a glove of garlic to huge ice packs and layers of cardboard. It seemed like such a waste to me.
- twakefield 11y ago
  My wife and I use Blue Apron and I am a big fan. I have to admit the packaging is extensive but at least they are trying to reduce the net waste [0]. A few other positives: - You get the experience of making the dinner (chopping, cooking, mixing, etc.). It's a good entry point for novices. - Many of the ingredients are somewhat exotic, so you wouldn't usually buy them in the grocery store. Or if you did you end up with a lot left over that you won't use again. - $59 for six meals actually seems like a bargain to me. Maybe we were doing it wrong but when we used to go to the store for all our meals, we spent a lot more and ended up wasting a lot of it. The downside is that you don't save that much time (other than the shopping trip). So I could see how Gobble is great for more time-constrained people. In the end, I think all of these services are trying to own the space, starting with their own niches. Once they get enough traction they can land and expand to take over the other services' niches. This comes at a cost to them (poor unit economics initially), but we the consumers benefit...for now at least. [0] https://support.blueapron.com/hc/en-us/articles/202510818-How-do-I-recycle-my-Blue-Apron-packaging- https://support.blueapron.com/hc/en-us/articles/202510818-Ho...
- 11y ago
sjclemmy 11y ago
This strikes me as tech bubble stuff. There are already shops that sell you ingredients. And cooking is not that hard. In fact, part of the fun is spending time cooking, with friends. Also - most people in the world can't afford this kind of thing.
- patio11 11y ago
  First world problems are still problems; this is "What's the most convenient way to deliver a home-cooked meal without dispatching a chef to cook it for you?", which is a thing that well-off professionals historically buy. Systemize the human labor there and it makes it affordable to more of the middle class while allowing people to cook for themselves, which at least some people want to do. Cooking is not hard like reading is not hard: if you grew up doing it, you might not remember having learned it at all. The historical expectation that at least half the population grew up cooking has fallen apart, particularly among some social classes. I would not suggest contempt of business models which only succeed by helping more people learn to cook. (Cards on table: can cook, do so rarely, would be very open to doing more and very willing to trade money to decrease time investment required.) As to the economics of it: doesn't strike me as having unit economics compatible with investor expectations but oh well capitalism happens -- if it does they make a bundle, if not they're sophisticated rich people who can afford to lose money while buying food for less-rich people at a loss. "Even the poorest Americans will have cooked food prepared by servants" was once science fiction, too. That business worked out pretty decently, modulo latter-day concerns that "Well maybe poor Americans shouldn't have their food cooked by servants."
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
marcusgarvey 11y ago
>The company says it currently has 1 million subscribers in California, so the round will help fund its national expansion. Paying subscribers? Or people on their email list?
Patrick_Devine 11y ago
I was a little skeptical about Gobble, but I used it when my wife was out of town at a conference a few weeks ago. It was pretty easy to do. Prep work is definitely the most time consuming part of cooking. My only gripe is the amount of waste it generates. I definitely have a feeling of guilt with how much of the packaging gets thrown into the garbage. Gobble really needs to address this.
code4tee 11y ago
On the plus side the meals do look quite good. On the downside when I see such a business racking up silly valuations like this I see lots of bubbles floating around.
etep 11y ago
To me, the highest cost of cooking for myself is planning and shopping. The value, therefore, is to offload the thinking, planning, and shopping part of this. The prep and cleanup is actually fun and easy to fit into my schedule. Therefore, solid value prop and great idea. Further, imo, the cost and packaging "waste" is nothing significant. When I shop for myself I still get packaging. Worse yet, a lot of food gets wasted anyway, i.e. because the grocery store doesn't sell me exactly as much food as I need, whereas Gobble does. I suspect this is actually more efficient, i.e. on all frontiers, especially given the waste I always generate from shopping for these ingredients.
- JTon 11y ago
  > To me, the highest cost of cooking for myself is planning and shopping I agree with shopping. But not so much with planning. Once you've been cooking for yourself for a couple months you can pretty much nail down a rotating meal plan that requires no substantial planning On the packaging waste, I was delving through the Gobble website and found out they offer a free "Return & Re-Use Program" [1] [1] https://gobble.com/faq https://gobble.com/faq
  - etep 11y ago
    I think a better comparison is the planning it would take to get to the variety that Gobble offers. I've been on that rotating meal plan and it is pretty narrow in my experience. Every once in a while I find a new recipe, euphoria ensues, and then I spend two hours going to whole foods and trader joes - lesson learned, don't do that! I don't think it is you and I appreciate the honest comment, but from the other comments it seems that everyone here has mastered the art of fitting in the planning, shopping, prep, cooking, and cleaning. Truly amazing! Or simply surprising that they can't hypothesize about the poor folk like myself who just can't quite get there in their life.
jaxomlotus 11y ago
I wish instead of: "we shop, chop and deliver to your door" on the homepage they modified the expression to "we shop, chop and drop it off at your door"
boldpanda 11y ago
$12/meal + shipping. Price is obfuscated on the website. I'd imagine that Gobble will struggle with the same things that every food delivery business in the world struggles with - low margins. People just aren't willing to pay high margins for food that gets delivered. There is constant pressure to offer more food at lower prices. Their most likely exit strategy is to build a brand strong enough that they can get a line of frozen prepared meals picked up by major grocery retailers or sign a licensing agreement to do something similar.
- shostack 11y ago
  Thanks for putting that front and center. My biggest issue with these services is that for a regular home-cooked meal, that is quite a premium for something where the portion size is quite often way too small or the ingredient quality isn't justified by the price. I know I'm looking for something that may not be able to exist because of the razor-thin margins, but if someone came out with a service at the <$10 price point with decent ingredients and portions, and healthy (read: low sodium, low sugar, low processed-crap) options, I'd likely switch a significant percentage of my weekly meals to them. As it stands now, it is just hard to justify at that price. But perhaps I'm not the target market.

40 points by confiscate 11y ago

I've got an idea. Step 1: Throw some rice in a rice cooker, add water, press button. Step 2: Cut up 2 sausages, throw it in the microwave for 2 minutes Step 3: Put one or two cups of frozen vegetables in a bowl, add water, and steam in the microwave for 4mins. Step 4: Throw the sausages and the vegetables on the rice, add Soy Sauce to taste. Optional: Feel free to make some eggs on a pan. Should only take 2-3mins. You can add that into the mix of Rice/Sausage/Veggies. Aaaaand that's dinner!

Alex3917 11y ago
You can also just cook any meat and vegetables in the rice cooker with the rice.
- onedev 11y ago
  Wait what, are you serious. You might have just changed everything I thought I knew about life and cooking.... I'm gonna try this out.
  - chaosphere2112 11y ago
    Yup, Roger Ebert wrote a cookbook on it: http://www.amazon.com/The-Pot-How-Use-It/dp/0740791427 http://www.amazon.com/The-Pot-How-Use-It/dp/0740791427
  - Alex3917 11y ago
    Yeah. You're not going to get quite the same flavor as if you had fried the meat in butter or whatever, but it's still pretty good, especially if afterwards you add some rice seasoning or nutritional yeast.

pbreit 11y ago

I think Blue Apron has set the price ceiling on this sort of thing: $10/portion.

notjustanymike 11y ago
Blue doesn't do any prep work though. You gotta chop those onions yourself.
- bmm6o 11y ago
  It's true, step 1 of a Blue Apron recipe can take 20 minutes. Green Chef does a lot of the prep and is only slightly more expensive.
- pbreit 11y ago
  Well, Gobble's meals are "one pot" and generally have fewer ingredients.

masonhensley 11y ago

Serious question - Why don't grocery stores make and market these ready to cook fresh/healthy boxed meals? They already have the inventory & could use last mile uberRush type delivery services that are expanding. I know I'm over simplifying this - but if I was wanted to be in this space, I'd partner with grocery stores to build their tech, and charge the groceries incremental fees off each sale without taking on inventory / capital risk. I'm just not sure about Gobble, blue apron, hello fresh et all... how are they differentiating themselves operationally? (Besides throwing money at having their own refrigerated distribution centers) FedEx-ing food around seems like a gigantic waste of resources and seems at odds with "changing the world" for better. But that's just me. *I'm a "busy millennial" with a good tech job who enjoys cooking - so I guess I'm in their target market?

rootedbox 11y ago
They do have this at the grocery store.
- masonhensley 11y ago
  Can you provide an example? Preferably one from a regional or national chain that's not exclusive to the Bay Area or NYC
  - josephjrobison 11y ago
    Whole Foods prepackaged meals + Instacart would be the best example I can think of that's spread throughout nationally.
  - Kluny 11y ago
    Bags of frozen prechopped veggies in sizes appropriate for a family of four for one meal, plus containers of fresh soup to go in the deli, plus a selection of fresh ready-to-heat entrees. A nice meal for two with enough leftover for someone's lunch would come to around $16 at my local Save-On. (veg $5, entree $7, soup $4).

orthoganol 11y ago

? At their $14/ meal price I can just order something healthy on SpoonRocket for a few bucks less, with almost instant delivery. Why wouldn't I do that?

dogma1138 11y ago
The price goes down the more meals you order their service is intended for people that would want to have "ready to cook" meals rather than an unplanned take-away. They can offer more verity in their menus over time and some people actually enjoy cooking even if the majority of the work was already been done. Their kits are also intended to be able to stored up to 5 days in refrigeration and up to 2 weeks if frozen which means you can use them on your own schedule which you can't do that easily with take-away or order-in. Another important fact is that when you are cooking you can adjust the recipe yourself add or remove ingredients, over cook or under cook the veggies depending on how you like them, add or replace seasoning etc. Oddly enough I don't understand why these types of kits aren't available in grocery stores I can go down to Marks and Spencer or Waitrose and get pre-cut veggies, meats, pre-cooked pasta/noodles and rice or whole premade meals including ready to cook steaks, fish, poultry, pasta dishes, pies, soups even deserts...

macNchz 11y ago

I've always been a bit curious about the market for these services, if you consider: - Price sensitive novices: likely realize fairly quickly that they can save quite a lot of money by shopping & chopping on their own. - Price insensitive novices: likely find that the meals push the limits of their cooking skill, take longer and have more cleanup than they expect, and will either learn enough cooking skills to make the meal packages feel restrictive, or just go back to takeout. - Price sensitive with cooking experience: likely realize how much cost is added for something that is not a big hassle if you have a little experience (i.e. basic knife skills and knowing where to find things quickly in the supermarket). - Price insensitive with cooking experience: likely feel restricted by the ingredients and menus, and can get halfway there with grocery delivery. A former roommate of mine (price insensitive novice) had a Blue Apron subscription for some time and I was always shocked at how incredibly much packaging there was, from individual foam wrappers around vegetables and tiny baggies with a glove of garlic to huge ice packs and layers of cardboard. It seemed like such a waste to me.

twakefield 11y ago
My wife and I use Blue Apron and I am a big fan. I have to admit the packaging is extensive but at least they are trying to reduce the net waste [0]. A few other positives: - You get the experience of making the dinner (chopping, cooking, mixing, etc.). It's a good entry point for novices. - Many of the ingredients are somewhat exotic, so you wouldn't usually buy them in the grocery store. Or if you did you end up with a lot left over that you won't use again. - $59 for six meals actually seems like a bargain to me. Maybe we were doing it wrong but when we used to go to the store for all our meals, we spent a lot more and ended up wasting a lot of it. The downside is that you don't save that much time (other than the shopping trip). So I could see how Gobble is great for more time-constrained people. In the end, I think all of these services are trying to own the space, starting with their own niches. Once they get enough traction they can land and expand to take over the other services' niches. This comes at a cost to them (poor unit economics initially), but we the consumers benefit...for now at least. [0] https://support.blueapron.com/hc/en-us/articles/202510818-How-do-I-recycle-my-Blue-Apron-packaging- https://support.blueapron.com/hc/en-us/articles/202510818-Ho...
11y ago

sjclemmy 11y ago

This strikes me as tech bubble stuff. There are already shops that sell you ingredients. And cooking is not that hard. In fact, part of the fun is spending time cooking, with friends. Also - most people in the world can't afford this kind of thing.

patio11 11y ago
First world problems are still problems; this is "What's the most convenient way to deliver a home-cooked meal without dispatching a chef to cook it for you?", which is a thing that well-off professionals historically buy. Systemize the human labor there and it makes it affordable to more of the middle class while allowing people to cook for themselves, which at least some people want to do. Cooking is not hard like reading is not hard: if you grew up doing it, you might not remember having learned it at all. The historical expectation that at least half the population grew up cooking has fallen apart, particularly among some social classes. I would not suggest contempt of business models which only succeed by helping more people learn to cook. (Cards on table: can cook, do so rarely, would be very open to doing more and very willing to trade money to decrease time investment required.) As to the economics of it: doesn't strike me as having unit economics compatible with investor expectations but oh well capitalism happens -- if it does they make a bundle, if not they're sophisticated rich people who can afford to lose money while buying food for less-rich people at a loss. "Even the poorest Americans will have cooked food prepared by servants" was once science fiction, too. That business worked out pretty decently, modulo latter-day concerns that "Well maybe poor Americans shouldn't have their food cooked by servants."
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

marcusgarvey 11y ago

>The company says it currently has 1 million subscribers in California, so the round will help fund its national expansion. Paying subscribers? Or people on their email list?

Patrick_Devine 11y ago

I was a little skeptical about Gobble, but I used it when my wife was out of town at a conference a few weeks ago. It was pretty easy to do. Prep work is definitely the most time consuming part of cooking. My only gripe is the amount of waste it generates. I definitely have a feeling of guilt with how much of the packaging gets thrown into the garbage. Gobble really needs to address this.

code4tee 11y ago

On the plus side the meals do look quite good. On the downside when I see such a business racking up silly valuations like this I see lots of bubbles floating around.

etep 11y ago

To me, the highest cost of cooking for myself is planning and shopping. The value, therefore, is to offload the thinking, planning, and shopping part of this. The prep and cleanup is actually fun and easy to fit into my schedule. Therefore, solid value prop and great idea. Further, imo, the cost and packaging "waste" is nothing significant. When I shop for myself I still get packaging. Worse yet, a lot of food gets wasted anyway, i.e. because the grocery store doesn't sell me exactly as much food as I need, whereas Gobble does. I suspect this is actually more efficient, i.e. on all frontiers, especially given the waste I always generate from shopping for these ingredients.

JTon 11y ago
> To me, the highest cost of cooking for myself is planning and shopping I agree with shopping. But not so much with planning. Once you've been cooking for yourself for a couple months you can pretty much nail down a rotating meal plan that requires no substantial planning On the packaging waste, I was delving through the Gobble website and found out they offer a free "Return & Re-Use Program" [1] [1] https://gobble.com/faq https://gobble.com/faq
- etep 11y ago
  I think a better comparison is the planning it would take to get to the variety that Gobble offers. I've been on that rotating meal plan and it is pretty narrow in my experience. Every once in a while I find a new recipe, euphoria ensues, and then I spend two hours going to whole foods and trader joes - lesson learned, don't do that! I don't think it is you and I appreciate the honest comment, but from the other comments it seems that everyone here has mastered the art of fitting in the planning, shopping, prep, cooking, and cleaning. Truly amazing! Or simply surprising that they can't hypothesize about the poor folk like myself who just can't quite get there in their life.

jaxomlotus 11y ago

I wish instead of: "we shop, chop and deliver to your door" on the homepage they modified the expression to "we shop, chop and drop it off at your door"

boldpanda 11y ago

$12/meal + shipping. Price is obfuscated on the website. I'd imagine that Gobble will struggle with the same things that every food delivery business in the world struggles with - low margins. People just aren't willing to pay high margins for food that gets delivered. There is constant pressure to offer more food at lower prices. Their most likely exit strategy is to build a brand strong enough that they can get a line of frozen prepared meals picked up by major grocery retailers or sign a licensing agreement to do something similar.

shostack 11y ago
Thanks for putting that front and center. My biggest issue with these services is that for a regular home-cooked meal, that is quite a premium for something where the portion size is quite often way too small or the ingredient quality isn't justified by the price. I know I'm looking for something that may not be able to exist because of the razor-thin margins, but if someone came out with a service at the <$10 price point with decent ingredients and portions, and healthy (read: low sodium, low sugar, low processed-crap) options, I'd likely switch a significant percentage of my weekly meals to them. As it stands now, it is just hard to justify at that price. But perhaps I'm not the target market.