14 ms·

Blue Apron Files for IPO

131 points by coloneltcb 9y ago

chrisgd 9y ago
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
ceejayoz 9y ago
> 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.
- downrightmike 9y ago
  That's going to be a fun tidbit when they ever have an E. coli outbreak. FTFY
teen 9y ago
The amount of pollution / trash this company produces seems pretty counter to their mission statement.
- leftnode 9y ago
  We canceled after a week precisely for this reason. I couldn't believe how much trash a single shipment generated.
  - spike021 9y ago
    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.
    - jonknee 9y ago
      From Googling around, lots of plastic bags: https://www.jennettefulda.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ingedients.jpg https://www.jennettefulda.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ing...
      - icehawk219 9y ago
        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.
    - schraitle 9y ago
      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.
  - resolaibohp 9y ago
    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.
    - swsieber 9y ago
      Right - but I don't have daily trash for spices. Or for eggs. It's not the fact that they generate trash. It's the frequency and quantity.
    - ceejayoz 9y ago
      > When I go grocery shopping I have bags and boxes for nearly everything I purchase. You don't get enough cold packs and insulation for it to stay cold for a couple of days in a hot shipping distribution center / truck, though.
  - artursapek 9y ago
    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!
    - Karunamon 9y ago
      Your accusatory comment assumes that the reader: * 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" [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert [2]: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/21/donald-trump/trump-43-million-americans-food-stamps/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/...
      - artursapek 9y ago
        Somehow those people in "food deserts" managed to get by for hundreds of years before this era of wasteful ultra-convenience startups.
        ceejayoz 9y ago
        They're a fairly recent development. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2516593/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2516593/ > 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%.
- sp332 9y ago
  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.
  - jonknee 9y ago
    > From what I recall when we had it, it was a lot less trash than going to the store and getting everything packaged individually. But all the stuff Blue Apron sends you is individually packaged (down to stuff like a single green onion in a bag)...
    - bpicolo 9y ago
      For various small bits they send a single brown paper bag (per meal).
      - sp332 9y ago
        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 https://goo.gl/photos/9xDYYQGtba6LPM1Y7 Very biodegradable in this case but still an interesting question.
        bpicolo 9y ago
        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
        Karunamon 9y ago
        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?
- jmeyers44 9y ago
  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?
  - giobox 9y ago
    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'.
    - teen 9y ago
      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.
      - giobox 9y ago
        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.
  - teen 9y ago
    https://www.jennettefulda.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ingedients.jpg https://www.jennettefulda.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ing... I mean just look at this photo... A resealable plastic bag for 1 green onion?
- bkanber 9y ago
  You can ship the boxes, gel packs, and foil bag back to them for recycling. They give you a free shipping label. 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...
  - dominotw 9y ago
    doesn't the carbon footprint of shipping it back offset the recycling?
    - kafkaesq 9y ago
      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. A loophole, in other words.
      - dominotw 9y ago
        they are obviously counting on the fact that their customers are 1. lazy/busy 2. don't care that much about recycling.
      - bkanber 9y ago
        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". [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/aug/19/recycling.waste https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/aug/19/recyclin...
        9y ago
- bpodgursky 9y ago
  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).
  - Terribledactyl 9y ago
    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.
    - chickenfries 9y ago
      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.
- liquizar 9y ago
  I'm sure they will move towards compostable packaging problem more or less solved from their standpoint
- scottbez1 9y ago
  My favorite was the single egg carton: https://i.imgur.com/tLAIx5Z.jpg https://i.imgur.com/tLAIx5Z.jpg 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...
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  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.
seibelj 9y ago
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 :)
- paulcole 9y ago
  >They are trying to help people cook healthy food, they are doing a good thing I don't think the idea that they're "doing a good thing" is so cut and dry. Aren't they producing an astounding amount of waste? And aren't the working conditions uncomfortable at best? https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/the-not-so-wholesome-reality-behind-the-making-of-your-meal https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/the-not-so-wholeso...
  - seibelj 9y ago
    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.
    - paulcole 9y ago
      uh ok? And I think sewers and roads are slightly more essential than tiny packaged bags of basil shipped to my house.
      - seibelj 9y ago
        whoosh
      - subroutine 9y ago
        Things must be shipped in packages. Are you against all products delivered by mail, or just the ones you could get locally at a store?
  - groby_b 9y ago
    Let's not forget the astonishing amount of dark patterns in their UI. Cancelling your Blue Apron account is... quite the experience. (Not to mention their food model seems to be "30% is crap we need to get rid of, and you will buy it")
jonaf 9y ago
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?
- nostrademons 9y ago
  Capital. The more money you raise, the longer you last at gambler's ruin. Hence why they're IPOing.
  - jonaf 9y ago
    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. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Company_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Company_history
glup 9y ago
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)?
- sushisource 9y ago
  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.
  - scottbez1 9y ago
    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.
    - avree 9y ago
      That's basically how cooking works though... you adjust the spice level, particularly salt, after each step... to taste.
      - nemo44x 9y ago
        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.
dominotw 9y ago
blue apron sucks. Who are the people getting an onion shipped from wherever in 12 layers of packaging and $10 chicken breast.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  No one who uses blue apron, since an onion for blue apron comes in exactly one layer of packaging (the outer box), usually. Which is one less layer (though possibly a heavier layer) than is typical with grocery shopping.
  - dominotw 9y ago
    > since an onion for blue apron comes in exactly one layer of packaging (the outer box) you have never used blue apron.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > you have never used blue apron. 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.)
    - dllthomas 9y ago
      It's possible this varies geographically, but my experience matches that of dragonwriter.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
temp246810 9y ago
For the lazy: >>> 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
- tetrep 9y ago
  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,
  - temp246810 9y ago
    Thanks, I did it quickly and thought I'd gotten the whole paragraph. Went ahead and added all of it, there was a page break in between.
  - marrone12 9y ago
    It'll be interesting to find out how much of the losses are one time expenditures in warehouses and robots vs just operating loss.
htsh 9y ago
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.
- sbov 9y ago
  If you live in a food desert you probably can't afford Blue Apron. They tend to be very low income neighborhoods.
  - r00fus 9y ago
    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.
    - ceejayoz 9y ago
      I suspect there are a lot more Detroit-style food deserts than Palo Alto-style ones in the US.
tedajax 9y ago
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.
javiramos 9y ago
Blue Apron is a rocketship!! Revenue/Profit 2014: $78 million / ($31 million) 2015: $340 million / ($47 million) 2016: $795 million / ($55 million)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
WheelsAtLarge 9y ago
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.
- bcassedy 9y ago
  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.
reubenswartz 9y ago
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.
- selectout 9y ago
  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.
- joshstrange 9y ago
  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.
stickfigure 9y ago
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?
- gigatexal 9y ago
  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.
  - tdeck 9y ago
    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.
    - Kalium 9y ago
      > 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.
icelancer 9y ago
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.
dmode 9y ago
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 ?
siliconc0w 9y ago
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.
choxi 9y ago
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.
stevewillows 9y ago
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.
- Retric 9y ago
  Chicken can be $1 or 5+$ per pound depending on area and sales. So, your savings really depends.
  - stevewillows 9y ago
    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 :)
    - be_erik 9y ago
      I want to head to your farmer's market then. I live in a high density city and proteins at my farmer's market are at least 2x supermarket prices.
      - 9y ago
inthewoods 9y ago
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.
torgoguys 9y ago
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.
Grue3 9y ago
Calling it, bigger flop than SNAP. Food startups almost never (never?) succeed.
bjacokes 9y ago
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.
smpetrey 9y ago
Isn't Blue Apron ripe for an acquisition from Amazon?

131 points by coloneltcb 9y ago

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

ceejayoz 9y ago

> 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.

downrightmike 9y ago
That's going to be a fun tidbit when they ever have an E. coli outbreak. FTFY

teen 9y ago

The amount of pollution / trash this company produces seems pretty counter to their mission statement.

leftnode 9y ago
We canceled after a week precisely for this reason. I couldn't believe how much trash a single shipment generated.
- spike021 9y ago
  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.
  - jonknee 9y ago
    From Googling around, lots of plastic bags: https://www.jennettefulda.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ingedients.jpg https://www.jennettefulda.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ing...
    - icehawk219 9y ago
      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.
  - schraitle 9y ago
    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.
- resolaibohp 9y ago
  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.
  - swsieber 9y ago
    Right - but I don't have daily trash for spices. Or for eggs. It's not the fact that they generate trash. It's the frequency and quantity.
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    > When I go grocery shopping I have bags and boxes for nearly everything I purchase. You don't get enough cold packs and insulation for it to stay cold for a couple of days in a hot shipping distribution center / truck, though.
- artursapek 9y ago
  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!
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    Your accusatory comment assumes that the reader: * 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" [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert [2]: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/21/donald-trump/trump-43-million-americans-food-stamps/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/...
    - artursapek 9y ago
      Somehow those people in "food deserts" managed to get by for hundreds of years before this era of wasteful ultra-convenience startups.
      - ceejayoz 9y ago
        They're a fairly recent development. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2516593/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2516593/ > 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%.
sp332 9y ago
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.
- jonknee 9y ago
  > From what I recall when we had it, it was a lot less trash than going to the store and getting everything packaged individually. But all the stuff Blue Apron sends you is individually packaged (down to stuff like a single green onion in a bag)...
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    For various small bits they send a single brown paper bag (per meal).
    - sp332 9y ago
      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 https://goo.gl/photos/9xDYYQGtba6LPM1Y7 Very biodegradable in this case but still an interesting question.
      - bpicolo 9y ago
        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
      - Karunamon 9y ago
        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?
jmeyers44 9y ago
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?
- giobox 9y ago
  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'.
  - teen 9y ago
    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.
    - giobox 9y ago
      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.
- teen 9y ago
  https://www.jennettefulda.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ingedients.jpg https://www.jennettefulda.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ing... I mean just look at this photo... A resealable plastic bag for 1 green onion?
bkanber 9y ago
You can ship the boxes, gel packs, and foil bag back to them for recycling. They give you a free shipping label. 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...
- dominotw 9y ago
  doesn't the carbon footprint of shipping it back offset the recycling?
  - kafkaesq 9y ago
    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. A loophole, in other words.
    - dominotw 9y ago
      they are obviously counting on the fact that their customers are 1. lazy/busy 2. don't care that much about recycling.
    - bkanber 9y ago
      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". [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/aug/19/recycling.waste https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/aug/19/recyclin...
      - 9y ago
bpodgursky 9y ago
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).
- Terribledactyl 9y ago
  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.
  - chickenfries 9y ago
    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.
liquizar 9y ago
I'm sure they will move towards compostable packaging problem more or less solved from their standpoint
scottbez1 9y ago
My favorite was the single egg carton: https://i.imgur.com/tLAIx5Z.jpg https://i.imgur.com/tLAIx5Z.jpg 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...
toomanybeersies 9y ago
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.

seibelj 9y ago

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 :)

paulcole 9y ago
>They are trying to help people cook healthy food, they are doing a good thing I don't think the idea that they're "doing a good thing" is so cut and dry. Aren't they producing an astounding amount of waste? And aren't the working conditions uncomfortable at best? https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/the-not-so-wholesome-reality-behind-the-making-of-your-meal https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/the-not-so-wholeso...
- seibelj 9y ago
  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.
  - paulcole 9y ago
    uh ok? And I think sewers and roads are slightly more essential than tiny packaged bags of basil shipped to my house.
    - seibelj 9y ago
      whoosh
    - subroutine 9y ago
      Things must be shipped in packages. Are you against all products delivered by mail, or just the ones you could get locally at a store?
- groby_b 9y ago
  Let's not forget the astonishing amount of dark patterns in their UI. Cancelling your Blue Apron account is... quite the experience. (Not to mention their food model seems to be "30% is crap we need to get rid of, and you will buy it")

jonaf 9y ago

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?

nostrademons 9y ago
Capital. The more money you raise, the longer you last at gambler's ruin. Hence why they're IPOing.
- jonaf 9y ago
  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. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Company_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Company_history

glup 9y ago

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)?

sushisource 9y ago
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.
- scottbez1 9y ago
  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.
  - avree 9y ago
    That's basically how cooking works though... you adjust the spice level, particularly salt, after each step... to taste.
    - nemo44x 9y ago
      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.

dominotw 9y ago

blue apron sucks. Who are the people getting an onion shipped from wherever in 12 layers of packaging and $10 chicken breast.

dragonwriter 9y ago
No one who uses blue apron, since an onion for blue apron comes in exactly one layer of packaging (the outer box), usually. Which is one less layer (though possibly a heavier layer) than is typical with grocery shopping.
- dominotw 9y ago
  > since an onion for blue apron comes in exactly one layer of packaging (the outer box) you have never used blue apron.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > you have never used blue apron. 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.)
  - dllthomas 9y ago
    It's possible this varies geographically, but my experience matches that of dragonwriter.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

temp246810 9y ago

For the lazy: >>> 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

tetrep 9y ago
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,
- temp246810 9y ago
  Thanks, I did it quickly and thought I'd gotten the whole paragraph. Went ahead and added all of it, there was a page break in between.
- marrone12 9y ago
  It'll be interesting to find out how much of the losses are one time expenditures in warehouses and robots vs just operating loss.

htsh 9y ago

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.

sbov 9y ago
If you live in a food desert you probably can't afford Blue Apron. They tend to be very low income neighborhoods.
- r00fus 9y ago
  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.
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    I suspect there are a lot more Detroit-style food deserts than Palo Alto-style ones in the US.

tedajax 9y ago

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.

javiramos 9y ago

Blue Apron is a rocketship!! Revenue/Profit 2014: $78 million / ($31 million) 2015: $340 million / ($47 million) 2016: $795 million / ($55 million)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

WheelsAtLarge 9y ago

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.

bcassedy 9y ago
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.

reubenswartz 9y ago

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.

selectout 9y ago
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.
joshstrange 9y ago
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.

stickfigure 9y ago

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?

gigatexal 9y ago
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.
- tdeck 9y ago
  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.
  - Kalium 9y ago
    > 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.

icelancer 9y ago

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.

dmode 9y ago

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 ?

siliconc0w 9y ago

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.

choxi 9y ago

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.

stevewillows 9y ago

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.

Retric 9y ago
Chicken can be $1 or 5+$ per pound depending on area and sales. So, your savings really depends.
- stevewillows 9y ago
  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 :)
  - be_erik 9y ago
    I want to head to your farmer's market then. I live in a high density city and proteins at my farmer's market are at least 2x supermarket prices.
    - 9y ago

inthewoods 9y ago

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.

torgoguys 9y ago

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.

Grue3 9y ago

Calling it, bigger flop than SNAP. Food startups almost never (never?) succeed.

bjacokes 9y ago

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.

smpetrey 9y ago

Isn't Blue Apron ripe for an acquisition from Amazon?