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As a subscriber, here are some arguments in favor of Blue Apron [or similar services]: 1) It's cheaper / healthier than eating at most restaurants [where I liv

by wrsh07 9y ago

As a subscriber, here are some arguments in favor of Blue Apron [or similar services]: 1) It's cheaper / healthier than eating at most restaurants [where I live, in Upper Manhattan] 2) The nearest grocery stores also aren't cheap. If I could save money, it would cost me a significant amount of time. [the lines at Trader Joe's alone, not to mention meal-planning + time to & from store]. 3) Some items are hard to buy in the right quantities. [eg red wine vinegar] 4) I don't need to do much normal grocery shopping. Between farmer's markets and Amazon Prime Now, I don't have a necessary weekly trip to the store. As I mentioned in another comment, I am one of the nearly-perfect early customers. It fills a need that I have, and it clearly doesn't fill any needs for you. This is actually a huge problem for Blue Apron, because it means that to acquire me, they just needed me to know about it [good!]. [But!] To acquire you, they'd probably have to (a) lower costs, (b) do lots of ... marketing?, (c) provide more food options [that's actually been happening], and (d) make cooking trivial. Delivery is a huge expense [I heard 20-30% [1]] for a service like Blue Apron. I imagine the goal of many of these "delivery" services is to get in on the ground floor before delivery / logistics become a solved problem of self-driving cars. They'll use VC money and low-margins to survive until their delivery fees drop and hope that being dominant in the market helps them keep their spot. ... And then they'll have a few years of reasonable profitability until they're disrupted? [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/21/heres-how-much-youre-actually-paying-for-free-shipping-on-blue-apron/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/21/heres...

wrsh07 9y ago
Also, something I've thought about a lot since listening to this 99pi episode [2] is that technology is best when it enhances useful skills. [or at least doesn't atrophy them] I think that services like Blue Apron are actually kind of ingenious in that they trivialize an annoying part of cooking [the shopping] while developing the "skill" part. On top of that, I think just using good ingredients helps you identify what to look for in stores - making you better at that aspect, too [without having to practice the "standing in line" bit] It's a little tidbit I've always liked about Blue Apron. [2]: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magenta-automation-paradox-pt-1/ http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magent... -- it's two parts.
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
  As an aside to readers: I can't recommend this 99% Invisible episode enough. Children of the Magenta has to be one of my top-3 favorites.
- ghaff 9y ago
  I'm not sure shopping is necessarily an annoying part though it depends on the circumstances and it does add to the total time commitment. I'd have said it was more about reducing the cognitive load. You're pretty much handed a bunch of ingredients and told what to do.
- ashark 9y ago
  Food shopping definitely sucks, and on top of the time commitment, having to keep a catalogue of typical prices per quantity and freshness/ripeness-determining markers in one's head is fairly burdensome. One of those great things the truly rich don't have any reason to do/learn unless they just feel like it. I'm skeptical of the value of these services overall but the more I think about time savings and not having to worry about keeping up my otherwise-useless food-buying skills they could be worth it, though only if they all but completely removed my need to grocery shop. And I think the prices would still have to come down a little more. What'd be more valuable is a grocery store with online ordering and curbside pickup with some kind of enforceable (like, with real teeth, not "oh yeah, we tried to screw you, here's a voucher for the $1.50 difference, bet you're glad you spent two hours getting us to pay up!") guarantee that they wouldn't sell me anything over the average price for my area. Infeasible now, but imagine if government tweaked the information imbalance to be a bit less out of customers' favor by mandating (or incentivizing) machine-readable posting of prices week to week... then such a service could exist, could be audited, could be more-or-less trusted. And would save huge numbers of hours and lots of fuel for driving around comparison shopping and other useless consumer BS we (those not rich enough to pay others to worry about this useless crap) currently put up with as practically a second job.
  - xhedley 9y ago
    We get this in the UK - I can order from Tesco or Asda and get it delivered to my door. "Price promise" price matches lowest price in area for branded goods like Heinz baked beans. It's cheaper in UK to pick supermarket own brand, in which case there is the issue that I like Tesco baked beans but not Asda baked beans. And Tesco offer a "as you would pick it yourself" on fresh food where they pick the longest shelf life fresh food. But Tesco failed and lost a lot of money in the US market. I wonder why the UK has good supermarket delivery and the US does not.

by wrsh07 9y ago

wrsh07 9y ago

Also, something I've thought about a lot since listening to this 99pi episode [2] is that technology is best when it enhances useful skills. [or at least doesn't atrophy them] I think that services like Blue Apron are actually kind of ingenious in that they trivialize an annoying part of cooking [the shopping] while developing the "skill" part. On top of that, I think just using good ingredients helps you identify what to look for in stores - making you better at that aspect, too [without having to practice the "standing in line" bit] It's a little tidbit I've always liked about Blue Apron. [2]: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magenta-automation-paradox-pt-1/ http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magent... -- it's two parts.

HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
As an aside to readers: I can't recommend this 99% Invisible episode enough. Children of the Magenta has to be one of my top-3 favorites.
ghaff 9y ago
I'm not sure shopping is necessarily an annoying part though it depends on the circumstances and it does add to the total time commitment. I'd have said it was more about reducing the cognitive load. You're pretty much handed a bunch of ingredients and told what to do.
ashark 9y ago
Food shopping definitely sucks, and on top of the time commitment, having to keep a catalogue of typical prices per quantity and freshness/ripeness-determining markers in one's head is fairly burdensome. One of those great things the truly rich don't have any reason to do/learn unless they just feel like it. I'm skeptical of the value of these services overall but the more I think about time savings and not having to worry about keeping up my otherwise-useless food-buying skills they could be worth it, though only if they all but completely removed my need to grocery shop. And I think the prices would still have to come down a little more. What'd be more valuable is a grocery store with online ordering and curbside pickup with some kind of enforceable (like, with real teeth, not "oh yeah, we tried to screw you, here's a voucher for the $1.50 difference, bet you're glad you spent two hours getting us to pay up!") guarantee that they wouldn't sell me anything over the average price for my area. Infeasible now, but imagine if government tweaked the information imbalance to be a bit less out of customers' favor by mandating (or incentivizing) machine-readable posting of prices week to week... then such a service could exist, could be audited, could be more-or-less trusted. And would save huge numbers of hours and lots of fuel for driving around comparison shopping and other useless consumer BS we (those not rich enough to pay others to worry about this useless crap) currently put up with as practically a second job.
- xhedley 9y ago
  We get this in the UK - I can order from Tesco or Asda and get it delivered to my door. "Price promise" price matches lowest price in area for branded goods like Heinz baked beans. It's cheaper in UK to pick supermarket own brand, in which case there is the issue that I like Tesco baked beans but not Asda baked beans. And Tesco offer a "as you would pick it yourself" on fresh food where they pick the longest shelf life fresh food. But Tesco failed and lost a lot of money in the US market. I wonder why the UK has good supermarket delivery and the US does not.