4 ms·

I have never seen what value Blue Apron provides, Their meals are overpriced for what you get from what I have seen, I fail to see their value over simply buyi

by syshum 9y ago

I have never seen what value Blue Apron provides, Their meals are overpriced for what you get from what I have seen, I fail to see their value over simply buying the stuff local and and finding a recipe online for free. for their $60 per week to get 6 small portion meals I can buy over 2x that number of meals shopping at my local store, + snacks and other household items

Johnny555 9y ago
I think for most of the people in their target market, if it saves them an hour (or more) of shopping, looking up recipes, etc per week, that more than makes up for the $60. I tried a couple of these services and while I liked the convenience, I couldn't stand the waste -- a couple dozen little plastic jars and baggies each week going into the recycling.
- hhmc 9y ago
  I suspect that the curation of recipes is appealing. Online recipes are notoriously hit or miss.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jarito 9y ago
The value of BlueApron isn't on a per meal price basis. As you mentioned, buying the ingredients yourself will be significantly less expensive. The value for Blue Apron for us: * I don't have to look through and choose recipes. * I don't have to spend a hour in the store, we pretty much just get staples (eggs, milk, etc) these days. * I don't throw away near as much food. We used to throw away around 50% of food purchases due to changing schedules / spoilage. We actually saved money moving to Blue Apron. * Blue Apron can include specialty ingredients that I won't normally have (e.g. I'm not routinely going to the Korean grocery). I like to cook. Blue Apron makes it easy to do that while exposing us to new and interesting recipes without committing a lot of time to the process. That's worth money.
- ajacksified 9y ago
  I personally don't, and can't, use it because my family's too large and the economics outweigh the time (and besides, I like planning and cooking.) I suspect this limits their expansion - I don't see how it can break below the barrier of an upper-middle class that can weigh priorities this way, and I'm not sure that's large enough of an audience to really form a growth strategy around. Now, curated recipe lists without having to buy the groceris through them is a subscription service I'd pay for. I already subscribe to Bon Appetit for the recipes.
- notyourday 9y ago
  > I don't have to look through and choose recipes. Google: quick and easy <protein> skillet with <what i have in a fridge> > * I don't have to spend a hour in the store, we pretty much just get staples (eggs, milk, etc) these days. In less than 6 months of cooking you would get entire pantry of all kinds of dry and canned ingredients needed by buying them in a reasonably sized containers as needed or as the opportunity presents itself > I don't throw away near as much food. We used to throw away around 50% of food purchases due to changing schedules / spoilage. We actually saved money moving to Blue Apron. That just means you are overbuying/overcooking. After 6 months of cooking a cost of a "complex" BA like meal without BA should be $2-3 per person even in the most expensive markets in the US. Blue Apron's cost can never match a cost of buying protein/pantry/vegetable items on sale as neither BA has the infrastructure and volume to match grocery chains nor does it have other ways of squeezing the margins. Now, you may decide that you do not want to have a pantry or use Google or know that $0.49-0.59 is a good price for chicken thighs and $0.99 is a good price for whole chicken in NYC or that you should not buy turmeric at Chelsea market because it is 4x the price at any other grocery store and that's why you would use BA. The problem is that there are just not enough people like you to make BA profitable, especially now with Amazon buying Whole Foods.
  - eropple 9y ago
    I agree with most of your post, but I think that $2-$3 a person is probably optimistic. I regularly manage about $5.50/meal, but less than that involves cutting back in quality or selection.
phailhaus 9y ago
Yeah, Blue Apron is not targeted to you. That doesn't mean it doesn't provide value to anyone.
Domenic_S 9y ago
There's value and then there's value. They definitely save time and hassle -- but is it worth the price? I guess we will see.
BlackjackCF 9y ago
I don't mind so much the price. What bothers me is that Blue Apron hasn't really made any accommodations for gluten/vegan options, and I feel like given their price range that might be part of their demographic to target. But yeah, I guess if you have celiac's or live with someone with celiac's you're just kind of shit out of luck for Blue Apron.
- greglindahl 9y ago
  There are specialist companies that do a good job with vegan and gluten-free. Which is part of Blue Apron's problem: there's tons of evidence that they don't have much of a moat.
usaphp 9y ago
You are paying for convenience to eat a different recipe every day, if I were to buy products that are used in their recipes I could certainly save some money but the problem is in quantities. When you purchase in bigger than needed for specific recipe quantities your ingredients tend to get bad really quickly. Also to be able to make any recipe from the internet you have to have a pretty big fridge and kitchen to store all the ingredients that might be needed. You can of course go to a store everyday and purchase ingredients that you need for specific recipe but then you would waste time and money on shopping.
jliptzin 9y ago
I am a blue apron subscriber. Issues with the economics of their business and the IPO aside, I like the service. Have you ever tried printing out a recipe online, driving to the grocery store, and picking up all the ingredients? It's a pain in the ass. Try finding tandoori spice rub, or pink lemons, or dried currants. Chances are your local supermarket doesn't have one or two ingredients, so you leave it our or sub it, but that makes a difference in the taste. On top of that, you're usually forced to buy much more than you need for any given recipe, making it pretty wasteful, and more expensive than it should be. Not to mention all the time wasted physically moving around the supermarket, driving, gas to the supermarket, etc. The recipes taste great and they're easy to follow. I routinely have better meals cooking blue apron than going out to eat. For me, this is a much faster, cheaper, and better solution. That's not to say this is a great business, personally I think anyone can copy this service, in particular larger companies, so I probably wouldn't buy the stock.
- syshum 9y ago
  >Try finding tandoori spice rub, or pink lemons, or dried currants I guess that is the other difference for me, I am no interested in these complex meals with these odd ingredients. Give me a protein, some greens or steamed veggies, maybe a baked potato and a salad I am good to go... Anymore I am getting to the Meal Prep Sunday style of cooking where I make a batch of something, then reheat it through out the week. I like simple good meals.
- undersuit 9y ago
  >Try finding tandoori spice rub, or pink lemons, or dried currants. Made the Chiles Rellenos last night, sure I could get a can of tomato paste for fifty cents, but I only needed a 4th of the can. When I made the catfish curry, I was thinking to myself, where do I even buy curry? Apparently I can go on Amazon and get a 5 pack of 12-serving cans. I don't think the plastic mass I have to deal with is good, but I also threw out a bunch of my roommate's moldy leftovers while cooking my Blue Apron meal.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    You can buy tomato paste in a squeeze tube. Great for that sort of thing. :-) As I said in a comment yesterday, I suspect that Blue Apron deliberately puts somewhat oddball ingredients, often in small quantities, in their recipes precisely to discourage people from thinking "Oh, I can just pick these up at the grocery store."
Larrikin 9y ago
I like cooking and consider myself lucky for starting the process of learning to cook a few years back. There are a lot of completely garbage recipes out there now. Allrecipes dominates Google but I've never made anything that actually tasted good from that site. I've got experience and know of specific sites that deliver that I use pretty much exclusively now instead of searching Google directly. However I can see someone just starting out being tricked by one of the many crap recipes out there and just simply wanting the convenience of a quality recipe with the exact ingredients.
- wwwdonohue 9y ago
  Would you mind sharing some of the sites you use?
  - Larrikin 9y ago
    I mostly use a mix of TV shows, youtube pages, and regular blog sites. Food Wishes, Serious Eats, Cooking With Dog, America's Test Kitchen, Maangchi, the forums of pizzamaking.com Bon Appetit recipes tend to be good when I make them, but they publish a lot of recipes and often times they aren't for food I actually want to make. Good Eats was nice when I was initially learning how to cook, but he sometimes goes over board, especially his weird unitasker rule. The correct rule should be to always critically evaluate bringing a new tool into kitchen, don't clutter it up with a lot of items you will rarely use, and make sure the tool is as easy as possible to keep clean.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> for their $60 per week to get 6 small portion meals I can buy over 2x that number of meals shopping at my local store, + snacks and other household items The value proposition is, primarily, saving time shopping, meal planning, and portioning-out ingredients. Whether this is sufficient to justify the cost depends on how you value your time, and whether you find value in spending it on those a activities.
gdulli 9y ago
I have friends who I know have a free subway pass (work buys them for us) but they regularly pay their own money for ridesharing services for trips within the area serviced by convenient public transportation.
waivej 9y ago
We have a toddler so time became extremely tight. Though it's been wonderful to have nice meals together as a family. The sheer time involved to plan and shop for ingredients makes it seem like a bargain to us. Not having to entertain in a grocery cart or plan meals around ingredients that can't be bought in small quantities is even better. I suppose it depends a bit on the types of things you like to eat. Occasionally there is one that I'll have a snack afterwards, but I tend to have a pretty big appetite and find the quantity fine.
- bluedino 9y ago
  >> We have a toddler so time became extremely tight. Take it a step further, buy pre-made meals from someplace like ICON meals and you just have to heat them up.
intoverflow2 9y ago
>I have never seen what value Blue Apron provides, Its it's not a food product it's a lifestyle product. As a food product it's no different from buying cheap prechopped supermarket produce and throwing it in a pan. Saves a few minutes or an hour a week at the expense of having to be at home to get the delivery. As a lifestyle product it's an effortless way to feel like you are cooking for yourself, being healthier, not shovelling readymeals or takeaway food into your mouth so you feel better about yourself. Also the fact you pay quite a lot for it gives you incentive to actually follow the routine.

by syshum 9y ago

Johnny555 9y ago

I think for most of the people in their target market, if it saves them an hour (or more) of shopping, looking up recipes, etc per week, that more than makes up for the $60. I tried a couple of these services and while I liked the convenience, I couldn't stand the waste -- a couple dozen little plastic jars and baggies each week going into the recycling.

hhmc 9y ago
I suspect that the curation of recipes is appealing. Online recipes are notoriously hit or miss.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jarito 9y ago

The value of BlueApron isn't on a per meal price basis. As you mentioned, buying the ingredients yourself will be significantly less expensive. The value for Blue Apron for us: * I don't have to look through and choose recipes. * I don't have to spend a hour in the store, we pretty much just get staples (eggs, milk, etc) these days. * I don't throw away near as much food. We used to throw away around 50% of food purchases due to changing schedules / spoilage. We actually saved money moving to Blue Apron. * Blue Apron can include specialty ingredients that I won't normally have (e.g. I'm not routinely going to the Korean grocery). I like to cook. Blue Apron makes it easy to do that while exposing us to new and interesting recipes without committing a lot of time to the process. That's worth money.

ajacksified 9y ago
I personally don't, and can't, use it because my family's too large and the economics outweigh the time (and besides, I like planning and cooking.) I suspect this limits their expansion - I don't see how it can break below the barrier of an upper-middle class that can weigh priorities this way, and I'm not sure that's large enough of an audience to really form a growth strategy around. Now, curated recipe lists without having to buy the groceris through them is a subscription service I'd pay for. I already subscribe to Bon Appetit for the recipes.
notyourday 9y ago
> I don't have to look through and choose recipes. Google: quick and easy <protein> skillet with <what i have in a fridge> > * I don't have to spend a hour in the store, we pretty much just get staples (eggs, milk, etc) these days. In less than 6 months of cooking you would get entire pantry of all kinds of dry and canned ingredients needed by buying them in a reasonably sized containers as needed or as the opportunity presents itself > I don't throw away near as much food. We used to throw away around 50% of food purchases due to changing schedules / spoilage. We actually saved money moving to Blue Apron. That just means you are overbuying/overcooking. After 6 months of cooking a cost of a "complex" BA like meal without BA should be $2-3 per person even in the most expensive markets in the US. Blue Apron's cost can never match a cost of buying protein/pantry/vegetable items on sale as neither BA has the infrastructure and volume to match grocery chains nor does it have other ways of squeezing the margins. Now, you may decide that you do not want to have a pantry or use Google or know that $0.49-0.59 is a good price for chicken thighs and $0.99 is a good price for whole chicken in NYC or that you should not buy turmeric at Chelsea market because it is 4x the price at any other grocery store and that's why you would use BA. The problem is that there are just not enough people like you to make BA profitable, especially now with Amazon buying Whole Foods.
- eropple 9y ago
  I agree with most of your post, but I think that $2-$3 a person is probably optimistic. I regularly manage about $5.50/meal, but less than that involves cutting back in quality or selection.

phailhaus 9y ago

Yeah, Blue Apron is not targeted to you. That doesn't mean it doesn't provide value to anyone.

Domenic_S 9y ago

There's value and then there's value. They definitely save time and hassle -- but is it worth the price? I guess we will see.

BlackjackCF 9y ago

I don't mind so much the price. What bothers me is that Blue Apron hasn't really made any accommodations for gluten/vegan options, and I feel like given their price range that might be part of their demographic to target. But yeah, I guess if you have celiac's or live with someone with celiac's you're just kind of shit out of luck for Blue Apron.

greglindahl 9y ago
There are specialist companies that do a good job with vegan and gluten-free. Which is part of Blue Apron's problem: there's tons of evidence that they don't have much of a moat.

usaphp 9y ago

You are paying for convenience to eat a different recipe every day, if I were to buy products that are used in their recipes I could certainly save some money but the problem is in quantities. When you purchase in bigger than needed for specific recipe quantities your ingredients tend to get bad really quickly. Also to be able to make any recipe from the internet you have to have a pretty big fridge and kitchen to store all the ingredients that might be needed. You can of course go to a store everyday and purchase ingredients that you need for specific recipe but then you would waste time and money on shopping.

jliptzin 9y ago

I am a blue apron subscriber. Issues with the economics of their business and the IPO aside, I like the service. Have you ever tried printing out a recipe online, driving to the grocery store, and picking up all the ingredients? It's a pain in the ass. Try finding tandoori spice rub, or pink lemons, or dried currants. Chances are your local supermarket doesn't have one or two ingredients, so you leave it our or sub it, but that makes a difference in the taste. On top of that, you're usually forced to buy much more than you need for any given recipe, making it pretty wasteful, and more expensive than it should be. Not to mention all the time wasted physically moving around the supermarket, driving, gas to the supermarket, etc. The recipes taste great and they're easy to follow. I routinely have better meals cooking blue apron than going out to eat. For me, this is a much faster, cheaper, and better solution. That's not to say this is a great business, personally I think anyone can copy this service, in particular larger companies, so I probably wouldn't buy the stock.

syshum 9y ago
>Try finding tandoori spice rub, or pink lemons, or dried currants I guess that is the other difference for me, I am no interested in these complex meals with these odd ingredients. Give me a protein, some greens or steamed veggies, maybe a baked potato and a salad I am good to go... Anymore I am getting to the Meal Prep Sunday style of cooking where I make a batch of something, then reheat it through out the week. I like simple good meals.
undersuit 9y ago
>Try finding tandoori spice rub, or pink lemons, or dried currants. Made the Chiles Rellenos last night, sure I could get a can of tomato paste for fifty cents, but I only needed a 4th of the can. When I made the catfish curry, I was thinking to myself, where do I even buy curry? Apparently I can go on Amazon and get a 5 pack of 12-serving cans. I don't think the plastic mass I have to deal with is good, but I also threw out a bunch of my roommate's moldy leftovers while cooking my Blue Apron meal.
- ghaff 9y ago
  You can buy tomato paste in a squeeze tube. Great for that sort of thing. :-) As I said in a comment yesterday, I suspect that Blue Apron deliberately puts somewhat oddball ingredients, often in small quantities, in their recipes precisely to discourage people from thinking "Oh, I can just pick these up at the grocery store."

Larrikin 9y ago

I like cooking and consider myself lucky for starting the process of learning to cook a few years back. There are a lot of completely garbage recipes out there now. Allrecipes dominates Google but I've never made anything that actually tasted good from that site. I've got experience and know of specific sites that deliver that I use pretty much exclusively now instead of searching Google directly. However I can see someone just starting out being tricked by one of the many crap recipes out there and just simply wanting the convenience of a quality recipe with the exact ingredients.

wwwdonohue 9y ago
Would you mind sharing some of the sites you use?
- Larrikin 9y ago
  I mostly use a mix of TV shows, youtube pages, and regular blog sites. Food Wishes, Serious Eats, Cooking With Dog, America's Test Kitchen, Maangchi, the forums of pizzamaking.com Bon Appetit recipes tend to be good when I make them, but they publish a lot of recipes and often times they aren't for food I actually want to make. Good Eats was nice when I was initially learning how to cook, but he sometimes goes over board, especially his weird unitasker rule. The correct rule should be to always critically evaluate bringing a new tool into kitchen, don't clutter it up with a lot of items you will rarely use, and make sure the tool is as easy as possible to keep clean.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> for their $60 per week to get 6 small portion meals I can buy over 2x that number of meals shopping at my local store, + snacks and other household items The value proposition is, primarily, saving time shopping, meal planning, and portioning-out ingredients. Whether this is sufficient to justify the cost depends on how you value your time, and whether you find value in spending it on those a activities.

gdulli 9y ago

I have friends who I know have a free subway pass (work buys them for us) but they regularly pay their own money for ridesharing services for trips within the area serviced by convenient public transportation.

waivej 9y ago

We have a toddler so time became extremely tight. Though it's been wonderful to have nice meals together as a family. The sheer time involved to plan and shop for ingredients makes it seem like a bargain to us. Not having to entertain in a grocery cart or plan meals around ingredients that can't be bought in small quantities is even better. I suppose it depends a bit on the types of things you like to eat. Occasionally there is one that I'll have a snack afterwards, but I tend to have a pretty big appetite and find the quantity fine.

bluedino 9y ago
>> We have a toddler so time became extremely tight. Take it a step further, buy pre-made meals from someplace like ICON meals and you just have to heat them up.

intoverflow2 9y ago

>I have never seen what value Blue Apron provides, Its it's not a food product it's a lifestyle product. As a food product it's no different from buying cheap prechopped supermarket produce and throwing it in a pan. Saves a few minutes or an hour a week at the expense of having to be at home to get the delivery. As a lifestyle product it's an effortless way to feel like you are cooking for yourself, being healthier, not shovelling readymeals or takeaway food into your mouth so you feel better about yourself. Also the fact you pay quite a lot for it gives you incentive to actually follow the routine.