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I really don't see how Blue Apron is superior to, let's imagine for a moment, Amazon next-day delivering Whole Foods to your house with a couple of recipes incl

I really don't see how Blue Apron is superior to, let's imagine for a moment, Amazon next-day delivering Whole Foods to your house with a couple of recipes included. What am I missing here? I personally think a much better model is high quality cooked or pre-cooked food delivered to your home. Deliver cooked restaurant quality food rapidly, like the ultimate take-out. Or just pop something in the oven for 20 min, etc. Cooking is time consuming and often annoying, the major pain point (for me and most people I know anyway) is not going to a grocery store once a week or finding recipes which are abundant online, it's the actual act of cooking for 30-60 minutes, for every dinner (or lunch), before 5 or 10 minutes of eating. Maybe I'm the wrong target demographic, who knows.

ghaff 9y ago
>Maybe I'm the wrong target demographic These services are for people who want to cook but feel they benefit from having someone else handle most of the planning and the shopping. In urban locations, there are tons of options to have take-out delivered.
- throwaway91111 9y ago
  Sure. But even then what does blue apron give over blue apron recipes + ingredients delivered by whole foods? Someone else decides what you eat; you just gotta be home and willing to cook. On top of that maybe they'd stop putting kale in everything because it's so damn cheap to source.
  - notadoc 9y ago
    > On top of that maybe they'd stop putting kale in everything because it's so damn cheap to source. Kale is extraordinarily trendy right now, that's probably the other reason it'd be included
zippergz 9y ago
The planning part is what you're missing. If I order from Whole Foods, I have to decide what to order. If I sign up for Blue Apron, they decide for me. Exactly what I need, no more and no less, shows up on my door weekly. No thinking required. Of course, whether that's a big benefit (or even interesting) to you or not will vary, but I think it's a material difference. (FWIW we tried Blue Apron for a little while and thought it was ok, but the pain points they solve aren't big pain points for us. And we found that the recipes we kind of hit or miss for our tastes. So we canceled a long time ago.)
- notyourday 9y ago
  > The planning part is what you're missing. If I order from Whole Foods, I have to decide what to order. If I sign up for Blue Apron, they decide for me. Exactly what I need, no more and no less, shows up on my door weekly. No thinking required. That's today. Today Whole Foods is not in this business. It will be, however. Because already today I can walk into smaller grocery stores in NYC ( C-Town, Associated, Key Foods ) and in some higher end ones there are meal kits ready. I'm not even talking about Wegmans which periodically makes Whole Foods look like a third rate store. Granted, at this time these are just pre-seasoned steaks and sides already packaged, kebobs already assembled, sides already portioned. They are at a 0-10% markup to the non-assembled prices of the raw ingridents at the same supermarkets. Supermarkets have been doing this for years in a prepared foods or partially prepared foods section. They know what their customers buy and they know how much they buy. All of that was pre Amazon-Whole Foods days. Amazon-Whole Foods is the elephant in the room. One needs to be rather irrational to bet on BA or anyone else raising money before knowing what Amazon - Wholefoods do to this market, especially considering that Whole Foods dwarfs all meal services combined in any major metro. Without those major metro customers BA and likes cannot survive.
- was_boring 9y ago
  I also tried blue apron (and hello fresh) and found their recipes to be needlessly complicated. Like seriously, why do I need 15+ ingredients? I'm still waiting for the 4 ingredients or less service -- even if they are processed first. I don't need to make everything from scratch.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    They're often needlessly complicated because, if they did a Rozanne Gold 3 ingredient thing, you'd be left wondering why you paid a premium to have this meal assembled and delivered. In all fairness, one approach seems to be to pre-make spice blends and the like which aren't pantry staples. This simplifies recipes but but not necessarily in a way you could do on your own.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > I'm still waiting for the 4 ingredients or less service -- even if they are processed first This is frozen food. I don't believe there's much profit between grocery stores and restaurants for people who don't care for culinary quality.
throwaway91111 9y ago
You're right, at least in how you start your post (simply delivering recipes + ingredients from a local grocer). There's just little profit in what you're suggesting.

ghaff 9y ago

>Maybe I'm the wrong target demographic These services are for people who want to cook but feel they benefit from having someone else handle most of the planning and the shopping. In urban locations, there are tons of options to have take-out delivered.

throwaway91111 9y ago
Sure. But even then what does blue apron give over blue apron recipes + ingredients delivered by whole foods? Someone else decides what you eat; you just gotta be home and willing to cook. On top of that maybe they'd stop putting kale in everything because it's so damn cheap to source.
- notadoc 9y ago
  > On top of that maybe they'd stop putting kale in everything because it's so damn cheap to source. Kale is extraordinarily trendy right now, that's probably the other reason it'd be included

zippergz 9y ago

The planning part is what you're missing. If I order from Whole Foods, I have to decide what to order. If I sign up for Blue Apron, they decide for me. Exactly what I need, no more and no less, shows up on my door weekly. No thinking required. Of course, whether that's a big benefit (or even interesting) to you or not will vary, but I think it's a material difference. (FWIW we tried Blue Apron for a little while and thought it was ok, but the pain points they solve aren't big pain points for us. And we found that the recipes we kind of hit or miss for our tastes. So we canceled a long time ago.)

notyourday 9y ago
> The planning part is what you're missing. If I order from Whole Foods, I have to decide what to order. If I sign up for Blue Apron, they decide for me. Exactly what I need, no more and no less, shows up on my door weekly. No thinking required. That's today. Today Whole Foods is not in this business. It will be, however. Because already today I can walk into smaller grocery stores in NYC ( C-Town, Associated, Key Foods ) and in some higher end ones there are meal kits ready. I'm not even talking about Wegmans which periodically makes Whole Foods look like a third rate store. Granted, at this time these are just pre-seasoned steaks and sides already packaged, kebobs already assembled, sides already portioned. They are at a 0-10% markup to the non-assembled prices of the raw ingridents at the same supermarkets. Supermarkets have been doing this for years in a prepared foods or partially prepared foods section. They know what their customers buy and they know how much they buy. All of that was pre Amazon-Whole Foods days. Amazon-Whole Foods is the elephant in the room. One needs to be rather irrational to bet on BA or anyone else raising money before knowing what Amazon - Wholefoods do to this market, especially considering that Whole Foods dwarfs all meal services combined in any major metro. Without those major metro customers BA and likes cannot survive.
was_boring 9y ago
I also tried blue apron (and hello fresh) and found their recipes to be needlessly complicated. Like seriously, why do I need 15+ ingredients? I'm still waiting for the 4 ingredients or less service -- even if they are processed first. I don't need to make everything from scratch.
- ghaff 9y ago
  They're often needlessly complicated because, if they did a Rozanne Gold 3 ingredient thing, you'd be left wondering why you paid a premium to have this meal assembled and delivered. In all fairness, one approach seems to be to pre-make spice blends and the like which aren't pantry staples. This simplifies recipes but but not necessarily in a way you could do on your own.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > I'm still waiting for the 4 ingredients or less service -- even if they are processed first This is frozen food. I don't believe there's much profit between grocery stores and restaurants for people who don't care for culinary quality.

throwaway91111 9y ago

You're right, at least in how you start your post (simply delivering recipes + ingredients from a local grocer). There's just little profit in what you're suggesting.