4 ms·

It’s not about “just buy some produce”. It’s “decide what I want to eat, go to the store, find the ingredients that turn into said meals, wait in a 15 minute ch

by jowiar 9y ago

It’s not about “just buy some produce”. It’s “decide what I want to eat, go to the store, find the ingredients that turn into said meals, wait in a 15 minute checkout line, haul things home”. For me, Blue Apron lowers the time commitment of cooking at home below that of “go out for a quick dinner”. At the end of a day at a desk, I enjoy doing completely brainless work with my hands for a half hour or so, but the cognitive load of figuring out what to cook is more than I care to do on a regular basis. Also, depending on where you are, urban grocery shopping is often a terrible experience.

swalsh 9y ago
When my family grew (2 kids) it became important to me to stop eating out so much. Mostly because eating out with a 2 year old is torture. So I started cooking at home every night. It's easy to do if you plan a menu for the week. I have some common items in the pantry, and I buy meat in bulk every other weekend. I'll run to the store on a weeknight to buy fresh fish, or for the occasional forgotten item. But more or less I just get it all done in one trip, I plan the menu around common ingredients, and I choose things that don't take hours to do. I spend $80 a week on groceries (cut out boxed up processed foods and your bill gets cheap) Families have been cooking dinners for a long time. Nothing new here.
- jowiar 9y ago
  Tasks like "plan a menu for the week" or "go grocery shopping" are the sort of thing where it's a relatively fixed amount of time whether you're shopping/cooking for 1 or for 4 -- i.e. there's an economy of scale on that time. For me, given the choice of "$30 + the time to plan meals and go shopping" vs "$60", I'll take the latter. If I had a choice between "$80 + the time to plan meals and go shopping" vs "$160", that time is worth a lot more money. In addition, set all of this in a New York apartment, where the ability to maintain a well-stocked pantry is limited.

by jowiar 9y ago

swalsh 9y ago

When my family grew (2 kids) it became important to me to stop eating out so much. Mostly because eating out with a 2 year old is torture. So I started cooking at home every night. It's easy to do if you plan a menu for the week. I have some common items in the pantry, and I buy meat in bulk every other weekend. I'll run to the store on a weeknight to buy fresh fish, or for the occasional forgotten item. But more or less I just get it all done in one trip, I plan the menu around common ingredients, and I choose things that don't take hours to do. I spend $80 a week on groceries (cut out boxed up processed foods and your bill gets cheap) Families have been cooking dinners for a long time. Nothing new here.

jowiar 9y ago
Tasks like "plan a menu for the week" or "go grocery shopping" are the sort of thing where it's a relatively fixed amount of time whether you're shopping/cooking for 1 or for 4 -- i.e. there's an economy of scale on that time. For me, given the choice of "$30 + the time to plan meals and go shopping" vs "$60", I'll take the latter. If I had a choice between "$80 + the time to plan meals and go shopping" vs "$160", that time is worth a lot more money. In addition, set all of this in a New York apartment, where the ability to maintain a well-stocked pantry is limited.