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I don't think they're failing because of a lack of competitive advantage. People just don't really like the service. My group of friends used the term "Blue Apr

I don't think they're failing because of a lack of competitive advantage. People just don't really like the service. My group of friends used the term "Blue Apron Anxiety" to describe the feeling you get when a new BA box was sitting on your doorstep and you still haven't cooked any of the meals from the last batch. If they did, competitive advantage could've been established (e.g. economies of scale). Besides, companies sometimes succeed with products that don't really afford themselves to competitive advantages (e.g. Facebook or Spotify) until they're big enough to be deeply entrenched.

randycupertino 8y ago
Not to mention the anxiety you feel when you open up the packaging and there was just so much waste. Every time I opened up a meal delivery service meal I just felt like I was killing the environment. One time I had a large cardboard box specifically solely to package 10 almonds which were also wrapped in plastic and surrounded in bubble wrap.
- exergy 8y ago
  > Every time I opened up a meal delivery service meal I just felt like I was killing the environment. As you well should. How the fuck have we gotten to the point where chopping up vegetables is a task too onerous for the "I'm too busy in my hustle to bother with this shit" types? These ass backwards Silicon Valley 'products' should be taken behind an alley and burned to the ground. Coral reefs are dying, mass exctinction is underway, our oceans are deadened and acidic, the little life that remains is full of microplastics and metals, glaciers are receding, entire fucking nations are sinking, fires are blazing larger than ever, antibiotics are no longer effective, heck, even drinkable water is getting scarcer, but fuck it, what we need is yet more asinine packaging to let the fat, overfed, heavily consuming American have yet another morsel of convenience because god forbid he have to get off his electric wheelchair to exercise his muscles and bike to a grocery store to buy some fucking Brocolli. Fuck it all.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > How the fuck have we gotten to the point where chopping up vegetables is a task too onerous for the "I'm too busy in my hustle to bother with this shit" types? Most meal kits (definitely Blue Apron) still have you chopping up vegetables; they are taking care of portioning and grouping (shopping and household inventory management), not prepping. So your complaint here is a bit of a non-sequitur.
    - hoppelhase 8y ago
      Not related to Blue Apron: Where I live, you can buy peeled and chopped onions. Have to be put in the fridge and are packed in a plastic bag.
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        Related to yours: the other day my wife told me she saw mandarin oranges peeled and individually wrapped in plastic. Mandarin oranges come with their own goddamn natural packaging. Why on Earth would you replace it with plastic?
        zimpenfish 8y ago
        The obvious answer is "to accommodate people with arthritis or other manual dexterity limiting condition."
        TeMPOraL 8y ago
        That's not obvious, as presumably you don't need much more effort to peel the skin off a mandarin orange than you'd need to peel off the plastic wrapper.
        zimpenfish 8y ago
        I had some "Easy Peeler" mandarins yesterday and, without any arthritis, they were much more effort than removing a plastic wrapper would have been. I can't even begin to imagine how hard it would be if I had crippling arthritis in my hands.

randycupertino 8y ago

Not to mention the anxiety you feel when you open up the packaging and there was just so much waste. Every time I opened up a meal delivery service meal I just felt like I was killing the environment. One time I had a large cardboard box specifically solely to package 10 almonds which were also wrapped in plastic and surrounded in bubble wrap.

exergy 8y ago
> Every time I opened up a meal delivery service meal I just felt like I was killing the environment. As you well should. How the fuck have we gotten to the point where chopping up vegetables is a task too onerous for the "I'm too busy in my hustle to bother with this shit" types? These ass backwards Silicon Valley 'products' should be taken behind an alley and burned to the ground. Coral reefs are dying, mass exctinction is underway, our oceans are deadened and acidic, the little life that remains is full of microplastics and metals, glaciers are receding, entire fucking nations are sinking, fires are blazing larger than ever, antibiotics are no longer effective, heck, even drinkable water is getting scarcer, but fuck it, what we need is yet more asinine packaging to let the fat, overfed, heavily consuming American have yet another morsel of convenience because god forbid he have to get off his electric wheelchair to exercise his muscles and bike to a grocery store to buy some fucking Brocolli. Fuck it all.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > How the fuck have we gotten to the point where chopping up vegetables is a task too onerous for the "I'm too busy in my hustle to bother with this shit" types? Most meal kits (definitely Blue Apron) still have you chopping up vegetables; they are taking care of portioning and grouping (shopping and household inventory management), not prepping. So your complaint here is a bit of a non-sequitur.
  - hoppelhase 8y ago
    Not related to Blue Apron: Where I live, you can buy peeled and chopped onions. Have to be put in the fridge and are packed in a plastic bag.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Related to yours: the other day my wife told me she saw mandarin oranges peeled and individually wrapped in plastic. Mandarin oranges come with their own goddamn natural packaging. Why on Earth would you replace it with plastic?
      - zimpenfish 8y ago
        The obvious answer is "to accommodate people with arthritis or other manual dexterity limiting condition."
        TeMPOraL 8y ago
        That's not obvious, as presumably you don't need much more effort to peel the skin off a mandarin orange than you'd need to peel off the plastic wrapper.
        zimpenfish 8y ago
        I had some "Easy Peeler" mandarins yesterday and, without any arthritis, they were much more effort than removing a plastic wrapper would have been. I can't even begin to imagine how hard it would be if I had crippling arthritis in my hands.