5 ms·

> OK with paying a non-trivial premium to have a lot of menu planning and shopping be handled by someone else This is the one I've never been able to get past.

> OK with paying a non-trivial premium to have a lot of menu planning and shopping be handled by someone else This is the one I've never been able to get past. For what these services cost, I can have someone else prepare my meal that will taste just as good or better. Why would I not do that? I get if you're trying to learn to cook or something like that, but that only sounds like a temporary problem.

jerkstate 8y ago
$10 per serving is essentially fast food prices in the bay area - you can't really get a healthy meal with meat and vegetables. My family used Blue Apron for a while when we first had kids, and it was great for our lifestyle. We did move on to a service that optimizes grocery shopping so we can buy ingredients for a week's worth of meals in one shopping trip. Edit: for those who asked, I am using thefresh20 now. It's pretty low-tech (just a weekly pdf). Besides being straightforward to shop for, it tells you how to prep stuff ahead of time. For example, bake 8 potatoes the first day and use half in a recipe today, half in a few days. Cook some pork chops today and save some for fried rice in a few days. Cook a pot of quinoa today and use it throughout the week. There are a number of other services out there that allow you to customize things like servings/calories per meal and diet types but I am dubious about how well they could possibly optimize shopping and prep to use up a whole quanta of an ingredient over multiple recipes in the course of a week to be near the manually curated efficiency of fresh 20. If anyone has experience with those please let me know!
- mdergosits 8y ago
  I cook meals in SF most nights for way less than $20 for 2 people without trying, meat or seafood and veggies.
- axxl 8y ago
  What service is that?
- iaresee 8y ago
  What service did you move on to? I'd be interested a better curated grocery delivery system than Amazon Fresh (which is already saving us a ton of time as a busy family).
- mawburn 8y ago
  And that makes sense for those living there, but not everyone lives in the Bay Area or pays anything near what people pay there for things. I would think for a service like this to succeed, it needs to be applicable to places where you can go to a real restaurant for ~$10-15 a person. Which is most of the US where the other 315million Americans live.
- ummonk 8y ago
  Eh what? I can eat out at a restaurant for like $15 with tax and tip, and the packed food usually lasts me an additional meal. I avoid pricey restaurants though.
  - jerkstate 8y ago
    Implying that $10 and $15 are approximately the same is telling. I'm talking about 6 to 40 person-meals per week for a family. (FWIW $10 per person-meal from blue apron is at the high end of home cooking, unless you are cooking high end ingredients like fancy fish or steak or including wine)
    - jdmichal 8y ago
      Especially when you start really planning meals around whatever is on sale that week and carrying ingredients from one meal to another, $10 per person per meal is definitely a lot. Also, pantry items where that $10 can get you a 5# bag of rice that lasts for many meals. One of my favorite personal discoveries is to buy the whole broccoli, use the florets as a vegetable side, and the stems in a soup. The sturdier stems hold up better with the same flavor.
    - ummonk 8y ago
      You said $10 per serving. I average $7.50 per serving from eating out ($15 per eat-out which lasts me two meals, since I go for restaurants which provide generously sized dishes).
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    What do you eat at a restaurant that costs that much?
    - ghaff 8y ago
      Huh? Go to a random Asian restaurant in SF and get a stir fry whatever and you're going to be in the $10-$15 range with tax and tip pretty easily.
    - Rychard 8y ago
- asdff 8y ago
  $10 per serving is egregious. Take a blue apron recipe with you to a grocery store, and I bet you can buy all the ingredients for $2.5 a meal.
  - Karunamon 8y ago
    Not in the same quantities you can't. If something calls for, say, eggs, you aren't going to buy a single egg, you're buying six at a minimum. If something calls for fresh cilantro, you're buying a whole bunch. If you're cooking for a family, fine, but cooking for one or two? The food waste problem sucks, and you can't really get around it unless you like eating the same thing for days in a row.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      Eggs last for quite some time. Yeah, herbs are an issue if you don't grow them. But not all recipes that call for them really need them. And you can also freeze leftovers that are useful for some purposes. I cook for one during the week. I do eat leftovers but I also repurpose ingredients, freeze things, and definitely don't eat the same thing for days in a row.
    - StillBored 8y ago
      Please, you do what we have been doing for the last 100 years. Freeze the extra. So you get 1 meal that is fresh and two that are frozen you can eat in a couple weeks. Do you honestly think that when you go to applebee's (or similar) the food didn't come out of a freezer? But maybe the real problem here is lack of "cooking" knowledge. Grinding that cilantro up and mixing it with some garlic and olive oil will extend its life in the fridge for weeks. Or just freeze it, or dry it. Yes, food waste sucks, but that is because a lot of traditional skills have been lost. My wife thinks I'm weird for taking chicken/turkey bones/necks/etc and making stock, but it turns a pile of bones meat scraps into a nice soup. This is also how to (apparently) run a profitable restaurant. Food rolls down from the fresh vegetables/meat, through the casserole stages until it ends up in a soup somewhere. Really it doesn't take much effort, but really after a day of work + driving/etc I'm lucky if I have the motivation to tear open a frozen bag of stir fry.
ghaff 8y ago
> I can have someone else prepare my meal that will taste just as good or better Maybe. For one thing, it depends on where you live. I guarantee you that I can cook better than pretty much anyplace within a 15 minute drive of my house. Secondly--and this is perhaps at least partly a reflection of how much I eat out when traveling on business--but, when I'm home, I mostly don't want to go out to a restaurant.
IggleSniggle 8y ago
When I get home, there’s a 60 min window for socializing and meals before bedtime routines begin. Going out to eat requires picking a location, getting everyone into the car, picking your order at the restaurant, waiting for food, waiting for check, piling in and going home. That just doesn’t fit in 60 min. On the other hand, grocery shopping requires advance collaborative choice. Sometimes the choosing can take over an hour. Delegating one decider comes with its own hazards, and effectively binds the decider to also be the grocery shopper in order to execute appropriately. Services like BlueApron solve for that by reducing the number of choices and removing the need to leave the house. If you don’t mind cooking / enjoy picking up new cooking skills, you optimize for stress-free time with your family.

jerkstate 8y ago

$10 per serving is essentially fast food prices in the bay area - you can't really get a healthy meal with meat and vegetables. My family used Blue Apron for a while when we first had kids, and it was great for our lifestyle. We did move on to a service that optimizes grocery shopping so we can buy ingredients for a week's worth of meals in one shopping trip. Edit: for those who asked, I am using thefresh20 now. It's pretty low-tech (just a weekly pdf). Besides being straightforward to shop for, it tells you how to prep stuff ahead of time. For example, bake 8 potatoes the first day and use half in a recipe today, half in a few days. Cook some pork chops today and save some for fried rice in a few days. Cook a pot of quinoa today and use it throughout the week. There are a number of other services out there that allow you to customize things like servings/calories per meal and diet types but I am dubious about how well they could possibly optimize shopping and prep to use up a whole quanta of an ingredient over multiple recipes in the course of a week to be near the manually curated efficiency of fresh 20. If anyone has experience with those please let me know!

mdergosits 8y ago
I cook meals in SF most nights for way less than $20 for 2 people without trying, meat or seafood and veggies.
axxl 8y ago
What service is that?
iaresee 8y ago
What service did you move on to? I'd be interested a better curated grocery delivery system than Amazon Fresh (which is already saving us a ton of time as a busy family).
mawburn 8y ago
And that makes sense for those living there, but not everyone lives in the Bay Area or pays anything near what people pay there for things. I would think for a service like this to succeed, it needs to be applicable to places where you can go to a real restaurant for ~$10-15 a person. Which is most of the US where the other 315million Americans live.
ummonk 8y ago
Eh what? I can eat out at a restaurant for like $15 with tax and tip, and the packed food usually lasts me an additional meal. I avoid pricey restaurants though.
- jerkstate 8y ago
  Implying that $10 and $15 are approximately the same is telling. I'm talking about 6 to 40 person-meals per week for a family. (FWIW $10 per person-meal from blue apron is at the high end of home cooking, unless you are cooking high end ingredients like fancy fish or steak or including wine)
  - jdmichal 8y ago
    Especially when you start really planning meals around whatever is on sale that week and carrying ingredients from one meal to another, $10 per person per meal is definitely a lot. Also, pantry items where that $10 can get you a 5# bag of rice that lasts for many meals. One of my favorite personal discoveries is to buy the whole broccoli, use the florets as a vegetable side, and the stems in a soup. The sturdier stems hold up better with the same flavor.
  - ummonk 8y ago
    You said $10 per serving. I average $7.50 per serving from eating out ($15 per eat-out which lasts me two meals, since I go for restaurants which provide generously sized dishes).
- conanbatt 8y ago
  What do you eat at a restaurant that costs that much?
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Huh? Go to a random Asian restaurant in SF and get a stir fry whatever and you're going to be in the $10-$15 range with tax and tip pretty easily.
  - Rychard 8y ago
asdff 8y ago
$10 per serving is egregious. Take a blue apron recipe with you to a grocery store, and I bet you can buy all the ingredients for $2.5 a meal.
- Karunamon 8y ago
  Not in the same quantities you can't. If something calls for, say, eggs, you aren't going to buy a single egg, you're buying six at a minimum. If something calls for fresh cilantro, you're buying a whole bunch. If you're cooking for a family, fine, but cooking for one or two? The food waste problem sucks, and you can't really get around it unless you like eating the same thing for days in a row.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Eggs last for quite some time. Yeah, herbs are an issue if you don't grow them. But not all recipes that call for them really need them. And you can also freeze leftovers that are useful for some purposes. I cook for one during the week. I do eat leftovers but I also repurpose ingredients, freeze things, and definitely don't eat the same thing for days in a row.
  - StillBored 8y ago
    Please, you do what we have been doing for the last 100 years. Freeze the extra. So you get 1 meal that is fresh and two that are frozen you can eat in a couple weeks. Do you honestly think that when you go to applebee's (or similar) the food didn't come out of a freezer? But maybe the real problem here is lack of "cooking" knowledge. Grinding that cilantro up and mixing it with some garlic and olive oil will extend its life in the fridge for weeks. Or just freeze it, or dry it. Yes, food waste sucks, but that is because a lot of traditional skills have been lost. My wife thinks I'm weird for taking chicken/turkey bones/necks/etc and making stock, but it turns a pile of bones meat scraps into a nice soup. This is also how to (apparently) run a profitable restaurant. Food rolls down from the fresh vegetables/meat, through the casserole stages until it ends up in a soup somewhere. Really it doesn't take much effort, but really after a day of work + driving/etc I'm lucky if I have the motivation to tear open a frozen bag of stir fry.

ghaff 8y ago

> I can have someone else prepare my meal that will taste just as good or better Maybe. For one thing, it depends on where you live. I guarantee you that I can cook better than pretty much anyplace within a 15 minute drive of my house. Secondly--and this is perhaps at least partly a reflection of how much I eat out when traveling on business--but, when I'm home, I mostly don't want to go out to a restaurant.

IggleSniggle 8y ago

When I get home, there’s a 60 min window for socializing and meals before bedtime routines begin. Going out to eat requires picking a location, getting everyone into the car, picking your order at the restaurant, waiting for food, waiting for check, piling in and going home. That just doesn’t fit in 60 min. On the other hand, grocery shopping requires advance collaborative choice. Sometimes the choosing can take over an hour. Delegating one decider comes with its own hazards, and effectively binds the decider to also be the grocery shopper in order to execute appropriately. Services like BlueApron solve for that by reducing the number of choices and removing the need to leave the house. If you don’t mind cooking / enjoy picking up new cooking skills, you optimize for stress-free time with your family.