10 ms·

Are Mail-Order Meal Kits Doomed?

125 points by prostoalex 8y ago

FussyZeus 8y ago
I never found these attractive, the amount of trash you generate using them is just heinous, and I'm not even usually a pro-environment person.
- wetmore 8y ago
  Not only do they generate trash by requiring a lot of small bags and such for the ingredients, they also create food waste by bundling together ingredients with different expiration times. I spent some time digging around in dumpsters behind a grocery store in Vegas which carries their own meal kit offering. They throw out huge boxes of meal kits with expired meat in them which contain a bunch of food which is good for longer, like rice, herbs, potatoes, etc. It was great for me because its a lot of clean, unexpired food for free but the amount of waste it created blew my mind.
Someone1234 8y ago
I recently purchased one at a Kroger (store branded). It is good to know that Costco will also stock them soon. Buying them at local stores has most of the benefits with less of the ecological impact or high costs. In fact the one I purchased had less overall packaging than buying the parts individually, there was still a price premium however.
jseliger 8y ago
I've tried various meal kit programs, chiefly because of their various free offers, and almost all of them start out strong and then their food quality declines overtime. My biggest complaint is not cost but the low quality of most of the food itself.
- fetus8 8y ago
  I have also tried various programs, and not only do I find the quality of the food to be an issue, but the menu and variety of food is really lacking. Even with little to no dietary restrictions, I often found that by week 3, meals started to feel the same and there was a lack of variety. I've kept the recipes that I really liked and just buy the ingredients myself at my local grocery store, no sense in paying for the food to be delivered at this point.
maxxxxx 8y ago
I also don’t think it’s interesting long term. It may be interesting to learn cooking but once you know a little you see quickly that going shopping is not that hard. I want either ready made foods or cook from scratch but not this weird thing in the middle. Is this the “uncanny valley” of food preparation? Almost looks like it but not close enough.
- treis 8y ago
  >once you know a little you see quickly that going shopping is not that hard Planning meals is still a somewhat significant cognitive load. I think that's the value proposition here. Getting a bunch of single meal portions is convenient, but not really any better than getting groceries delivered. It's not having to go through the process of finding recipes and then generating a shopping list that's the killer feature. I think the ideal thing is the ability to click and say I want to make these four meals this week. It adds a list of perishables (meat, veggies, etc.) to my cart and a spits out a list of staples (spices, flour, soy sauce, etc.) for me to check to see if I have. Then I either have it delivered or it can print me out a shopping list.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    "I think the ideal thing is the ability to click and say I want to make these four meals this week. It adds a list of perishables (meat, veggies, etc.) to my cart and a spits out a list of staples (spices, flour, soy sauce, etc.) for me to check to see if I have. Then I either have it delivered or it can print me out a shopping list. " I would like that too. For this a "smart fridge" would actually make sense if it could check what you have already.
  - zelos 8y ago
    That does sound like a great idea. You could even add some automated optimisation recipe suggestions: “if you add these two ingredients to your basket, you could use the leftover vegetables from recipe A to also make recipe B”
  - moreira 8y ago
    Check out https://www.eatthismuch.com https://www.eatthismuch.com. Does exactly what you're describing, and it's brilliant. I picked it up last year, I couldn't believe it existed.
deadmetheny 8y ago
> That’s where making one-off meal kits available at retail locations like grocery stores and membership clubs comes in; according to Seifer, moving beyond the mail-order subscription model seems pivotal to meal kits’ long-term viability. This is the money quote. The people who subscribe to these things and figure out cooking is not hard and just requires a bit of initial guidance are almost certainly going to keep recipes and do their own shopping. And now that it's proven viable and so many supermarkets deliver groceries, they're going to swoop in and eat mail-order kits' collective lunches.
- hvs 8y ago
  Just wait until these people discover that these "recipes" are available in things called "cookbooks" that they can purchase without subscribing to a meal service.
  - robodale 8y ago
    ...and then they discover they can get "recipes" from any number of "websites", for free, and without even buying a cookbook!
  - jerkstate 8y ago
    the main thing that meal kit services did for me was automate shopping and variety. Now I use a non-kit shopping list/recipe service that lets me pick from a recipe list at the beginning of the week and puts a shopping list together for me, and shop once a week. We have very little food waste (compared to shopping for ingredients then needing to fit them into a recipe) and it's very time-efficient (compared to choosing recipes and manually compiling a shopping list from recipes in a cookbook).
  - untog 8y ago
    That's not really the point. Shopping for a dozen individual ingredients for a recipe is time consuming, and is one reason why people are more inclined to try these meal kit boxes. Selling a pre-packaged meal kit in a store still keeps the time-saving benefits, and removes the shipping difficulty.
tick_tock_tick 8y ago
Meal kits are doomed but fully prepared meal delivery services like freshly are here to stay. Even if freshly itself dies I really think Amazon is going to expand into the pre-made meal market.
- jayess 8y ago
  Agreed. I switched from Green Chef to Freshly. I love it. In three minutes I have a meal. With Green Chef it was always 30-45 minutes of prep and it got old.
- petra 8y ago
  I think frozen meals will make comeback. I'm thinking about non-cooked frozen meals , which you'll cook at home in some one-click cooking gadget , like an instant-pot or a smart combi-oven, or maybe some basic cooking robot[1]. That way you could get high quality, high-convenience at a cheaper price. [1]you get pre-cut ingredients. You put each ingredient in a bin at your home cooking machine. The machine adds each ingredient to a pot at the right time, and mixes when needed and controls the heat.
  - lapnitnelav 8y ago
    Might as well buy a Thermomix or equivalent
    - petra 8y ago
      The Thermomix doesn't offer a great amount of value. If it was, a competitor would be offering it for a mass market price($300-400 or cheaper), and have a hit.
- cozzyd 8y ago
  I think they have meal kits at Amazon stores, at least the one I've been in (Chicago, Illinois Center location).
0xname 8y ago
It would be nice if grocery stores had a more descriptive/accessible way of searching for and buying items online. Choosing a recipe, then getting a list of required ingredients - perhaps even delivered automatically to your door - seems like a much more environmentally friendly and practical solution compared to these meal kits.
- ericcholis 8y ago
  Wegmans (mid-Atlantic and New England) has this in their app and on their website, it's quite nice. Sample: https://www.wegmans.com/meals-recipes/meals/main-course/asian-cauliflower--rice--lettuce-wraps.html https://www.wegmans.com/meals-recipes/meals/main-course/asia...
- jerkstate 8y ago
  There are a number of curated recipe apps that put together a weekly shopping list, some even integrate with amazon fresh or instacart for delivery. Your weekly recipe choices are not infinite, but I really like the suggestion of novelty and not being overwhelmed by too many choices.
throwaway-1283 8y ago
I don't necessarily need to eat something different every day, which is what these Meal Kits provide (i.e. variety in cooking). I actually think meal kits for bulk meal prep would be more interesting. Meal prep has become a "thing" especially for those with some fitness goal - and getting a shipment that allows you bulk prepare 1-2 weeks worth of 1-2 dishes for lunch and/or dinner that fits a particular diet or fitness goal would be a lot more interesting to me (e.g. for weight loss, keto, bulking up, marathon training, etc.)
- davis_m 8y ago
  Does the group of people who meal prep line up with those that don't want to think about meal prep? One of the benefits of these meal prep kits is that you end up with a freshly cooked meal. If you are going to be eating a prepared meal, why not just let the service send it fully ready to go?
  - throwaway-1283 8y ago
    I haven't tried a prepared meal prep food delivery service before, but I would imagine that a successful "bulk meal prep kit" would need to be cheaper per meal than one that is pre-made. I also think a major part of the appeal of meal kits is not really in having a "freshly prepared meal" as much as in helping people more easily achieve a level of satisfaction out of making something homemade. That, and the convenience of not 1) having to go to the grocery store to buy meal prep goods and 2) not having to find decent recipes for meals that fit your nutrition or fitness goal
brink 8y ago
I quit Blue Apron for a few reasons. 1. My plastic trash output doubled overnight when I signed up. 2. Excessive amounts of carrots and other "cheap, but filling" substances. 3. My life doesn't need another subscription service to think about and manage. 4. Going to the store once a week isn't that much of a hassle, the food quality is higher, and it's cheaper. Edit: The variety was nice though. Trying something different every time was an adventure, though most nights I wasn't feeling adventurous. Most nights, I didn't really feel like cooking something I may or may not like.
- updateYourMind 8y ago
  I can't read your list on mobile
  - QuercusMax 8y ago
    Is HN ever going to fix this issue? It's really obnoxious, and feels like it could be fixed with a stylesheet change.
    - antidesitter 8y ago
      Agreed. It is beyond me why the admins refuse to change a couple of lines of CSS, when this is an issue that has been raised again and again by the community.
      - updateYourMind 8y ago
        They can be pretty stubborn. When they added the [-] next to comments, everybody told them, on day 1, that it made no sense to have it on the right side and it would be easier to minimize comments on the left side. They did nothing.
    - ahakki 8y ago
      You really shouln't use the fixed width style for lists, it's basically only useful for code. instead you can just make a list with normal paragraphs so that lines can wrap normally. 1. Item One Das Handelsgericht Zürich hat in einem Massnahmeverfahren der Raiffeisen Schweiz gegen Inside Paradeplatz und Lukas Hässig entschieden, dass der Artikel eines anonymen Autors vom 20. August 2018 zu löschen sei. 2. Item two Das Handelsgericht hat festgehalten, dass nicht klar sei, ob unter den gegebenen Umständen der Text wirklich wie behauptet von einem ehemaligen Kadermann der Bank stamme. 3. Item three Inside Paradeplatz und Lukas Hässig wie auch Raiffeisen Schweiz akzeptieren diesen Entscheid.
jVinc 8y ago
I've tried 3 services now, and what they all seem to not get is that they are not selling food. I can get food in the local supermarket. They are selling convenience and peace of mind. Whats the difference? The difference is that if you screw up my order 2-3 times, then I will quit your service and never look back. Sure you deliver food to my door most the time, but you are not providing convenience and peace of mind. I have never had the issue where going to the supermarket to shop for dinner unknowingly left me without crucial ingredients or return boxes crowding my driveway. I have never had the issue where a supermarket sneaks shellfish into my order even though I am allergic and explicitly did not want shellfish when I entered the supermarket. The tolerances on these services are just much much harder than a brick and mortar store and it feels like none of them take it seriously at all. You need to provide near 98% for every single customer or they eventually drop off as they lose patience with you and switch service, and after a couple they just don't want to bother any more.
- Sebguer 8y ago
  Additionally, the dependency on last mile shipping companies which by and large are awful means that some problems will never be entirely under their control. I used BlueApron for several months, but then the last mile delivery company stopped dropping the package at my door and instead began leaving it in my apartment's mail room, which doesn't notify me when I have a package and closes overnight. That + some growing concerns over food safety (esp around their meat) lead to me dropping and giving up on them.
  - MuffinFlavored 8y ago
    What'd you switch to instead?
    - LordDragonfang 8y ago
      I'm assuming they just went back to B&M groceries.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
  Same experience here. Every single service will credit you for mistakes but it only takes one or two mistakes before the convenience factor is destroyed. I’ve had the core ingredient missing from my boxes before. As in, the core ingredient is in the recipe name! I also found the produce quality to be hit or miss. Spinach especially was regularly too wet and thus spoiled before I even had a chance to use it. That never happens to me with store bought produce. The ecological impact also started to wear on me. I felt gross with the amount of plastic I was throwing out.
secure 8y ago
I learnt about Hello Fresh a few weeks ago, signed up, and have been a happy customer since. For me, not having to pick a recipe and do the shopping is the biggest convenience. The results range from meh to awesome (certainly sometimes due to me botching the recipe). Price-wise, the service is between eating out and buying groceries myself, which I think is fair. Shipments have been on time and usually okay (had rotten tomatoes once). I’m not sure how long I’ll stay with them, but for now, I have no intention of canceling. I have eaten healthier food with more variety, and learnt a bunch about cooking and recipe tuning in the process.
- borgchick 8y ago
  I've been with HelloFresh for a year and a half. Before joining, I could only make the most basic meals, spaghetti, grilled cheese. Now, I feel like the training with HelloFresh and I'm a much better cook. The variety of meals has got me to try numerous things (and combinations of spices, ingredients, etc) that I normally would never buy for myself in a grocery store, or order in a restaurant. I have to say that one thing about HelloFresh meals, they always plate so well. Over the time I've been with them, I've certainly collected a number of favourite recipies. But unfortunately, recipies are definitely repeating now. There are a number of reasons I am still with them. 1. Having everything needed just show up is really nice. I waste way less food with HelloFresh (either over buying ingredients that go bad, or making too much due to poor portion control and no one wants to eat left over 3 days after). Having just the right amount of fresh herbs for a meal can really make or break the flavour. I do still go to to grocery store for some basic stuff that I use to supplement some meals with, as some meals are occassaionally small. For example, if the meal comes with 1 potato, I may add a potato of my own. I leave the meat portion alone, and I think this has gotten me to eat smaller portions as well. 2. Having a constant stream of different meals is nice. Before, my husband and I'd settled into always making the standard rotation of around 10 meals. That gets dull really quick. It was leading us to ordering pizza more than once a week, which is definitely not good (it is tasty, but not good). 3. I enjoy making the food, and like I said, it always looks great when it is plated, so I take pictures of each creation and proud to show friends and family. The over packaging issue, so the box and the meals within is cardboard and paper bags, I recycle both. I noticed recently they no longer plastic bag the garlic or shallots, which is just fine by me. The biggest waste right now is all the small plastic bags the sauces and spices come in. I suppose if I wanted, I could recycle those as well since they are plastic. The ice packs are non-chemical, and reusable. I've given many many away to friends and family. Basically no one I know ever has to buy an ice pack again. And even then I have too many of them, so once in a while I cut a bunch open and wash it down the drain (they say it is a non-toxic salt solution, and safe to wash down the drain) The boxes I've also given away when people want moving boxes, but I recycle most of them. I think recently some of the meals have gotten a little "meh". I paused my subscription on some weeks when really nothing on the list excited me. I hope that trend doesn't continue. I have not tried other services like BA.
radicalbyte 8y ago
Hello Fresh levelled me up as a cook and greatly reduced the amount of waste we generate. Our bin is emptied once a month now (from twice a month) - it would be once every two months if it wasn't for the diapers.
bluedino 8y ago
My wife thinks they're fun to make. People get to try new foods and ingredients. Cheaper than going out, but obviously not cheaper than buying the groceries yourself. Plenty of people spend $5 at a coffee shop so I can see a subset of the market continuing to pay $8/serving + shipping for this stuff.
Animats 8y ago
Probably. Meal kits may become available in supermarkets, though. They have a big advantage - a cold chain. They can keep something cold from the plant that made it to the moment the user takes it out of the cold case. The mail order people can't do that. The Doordash/Uber/etc crowd can't even keep things warm.
- epochwolf 8y ago
  One of the Kroger stores near me has meal kits next to the salad bar.
  - jcims 8y ago
    I really think Kroger should just release recipes to their ClickList service. Why limit it to 5-6 pre-packaged meals with dubious produce selections visible through the plastic.
- canada_dry 8y ago
  It kinda boggles my mind why the big supermarket chains aren't all over this!?! (I'm looking at you Loblaw) The service I'd like would either deliver or pickup 2-3 pre-measured ready-to-prep meals in re-useable containers (i.e. glass/stainless that I return to them for re-use). In large urban centres already serviced by a big grocer this would seem to be such a great way to lock consumers into their product!
- notjustanymike 8y ago
  Safeway bought Plated for that reason
groby_b 8y ago
All of the ones I tried had a significant drawback - they somewhat forced your selection by grouping meals together, or restricting choice otherwise. Which... no thanks. There are foods I don't like, and I won't buy them just because you need to get rid of your supplies. Meanwhile, I'm very happy with freshly - no cooking except "microwave for 3:30", mostly decent food quality. They still have the same last-mile problem as everybody else, though. (Seriously, could somebody just nuke OnTrac from orbit?)
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
  I also did Freshly for a bit. The convenience is clearly there because like you said, no cooking. I found them to be even better when you reheat in the oven too. I eventually cancelled Freshly because I grew tired of the lack of variation.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mxcrossb 8y ago
My only fear is that the podcast market will also collapse without their advertising money.
- apacheCamel 8y ago
  They could still rely on Squarespace and Stamps.com to fill that void.
- bschwindHN 8y ago
  MeUndies and Shari's Berries will have to step it up
- kalleboo 8y ago
  I just heard an ad for "the world's first subscription electric toothbrush". Just startup fee cost more than a Braun one. There's still lots of dumb VC money to advertise on podcasts left even without the food boxes.
appsonify 8y ago
Long time ago I wouldn't have minded. But cooking itself is an enjoyable process....and those are the people these guys are targteting.... it's not a sustainable model because once you realize you have a measuring spoon and the right beakers, its just following directions, sort of like a series of linux commands you would normally copy & paste
giacaglia 8y ago
I've wrote about this some time ago here: https://medium.com/@giacaglia/the-end-of-the-meal-kit-ffc707a1957 https://medium.com/@giacaglia/the-end-of-the-meal-kit-ffc707...
ohiovr 8y ago
I just stick to a single cultural cuisine for a while and fold my leftovers somehow into tomorrows meal and try not to have too many left overs to begin with. This works pretty good with Mexican, and most cultures know something about leftover management. If I need to be entertained while dining I'll do it at a restaurant now and then. Picking out ingredients for a random recipe is going to leave you with little surpluses here and there. It can be hard to work it all into what you cook if you vary widely in what you cook. Though I do love cooking a variety of things. It can be wasteful unless your planning is on par with a chef.
darkport 8y ago
Would people here use a similar service, but the ingredients are automatically sourced from your local supermarket and delivered to your door? Almost supermarket prices with still the convenience of not deciding what to eat and buying the separately.
- roel_v 8y ago
  "Almost supermarket prices" This is the problem - it's not going to be 'almost supermarket prices'. It'll be a 10-20% markup, which is a lot for food.
  - Uhhrrr 8y ago
    But it's not necessarily so much if it saves me an hour of driving and shopping.
    - roel_v 8y ago
      People don't value their time like that, at least, most of them don't. I mean, some do, but at my hourly rate the time I spend on driving and shopping is much more than its cost and I still balk at paying e5 for grocery deliveries, and I program economic models for a living! (instead I always order a few products that give me free delivery, and/or select a not so popular delivery time slot). Point being, economic modeling and naively assigning a time value equal to or even just related to people's normal hourly wages is - well - naive, and does not yield accurate representations of real world behaviors. Here's another example: I used to have a cleaner who I'd pay e10/hour. She'd park across the street from my house, paid parking, e6 per day. There was free parking available at 10 minutes walking distance. So for 20 minutes of walking, she'd save 6 euros, i.e. e18/h, almost double what she could make from her actual work! And yet she continued to pay for parking, even after I did this math for her. Point being: people are sensitive to costs in very non-intuitive (some might say: irrational, but I don't like the connotations of that word) ways.
- gorbypark 8y ago
  Yes! I've tried out a few of the services here in Canada, using first order promos, and I've found them all to be expensive and have a crazy amount of packaging. I'd love to be able to decide I want a kit, order it online at lunch time, and either have it delivered or pick it up on my way home.
11thEarlOfMar 8y ago
Makes me wonder how Gobble is doing. It seems to be likely that there is a percentage of customers who will try and use these services for the long run. The trick will be for these companies to build up enough profitable customers so that they can spend on marketing to new customers and still make a profit. I'd expect some consolidation and in a few years, a handful of sustainable businesses.
- warbaker 8y ago
  I use Gobble and still like it. Unlike BlueApron etc, Gobble is intended to be quick and easy. Like, rather than giving you potato and expecting you to mash it, Gobble gives you the damn mashed potatoes and you microwave them.
patentatt 8y ago
I’m seeing a lot of the negatives of meal kits here, but let me counter with my experience. I have little kids, and delivery meal kits are great for us. Shopping with a toddler and an infant is HARD. The cognitive load of keeping food stocked is hard. With a meal kit subscription, it’s set and forget, I can always be sure that I have at least 3 solid meals for that week with fresh food. It takes half of the thinking and shopping and automates it.
logfromblammo 8y ago
I never understood the appeal behind them in the first place, so take my opinion with that bias in mind. I think that a user-adaptive program to procedurally generate a weekly meal plan, break that down into a unified grocery shopping list, and maybe even forward said list to the picker services that some grocery stores are running now, would remove every last speck of competitive advantage the mail order kits have. Instead of getting a dinner-in-a-box delivered to your door every day, you can park in a pickup spot at the grocery, pop the trunk/hatch, get your order, and take it home. Every night, your phone can alert you when to start dinner, what foods you'll need, and pull up a recipe card or checklist if you need it. If you know how to make tacos, and like to eat them every Tuesday, you'll get taco ingredients on your grocery list every week, and will likely get frequent suggestions for recipes that also contain cilantro, chiles, lime, tomatoes, sour cream, and green onions, to use up the leftovers. Cilantro-lime chicken. Pad Thai. Crunchy ramen salad. The most efficient meals divide your grocery store haul across multiple meals, so you don't end up eating a whole head of lettuce in one sitting, but can eat a little in every meal for which lettuce makes sense, until it's gone--ideally the night before you pick up your next load of groceries. But the biggest advantage is that I wouldn't have to think about food until it's exactly the time I need to deal with it. There're no tedious exchanges like: "Whaddya wanna eat? Dunno; whaddyou want? Don't care. Pizza? No, not that. Mexican? Nah. Sushi? Yyyyeah... okay. Sakura or Honada? I thought we weren't going to Sakura any more? Oh yeah." &c. &c. &c. Remember when Mom and/or Dad said "We're having meatloaf and Brussels sprouts tonight. Siddown, shaddap, and eat."? That was easy. All you had to do was show up. It even worked okay after Mom/Dad got sick of your kid complaints and said, "Fine. You make dinner, and I'll unload the dishwasher." The menu was already planned, and the food ready to cook. So a program that would select a partially randomized meal, composed of stuff that I already told it I like, and can cook, would eliminate a lot of time wasted on thinking about food. The mail-order services do that, but they're not the only ones who can do that.
- gorbypark 8y ago
  This would be a great service. I'd pay a few bucks a week to have a service that sent me a weekly shopping list, and the corresponding recipes. I hate wasting food, so if it could know that "well, he needs blackbeans for this recipe, but an entire can is too much, so we'll chuck in the other recipe a few days later to use up the beans..."
Havoc 8y ago
Much prefer the Huel / Soylent route.
nyc_pizzadev 8y ago
For me, the quality had gone downhill considerably. First, missing ingredients or completely mis-boxed orders. Then, the actual ingredients started becoming low quality. Stuff that would remain on the shelf at the grocery store. Then stuff started coming damaged. And all the sides are cheap (high) carbs. I was ok with the packaging, it never bothered me. Going to the store, you get exactly what you want, good to high quality choices, and no damage! Plus, endless variety. And its way cheaper. So for me, there was little value left.
fraudsyndrome 8y ago
Does anyone just use these websites for meal ideas and just go shopping on their own? My issue is finding a good recipe which also doesn't have 15 separate ingredients to buy - these companies I'd imagine would try to have as little ingredients as possible - and have similarities that picking a few recipes means you already have crossovers. Most recipes I see are sometimes way too much trouble or take too long to prepare (sometimes overnight!) - I thought I'd be okay eating the same thing but when you're living with others and cooking together you want some variety.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Try one of Roxanne Gold’s cookbooks. One of her Schticks is recipes with just a few ingredients. If nothing else, it helps get you into a mode of knowing that recipes can be pretty simple. There are also regional cuisines that require more ingredients but there’s a core set that get reused a lot.
datademon 8y ago
I would pay a LOT for a meal kit or pre-made meal service that placed allergies/intolerances as its priority. I suspect the reason this is so difficult is also the reason that I would pay a lot for it: it's a huge pain to come up with many recipes when you're allergic to many things. I'm allergic to almost all legumes. That includes soy, peanuts, lentils, edamame, most beans, peas, licorice, etc. However, I'm not allergic to black beans. This combination of allergies is highly unique: I'm sure there aren't that many people out there who share the exact same allergies. Sure, maybe some people have overlap, but it's likely only a partial overlap. This means that any meal kit service would either have to 1) Provide bespoke sets of kits for almost every allergy combination possible or 2) Provide a limited number of meal sets that hit the big categories. Option 1 is nigh impossible since that's too many combinations to gain the benefits of economies of scale. Option 2 also sucks because my allergies might get lumped into a broader category and I miss out on ingredients. (Eg. I actually can eat black beans, but since they're legumes, they would likely be banned from a 'no legumes' set of meals) The closest service I've found is https://paleoonthego.com/collections/aip-bakery https://paleoonthego.com/collections/aip-bakery However, I think they fall prey to my option 2's issues. No nightshades??? What the heck? I love tomatoes! Additionally, I haven't even bothered ordering anything from there because the items are so expensive. Just look at some of the prices: $22 for 4 pop tarts! So in fact, not only did they fall prey to option 2's issues, but they also fall prey to option 1's issues! (lack of economies of scale) I have no idea if this issue is ever solvable in a way that provides a stable business model. Frankly, if normal meal kit services can't make it work, I doubt one that artificially limits its customer base would work either.
- adamisom 8y ago
  So.. I'm guessing it's not as simple as it sounds for the biz to tag each recipe with each allergen-ingredient, and then exclude recipes on that basis for a given customer's list of allergens?
  - datademon 8y ago
    Maybe I haven't looked hard enough: but I still haven't found a service that can reliably do that at the level of detail I need. (Eg. Blacklist all legumes, except for black beans which are whitelisted) Plus I think that unless the business is focused around these bespoke allergy-friendly recipes, then me blacklisting a large swath of ingredients will lead to me missing out on most of / their best meals.
niftylettuce 8y ago
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- youeseh 8y ago
  Hey, just a suggestion. You asked me to enter my zip code first and then told me that you don't serve my area. Might I suggest A/B testing the following: show us your service areas and ask for our zipcode / email to notify us when the service will be available in our area. This is a bit more transparent with less of a letdown. But I'm not sure if it'll net you more useful data (thus the A/B test).
nubbins 8y ago
I found that Blue Apron did pretty much all I could have expected on their end- better recipes and ingredients that I usually got in my neighborhood and new techniques I hadn’t tried. I quit because of the fundamental problem that a subscription food service requires an unknown time commitment (recipes were quite involved)3x a week as well as worry about missing the delivery and having food spoil.
- nilkn 8y ago
  This was the same issue for me. Maybe I’m just inefficient at cooking but I discovered quite quickly that cooking complex meals at home multiple times per week is actually not something I wanted to do. I found myself spending what felt like an inordinate amount of time on dinner between prep, actual cooking, eating, and extensive cleanup. I don’t know if this is really Blue Apron’s fault. It’s more that I thought I wanted their service, then discovered I really didn’t. On the logistics side, there were also numerous times when the delivery time was just not convenient for me. Again, I don’t think BA really did anything wrong here per se, but it was frustrating needing to plan around expecting a big box of fresh food to show up sometime on a particular day. This was further complicated by living in an apartment complex where deliveries sometimes go to the door... but also sometimes to the leasing office, which closes before I even get home.
  - drainyard 8y ago
    This is my main issue with these types of services. Some weeks I want to make something new/complex 4 times and some weeks I barely want to at all. Here in Denmark we have a nice services where you can cancel your order or reorder every week, but I never know how much time I have at the beginning of the week.
    - nilkn 8y ago
      For what it's worth you can cancel/skip specific deliveries with Blue Apron. That helps some on the logistics side if you know in advance you're going to be busy the day of delivery. But it doesn't completely address the issue, especially since you have to skip a certain amount of time in advance.
koverda 8y ago
My wife & I used to use some of these services, but switched over to the following process: 1. cookinglightdiet.com for recipe ideas & meal planning. They are typically quick, simple, and healthy recipes. Costs $4 / mo 2. Generate shopping list on that site. 3. Populate my shopping cart on the grocery store's site - we go to Ralph's typically. Pick a time to get the groceries. That service of theirs is called Clicklist. 4. Pick up groceries at the designated time ($8 fee). Picking meals is easy, generating the shopping list & filling the cart takes a little bit of time, picking the groceries up takes minutes (way better than spending an hour and a half searching for ingredients yourself). It's like normal grocery shopping some of the perks & convenience of meal kit services. Credit to my wife for coming up with all of this.
larl 8y ago
I tried a couple of blue apron kits when they were in Costco. Some nights you have the time and energy to cook from scratch. Some nights you order pizza. Other nights a meal kit is just right.
nateburke 8y ago
BA can execute at 100% and they will still not get around the fact that they are selling groceries + additional food packaging services and neither the grocery business nor packaging has ever had real margins to speak of in the past 30 years.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
djitz 8y ago
I subscribed to Blue Apron for a few months and was unhappy with the service. Boxes would come missing important items or with incorrect quantities. Recently, I purchased a Tovala oven (and subscribed for the meals which go along with it.) So far so good! I only use it to supplement meals we cook at home or for lunch when certain dinners we cook won’t have leftovers, etc. It’s surprisingly good and we use the oven to cook our own food, as well.
djsumdog 8y ago
I never tried any of these services. None of them offered keto-friendly (low carbohydrate) meal options. I probably would have if at least one of them did.
dominotw 8y ago
Too expensive. I make software engineer money and I can't justify it.
sumoboy 8y ago
First selling most perishable items online is difficult, but to believe home meals are doomed is shortsighted. The market exists otherwise because not everybody wants to play Gordon Ramsey every night. These companies are mostly doing everything themselves when in many cases they should partner with local grocery store chains and create branded meal plans. It's no different than the flower industry, where you partner with local florists who build your bouquet and deliver it under a national brand. It's extremely tough to deliver flower bouquets from a central fulfillment facility, been there did that. People are lazy, nothing changes there anytime soon. Yet these are the same people who drop $75 for dinner a few times a week like it's no big deal yet will compare that to a meal subscription like it's a ripoff. The audience is out there, just a matter of finding them.
gumby 8y ago
Mealkits haven't worked for me at all (I have tried a few), but boxes of fresh veggies and of meat have been great. Not naming companies as I'm not shilling, just pointing out the success (for one person!) of a different model.
ariekachler 8y ago
They are indeed doomed. They can easily be replaced by your local supermarket putting a kiosk and you buying it whenever you feel like it, not on a shipping schedule. I've seen it on my local supermarket. Love it.
- gricardo99 8y ago
  I came here to say the same thing. The supermarket was always the big looming threat to any meal kit business. And they are also providing pickup and delivery service.

125 points by prostoalex 8y ago

I never found these attractive, the amount of trash you generate using them is just heinous, and I'm not even usually a pro-environment person.

wetmore 8y ago
Not only do they generate trash by requiring a lot of small bags and such for the ingredients, they also create food waste by bundling together ingredients with different expiration times. I spent some time digging around in dumpsters behind a grocery store in Vegas which carries their own meal kit offering. They throw out huge boxes of meal kits with expired meat in them which contain a bunch of food which is good for longer, like rice, herbs, potatoes, etc. It was great for me because its a lot of clean, unexpired food for free but the amount of waste it created blew my mind.

Someone1234 8y ago

I recently purchased one at a Kroger (store branded). It is good to know that Costco will also stock them soon. Buying them at local stores has most of the benefits with less of the ecological impact or high costs. In fact the one I purchased had less overall packaging than buying the parts individually, there was still a price premium however.

jseliger 8y ago

I've tried various meal kit programs, chiefly because of their various free offers, and almost all of them start out strong and then their food quality declines overtime. My biggest complaint is not cost but the low quality of most of the food itself.

fetus8 8y ago
I have also tried various programs, and not only do I find the quality of the food to be an issue, but the menu and variety of food is really lacking. Even with little to no dietary restrictions, I often found that by week 3, meals started to feel the same and there was a lack of variety. I've kept the recipes that I really liked and just buy the ingredients myself at my local grocery store, no sense in paying for the food to be delivered at this point.

maxxxxx 8y ago

I also don’t think it’s interesting long term. It may be interesting to learn cooking but once you know a little you see quickly that going shopping is not that hard. I want either ready made foods or cook from scratch but not this weird thing in the middle. Is this the “uncanny valley” of food preparation? Almost looks like it but not close enough.

treis 8y ago
>once you know a little you see quickly that going shopping is not that hard Planning meals is still a somewhat significant cognitive load. I think that's the value proposition here. Getting a bunch of single meal portions is convenient, but not really any better than getting groceries delivered. It's not having to go through the process of finding recipes and then generating a shopping list that's the killer feature. I think the ideal thing is the ability to click and say I want to make these four meals this week. It adds a list of perishables (meat, veggies, etc.) to my cart and a spits out a list of staples (spices, flour, soy sauce, etc.) for me to check to see if I have. Then I either have it delivered or it can print me out a shopping list.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  "I think the ideal thing is the ability to click and say I want to make these four meals this week. It adds a list of perishables (meat, veggies, etc.) to my cart and a spits out a list of staples (spices, flour, soy sauce, etc.) for me to check to see if I have. Then I either have it delivered or it can print me out a shopping list. " I would like that too. For this a "smart fridge" would actually make sense if it could check what you have already.
- zelos 8y ago
  That does sound like a great idea. You could even add some automated optimisation recipe suggestions: “if you add these two ingredients to your basket, you could use the leftover vegetables from recipe A to also make recipe B”
- moreira 8y ago
  Check out https://www.eatthismuch.com https://www.eatthismuch.com. Does exactly what you're describing, and it's brilliant. I picked it up last year, I couldn't believe it existed.

deadmetheny 8y ago

> That’s where making one-off meal kits available at retail locations like grocery stores and membership clubs comes in; according to Seifer, moving beyond the mail-order subscription model seems pivotal to meal kits’ long-term viability. This is the money quote. The people who subscribe to these things and figure out cooking is not hard and just requires a bit of initial guidance are almost certainly going to keep recipes and do their own shopping. And now that it's proven viable and so many supermarkets deliver groceries, they're going to swoop in and eat mail-order kits' collective lunches.

hvs 8y ago
Just wait until these people discover that these "recipes" are available in things called "cookbooks" that they can purchase without subscribing to a meal service.
- robodale 8y ago
  ...and then they discover they can get "recipes" from any number of "websites", for free, and without even buying a cookbook!
- jerkstate 8y ago
  the main thing that meal kit services did for me was automate shopping and variety. Now I use a non-kit shopping list/recipe service that lets me pick from a recipe list at the beginning of the week and puts a shopping list together for me, and shop once a week. We have very little food waste (compared to shopping for ingredients then needing to fit them into a recipe) and it's very time-efficient (compared to choosing recipes and manually compiling a shopping list from recipes in a cookbook).
- untog 8y ago
  That's not really the point. Shopping for a dozen individual ingredients for a recipe is time consuming, and is one reason why people are more inclined to try these meal kit boxes. Selling a pre-packaged meal kit in a store still keeps the time-saving benefits, and removes the shipping difficulty.

tick_tock_tick 8y ago

Meal kits are doomed but fully prepared meal delivery services like freshly are here to stay. Even if freshly itself dies I really think Amazon is going to expand into the pre-made meal market.

jayess 8y ago
Agreed. I switched from Green Chef to Freshly. I love it. In three minutes I have a meal. With Green Chef it was always 30-45 minutes of prep and it got old.
petra 8y ago
I think frozen meals will make comeback. I'm thinking about non-cooked frozen meals , which you'll cook at home in some one-click cooking gadget , like an instant-pot or a smart combi-oven, or maybe some basic cooking robot[1]. That way you could get high quality, high-convenience at a cheaper price. [1]you get pre-cut ingredients. You put each ingredient in a bin at your home cooking machine. The machine adds each ingredient to a pot at the right time, and mixes when needed and controls the heat.
- lapnitnelav 8y ago
  Might as well buy a Thermomix or equivalent
  - petra 8y ago
    The Thermomix doesn't offer a great amount of value. If it was, a competitor would be offering it for a mass market price($300-400 or cheaper), and have a hit.
cozzyd 8y ago
I think they have meal kits at Amazon stores, at least the one I've been in (Chicago, Illinois Center location).

0xname 8y ago

It would be nice if grocery stores had a more descriptive/accessible way of searching for and buying items online. Choosing a recipe, then getting a list of required ingredients - perhaps even delivered automatically to your door - seems like a much more environmentally friendly and practical solution compared to these meal kits.

ericcholis 8y ago
Wegmans (mid-Atlantic and New England) has this in their app and on their website, it's quite nice. Sample: https://www.wegmans.com/meals-recipes/meals/main-course/asian-cauliflower--rice--lettuce-wraps.html https://www.wegmans.com/meals-recipes/meals/main-course/asia...
jerkstate 8y ago
There are a number of curated recipe apps that put together a weekly shopping list, some even integrate with amazon fresh or instacart for delivery. Your weekly recipe choices are not infinite, but I really like the suggestion of novelty and not being overwhelmed by too many choices.

throwaway-1283 8y ago

I don't necessarily need to eat something different every day, which is what these Meal Kits provide (i.e. variety in cooking). I actually think meal kits for bulk meal prep would be more interesting. Meal prep has become a "thing" especially for those with some fitness goal - and getting a shipment that allows you bulk prepare 1-2 weeks worth of 1-2 dishes for lunch and/or dinner that fits a particular diet or fitness goal would be a lot more interesting to me (e.g. for weight loss, keto, bulking up, marathon training, etc.)

davis_m 8y ago
Does the group of people who meal prep line up with those that don't want to think about meal prep? One of the benefits of these meal prep kits is that you end up with a freshly cooked meal. If you are going to be eating a prepared meal, why not just let the service send it fully ready to go?
- throwaway-1283 8y ago
  I haven't tried a prepared meal prep food delivery service before, but I would imagine that a successful "bulk meal prep kit" would need to be cheaper per meal than one that is pre-made. I also think a major part of the appeal of meal kits is not really in having a "freshly prepared meal" as much as in helping people more easily achieve a level of satisfaction out of making something homemade. That, and the convenience of not 1) having to go to the grocery store to buy meal prep goods and 2) not having to find decent recipes for meals that fit your nutrition or fitness goal

brink 8y ago

I quit Blue Apron for a few reasons. 1. My plastic trash output doubled overnight when I signed up. 2. Excessive amounts of carrots and other "cheap, but filling" substances. 3. My life doesn't need another subscription service to think about and manage. 4. Going to the store once a week isn't that much of a hassle, the food quality is higher, and it's cheaper. Edit: The variety was nice though. Trying something different every time was an adventure, though most nights I wasn't feeling adventurous. Most nights, I didn't really feel like cooking something I may or may not like.

updateYourMind 8y ago
I can't read your list on mobile
- QuercusMax 8y ago
  Is HN ever going to fix this issue? It's really obnoxious, and feels like it could be fixed with a stylesheet change.
  - antidesitter 8y ago
    Agreed. It is beyond me why the admins refuse to change a couple of lines of CSS, when this is an issue that has been raised again and again by the community.
    - updateYourMind 8y ago
      They can be pretty stubborn. When they added the [-] next to comments, everybody told them, on day 1, that it made no sense to have it on the right side and it would be easier to minimize comments on the left side. They did nothing.
  - ahakki 8y ago
    You really shouln't use the fixed width style for lists, it's basically only useful for code. instead you can just make a list with normal paragraphs so that lines can wrap normally. 1. Item One Das Handelsgericht Zürich hat in einem Massnahmeverfahren der Raiffeisen Schweiz gegen Inside Paradeplatz und Lukas Hässig entschieden, dass der Artikel eines anonymen Autors vom 20. August 2018 zu löschen sei. 2. Item two Das Handelsgericht hat festgehalten, dass nicht klar sei, ob unter den gegebenen Umständen der Text wirklich wie behauptet von einem ehemaligen Kadermann der Bank stamme. 3. Item three Inside Paradeplatz und Lukas Hässig wie auch Raiffeisen Schweiz akzeptieren diesen Entscheid.

jVinc 8y ago

I've tried 3 services now, and what they all seem to not get is that they are not selling food. I can get food in the local supermarket. They are selling convenience and peace of mind. Whats the difference? The difference is that if you screw up my order 2-3 times, then I will quit your service and never look back. Sure you deliver food to my door most the time, but you are not providing convenience and peace of mind. I have never had the issue where going to the supermarket to shop for dinner unknowingly left me without crucial ingredients or return boxes crowding my driveway. I have never had the issue where a supermarket sneaks shellfish into my order even though I am allergic and explicitly did not want shellfish when I entered the supermarket. The tolerances on these services are just much much harder than a brick and mortar store and it feels like none of them take it seriously at all. You need to provide near 98% for every single customer or they eventually drop off as they lose patience with you and switch service, and after a couple they just don't want to bother any more.

Sebguer 8y ago
Additionally, the dependency on last mile shipping companies which by and large are awful means that some problems will never be entirely under their control. I used BlueApron for several months, but then the last mile delivery company stopped dropping the package at my door and instead began leaving it in my apartment's mail room, which doesn't notify me when I have a package and closes overnight. That + some growing concerns over food safety (esp around their meat) lead to me dropping and giving up on them.
- MuffinFlavored 8y ago
  What'd you switch to instead?
  - LordDragonfang 8y ago
    I'm assuming they just went back to B&M groceries.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
Same experience here. Every single service will credit you for mistakes but it only takes one or two mistakes before the convenience factor is destroyed. I’ve had the core ingredient missing from my boxes before. As in, the core ingredient is in the recipe name! I also found the produce quality to be hit or miss. Spinach especially was regularly too wet and thus spoiled before I even had a chance to use it. That never happens to me with store bought produce. The ecological impact also started to wear on me. I felt gross with the amount of plastic I was throwing out.

secure 8y ago

I learnt about Hello Fresh a few weeks ago, signed up, and have been a happy customer since. For me, not having to pick a recipe and do the shopping is the biggest convenience. The results range from meh to awesome (certainly sometimes due to me botching the recipe). Price-wise, the service is between eating out and buying groceries myself, which I think is fair. Shipments have been on time and usually okay (had rotten tomatoes once). I’m not sure how long I’ll stay with them, but for now, I have no intention of canceling. I have eaten healthier food with more variety, and learnt a bunch about cooking and recipe tuning in the process.

borgchick 8y ago
I've been with HelloFresh for a year and a half. Before joining, I could only make the most basic meals, spaghetti, grilled cheese. Now, I feel like the training with HelloFresh and I'm a much better cook. The variety of meals has got me to try numerous things (and combinations of spices, ingredients, etc) that I normally would never buy for myself in a grocery store, or order in a restaurant. I have to say that one thing about HelloFresh meals, they always plate so well. Over the time I've been with them, I've certainly collected a number of favourite recipies. But unfortunately, recipies are definitely repeating now. There are a number of reasons I am still with them. 1. Having everything needed just show up is really nice. I waste way less food with HelloFresh (either over buying ingredients that go bad, or making too much due to poor portion control and no one wants to eat left over 3 days after). Having just the right amount of fresh herbs for a meal can really make or break the flavour. I do still go to to grocery store for some basic stuff that I use to supplement some meals with, as some meals are occassaionally small. For example, if the meal comes with 1 potato, I may add a potato of my own. I leave the meat portion alone, and I think this has gotten me to eat smaller portions as well. 2. Having a constant stream of different meals is nice. Before, my husband and I'd settled into always making the standard rotation of around 10 meals. That gets dull really quick. It was leading us to ordering pizza more than once a week, which is definitely not good (it is tasty, but not good). 3. I enjoy making the food, and like I said, it always looks great when it is plated, so I take pictures of each creation and proud to show friends and family. The over packaging issue, so the box and the meals within is cardboard and paper bags, I recycle both. I noticed recently they no longer plastic bag the garlic or shallots, which is just fine by me. The biggest waste right now is all the small plastic bags the sauces and spices come in. I suppose if I wanted, I could recycle those as well since they are plastic. The ice packs are non-chemical, and reusable. I've given many many away to friends and family. Basically no one I know ever has to buy an ice pack again. And even then I have too many of them, so once in a while I cut a bunch open and wash it down the drain (they say it is a non-toxic salt solution, and safe to wash down the drain) The boxes I've also given away when people want moving boxes, but I recycle most of them. I think recently some of the meals have gotten a little "meh". I paused my subscription on some weeks when really nothing on the list excited me. I hope that trend doesn't continue. I have not tried other services like BA.

radicalbyte 8y ago

Hello Fresh levelled me up as a cook and greatly reduced the amount of waste we generate. Our bin is emptied once a month now (from twice a month) - it would be once every two months if it wasn't for the diapers.

bluedino 8y ago

My wife thinks they're fun to make. People get to try new foods and ingredients. Cheaper than going out, but obviously not cheaper than buying the groceries yourself. Plenty of people spend $5 at a coffee shop so I can see a subset of the market continuing to pay $8/serving + shipping for this stuff.

Animats 8y ago

Probably. Meal kits may become available in supermarkets, though. They have a big advantage - a cold chain. They can keep something cold from the plant that made it to the moment the user takes it out of the cold case. The mail order people can't do that. The Doordash/Uber/etc crowd can't even keep things warm.

epochwolf 8y ago
One of the Kroger stores near me has meal kits next to the salad bar.
- jcims 8y ago
  I really think Kroger should just release recipes to their ClickList service. Why limit it to 5-6 pre-packaged meals with dubious produce selections visible through the plastic.
canada_dry 8y ago
It kinda boggles my mind why the big supermarket chains aren't all over this!?! (I'm looking at you Loblaw) The service I'd like would either deliver or pickup 2-3 pre-measured ready-to-prep meals in re-useable containers (i.e. glass/stainless that I return to them for re-use). In large urban centres already serviced by a big grocer this would seem to be such a great way to lock consumers into their product!
notjustanymike 8y ago
Safeway bought Plated for that reason

groby_b 8y ago

All of the ones I tried had a significant drawback - they somewhat forced your selection by grouping meals together, or restricting choice otherwise. Which... no thanks. There are foods I don't like, and I won't buy them just because you need to get rid of your supplies. Meanwhile, I'm very happy with freshly - no cooking except "microwave for 3:30", mostly decent food quality. They still have the same last-mile problem as everybody else, though. (Seriously, could somebody just nuke OnTrac from orbit?)

eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
I also did Freshly for a bit. The convenience is clearly there because like you said, no cooking. I found them to be even better when you reheat in the oven too. I eventually cancelled Freshly because I grew tired of the lack of variation.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

mxcrossb 8y ago

My only fear is that the podcast market will also collapse without their advertising money.

apacheCamel 8y ago
They could still rely on Squarespace and Stamps.com to fill that void.
bschwindHN 8y ago
MeUndies and Shari's Berries will have to step it up
kalleboo 8y ago
I just heard an ad for "the world's first subscription electric toothbrush". Just startup fee cost more than a Braun one. There's still lots of dumb VC money to advertise on podcasts left even without the food boxes.

appsonify 8y ago

Long time ago I wouldn't have minded. But cooking itself is an enjoyable process....and those are the people these guys are targteting.... it's not a sustainable model because once you realize you have a measuring spoon and the right beakers, its just following directions, sort of like a series of linux commands you would normally copy & paste

giacaglia 8y ago

I've wrote about this some time ago here: https://medium.com/@giacaglia/the-end-of-the-meal-kit-ffc707a1957 https://medium.com/@giacaglia/the-end-of-the-meal-kit-ffc707...

ohiovr 8y ago

I just stick to a single cultural cuisine for a while and fold my leftovers somehow into tomorrows meal and try not to have too many left overs to begin with. This works pretty good with Mexican, and most cultures know something about leftover management. If I need to be entertained while dining I'll do it at a restaurant now and then. Picking out ingredients for a random recipe is going to leave you with little surpluses here and there. It can be hard to work it all into what you cook if you vary widely in what you cook. Though I do love cooking a variety of things. It can be wasteful unless your planning is on par with a chef.

darkport 8y ago

Would people here use a similar service, but the ingredients are automatically sourced from your local supermarket and delivered to your door? Almost supermarket prices with still the convenience of not deciding what to eat and buying the separately.

roel_v 8y ago
"Almost supermarket prices" This is the problem - it's not going to be 'almost supermarket prices'. It'll be a 10-20% markup, which is a lot for food.
- Uhhrrr 8y ago
  But it's not necessarily so much if it saves me an hour of driving and shopping.
  - roel_v 8y ago
    People don't value their time like that, at least, most of them don't. I mean, some do, but at my hourly rate the time I spend on driving and shopping is much more than its cost and I still balk at paying e5 for grocery deliveries, and I program economic models for a living! (instead I always order a few products that give me free delivery, and/or select a not so popular delivery time slot). Point being, economic modeling and naively assigning a time value equal to or even just related to people's normal hourly wages is - well - naive, and does not yield accurate representations of real world behaviors. Here's another example: I used to have a cleaner who I'd pay e10/hour. She'd park across the street from my house, paid parking, e6 per day. There was free parking available at 10 minutes walking distance. So for 20 minutes of walking, she'd save 6 euros, i.e. e18/h, almost double what she could make from her actual work! And yet she continued to pay for parking, even after I did this math for her. Point being: people are sensitive to costs in very non-intuitive (some might say: irrational, but I don't like the connotations of that word) ways.
gorbypark 8y ago
Yes! I've tried out a few of the services here in Canada, using first order promos, and I've found them all to be expensive and have a crazy amount of packaging. I'd love to be able to decide I want a kit, order it online at lunch time, and either have it delivered or pick it up on my way home.

11thEarlOfMar 8y ago

Makes me wonder how Gobble is doing. It seems to be likely that there is a percentage of customers who will try and use these services for the long run. The trick will be for these companies to build up enough profitable customers so that they can spend on marketing to new customers and still make a profit. I'd expect some consolidation and in a few years, a handful of sustainable businesses.

warbaker 8y ago
I use Gobble and still like it. Unlike BlueApron etc, Gobble is intended to be quick and easy. Like, rather than giving you potato and expecting you to mash it, Gobble gives you the damn mashed potatoes and you microwave them.

patentatt 8y ago

I’m seeing a lot of the negatives of meal kits here, but let me counter with my experience. I have little kids, and delivery meal kits are great for us. Shopping with a toddler and an infant is HARD. The cognitive load of keeping food stocked is hard. With a meal kit subscription, it’s set and forget, I can always be sure that I have at least 3 solid meals for that week with fresh food. It takes half of the thinking and shopping and automates it.

logfromblammo 8y ago

I never understood the appeal behind them in the first place, so take my opinion with that bias in mind. I think that a user-adaptive program to procedurally generate a weekly meal plan, break that down into a unified grocery shopping list, and maybe even forward said list to the picker services that some grocery stores are running now, would remove every last speck of competitive advantage the mail order kits have. Instead of getting a dinner-in-a-box delivered to your door every day, you can park in a pickup spot at the grocery, pop the trunk/hatch, get your order, and take it home. Every night, your phone can alert you when to start dinner, what foods you'll need, and pull up a recipe card or checklist if you need it. If you know how to make tacos, and like to eat them every Tuesday, you'll get taco ingredients on your grocery list every week, and will likely get frequent suggestions for recipes that also contain cilantro, chiles, lime, tomatoes, sour cream, and green onions, to use up the leftovers. Cilantro-lime chicken. Pad Thai. Crunchy ramen salad. The most efficient meals divide your grocery store haul across multiple meals, so you don't end up eating a whole head of lettuce in one sitting, but can eat a little in every meal for which lettuce makes sense, until it's gone--ideally the night before you pick up your next load of groceries. But the biggest advantage is that I wouldn't have to think about food until it's exactly the time I need to deal with it. There're no tedious exchanges like: "Whaddya wanna eat? Dunno; whaddyou want? Don't care. Pizza? No, not that. Mexican? Nah. Sushi? Yyyyeah... okay. Sakura or Honada? I thought we weren't going to Sakura any more? Oh yeah." &c. &c. &c. Remember when Mom and/or Dad said "We're having meatloaf and Brussels sprouts tonight. Siddown, shaddap, and eat."? That was easy. All you had to do was show up. It even worked okay after Mom/Dad got sick of your kid complaints and said, "Fine. You make dinner, and I'll unload the dishwasher." The menu was already planned, and the food ready to cook. So a program that would select a partially randomized meal, composed of stuff that I already told it I like, and can cook, would eliminate a lot of time wasted on thinking about food. The mail-order services do that, but they're not the only ones who can do that.

gorbypark 8y ago
This would be a great service. I'd pay a few bucks a week to have a service that sent me a weekly shopping list, and the corresponding recipes. I hate wasting food, so if it could know that "well, he needs blackbeans for this recipe, but an entire can is too much, so we'll chuck in the other recipe a few days later to use up the beans..."

Havoc 8y ago

Much prefer the Huel / Soylent route.

nyc_pizzadev 8y ago

For me, the quality had gone downhill considerably. First, missing ingredients or completely mis-boxed orders. Then, the actual ingredients started becoming low quality. Stuff that would remain on the shelf at the grocery store. Then stuff started coming damaged. And all the sides are cheap (high) carbs. I was ok with the packaging, it never bothered me. Going to the store, you get exactly what you want, good to high quality choices, and no damage! Plus, endless variety. And its way cheaper. So for me, there was little value left.

fraudsyndrome 8y ago

Does anyone just use these websites for meal ideas and just go shopping on their own? My issue is finding a good recipe which also doesn't have 15 separate ingredients to buy - these companies I'd imagine would try to have as little ingredients as possible - and have similarities that picking a few recipes means you already have crossovers. Most recipes I see are sometimes way too much trouble or take too long to prepare (sometimes overnight!) - I thought I'd be okay eating the same thing but when you're living with others and cooking together you want some variety.

ghaff 8y ago
Try one of Roxanne Gold’s cookbooks. One of her Schticks is recipes with just a few ingredients. If nothing else, it helps get you into a mode of knowing that recipes can be pretty simple. There are also regional cuisines that require more ingredients but there’s a core set that get reused a lot.

datademon 8y ago

I would pay a LOT for a meal kit or pre-made meal service that placed allergies/intolerances as its priority. I suspect the reason this is so difficult is also the reason that I would pay a lot for it: it's a huge pain to come up with many recipes when you're allergic to many things. I'm allergic to almost all legumes. That includes soy, peanuts, lentils, edamame, most beans, peas, licorice, etc. However, I'm not allergic to black beans. This combination of allergies is highly unique: I'm sure there aren't that many people out there who share the exact same allergies. Sure, maybe some people have overlap, but it's likely only a partial overlap. This means that any meal kit service would either have to 1) Provide bespoke sets of kits for almost every allergy combination possible or 2) Provide a limited number of meal sets that hit the big categories. Option 1 is nigh impossible since that's too many combinations to gain the benefits of economies of scale. Option 2 also sucks because my allergies might get lumped into a broader category and I miss out on ingredients. (Eg. I actually can eat black beans, but since they're legumes, they would likely be banned from a 'no legumes' set of meals) The closest service I've found is https://paleoonthego.com/collections/aip-bakery https://paleoonthego.com/collections/aip-bakery However, I think they fall prey to my option 2's issues. No nightshades??? What the heck? I love tomatoes! Additionally, I haven't even bothered ordering anything from there because the items are so expensive. Just look at some of the prices: $22 for 4 pop tarts! So in fact, not only did they fall prey to option 2's issues, but they also fall prey to option 1's issues! (lack of economies of scale) I have no idea if this issue is ever solvable in a way that provides a stable business model. Frankly, if normal meal kit services can't make it work, I doubt one that artificially limits its customer base would work either.

adamisom 8y ago
So.. I'm guessing it's not as simple as it sounds for the biz to tag each recipe with each allergen-ingredient, and then exclude recipes on that basis for a given customer's list of allergens?
- datademon 8y ago
  Maybe I haven't looked hard enough: but I still haven't found a service that can reliably do that at the level of detail I need. (Eg. Blacklist all legumes, except for black beans which are whitelisted) Plus I think that unless the business is focused around these bespoke allergy-friendly recipes, then me blacklisting a large swath of ingredients will lead to me missing out on most of / their best meals.

niftylettuce 8y ago

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youeseh 8y ago
Hey, just a suggestion. You asked me to enter my zip code first and then told me that you don't serve my area. Might I suggest A/B testing the following: show us your service areas and ask for our zipcode / email to notify us when the service will be available in our area. This is a bit more transparent with less of a letdown. But I'm not sure if it'll net you more useful data (thus the A/B test).

nubbins 8y ago

I found that Blue Apron did pretty much all I could have expected on their end- better recipes and ingredients that I usually got in my neighborhood and new techniques I hadn’t tried. I quit because of the fundamental problem that a subscription food service requires an unknown time commitment (recipes were quite involved)3x a week as well as worry about missing the delivery and having food spoil.

nilkn 8y ago
This was the same issue for me. Maybe I’m just inefficient at cooking but I discovered quite quickly that cooking complex meals at home multiple times per week is actually not something I wanted to do. I found myself spending what felt like an inordinate amount of time on dinner between prep, actual cooking, eating, and extensive cleanup. I don’t know if this is really Blue Apron’s fault. It’s more that I thought I wanted their service, then discovered I really didn’t. On the logistics side, there were also numerous times when the delivery time was just not convenient for me. Again, I don’t think BA really did anything wrong here per se, but it was frustrating needing to plan around expecting a big box of fresh food to show up sometime on a particular day. This was further complicated by living in an apartment complex where deliveries sometimes go to the door... but also sometimes to the leasing office, which closes before I even get home.
- drainyard 8y ago
  This is my main issue with these types of services. Some weeks I want to make something new/complex 4 times and some weeks I barely want to at all. Here in Denmark we have a nice services where you can cancel your order or reorder every week, but I never know how much time I have at the beginning of the week.
  - nilkn 8y ago
    For what it's worth you can cancel/skip specific deliveries with Blue Apron. That helps some on the logistics side if you know in advance you're going to be busy the day of delivery. But it doesn't completely address the issue, especially since you have to skip a certain amount of time in advance.

koverda 8y ago

My wife & I used to use some of these services, but switched over to the following process: 1. cookinglightdiet.com for recipe ideas & meal planning. They are typically quick, simple, and healthy recipes. Costs $4 / mo 2. Generate shopping list on that site. 3. Populate my shopping cart on the grocery store's site - we go to Ralph's typically. Pick a time to get the groceries. That service of theirs is called Clicklist. 4. Pick up groceries at the designated time ($8 fee). Picking meals is easy, generating the shopping list & filling the cart takes a little bit of time, picking the groceries up takes minutes (way better than spending an hour and a half searching for ingredients yourself). It's like normal grocery shopping some of the perks & convenience of meal kit services. Credit to my wife for coming up with all of this.

larl 8y ago

I tried a couple of blue apron kits when they were in Costco. Some nights you have the time and energy to cook from scratch. Some nights you order pizza. Other nights a meal kit is just right.

nateburke 8y ago

BA can execute at 100% and they will still not get around the fact that they are selling groceries + additional food packaging services and neither the grocery business nor packaging has ever had real margins to speak of in the past 30 years.

deleted 8y ago

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djitz 8y ago

I subscribed to Blue Apron for a few months and was unhappy with the service. Boxes would come missing important items or with incorrect quantities. Recently, I purchased a Tovala oven (and subscribed for the meals which go along with it.) So far so good! I only use it to supplement meals we cook at home or for lunch when certain dinners we cook won’t have leftovers, etc. It’s surprisingly good and we use the oven to cook our own food, as well.

djsumdog 8y ago

I never tried any of these services. None of them offered keto-friendly (low carbohydrate) meal options. I probably would have if at least one of them did.

dominotw 8y ago

Too expensive. I make software engineer money and I can't justify it.

sumoboy 8y ago

First selling most perishable items online is difficult, but to believe home meals are doomed is shortsighted. The market exists otherwise because not everybody wants to play Gordon Ramsey every night. These companies are mostly doing everything themselves when in many cases they should partner with local grocery store chains and create branded meal plans. It's no different than the flower industry, where you partner with local florists who build your bouquet and deliver it under a national brand. It's extremely tough to deliver flower bouquets from a central fulfillment facility, been there did that. People are lazy, nothing changes there anytime soon. Yet these are the same people who drop $75 for dinner a few times a week like it's no big deal yet will compare that to a meal subscription like it's a ripoff. The audience is out there, just a matter of finding them.

gumby 8y ago

Mealkits haven't worked for me at all (I have tried a few), but boxes of fresh veggies and of meat have been great. Not naming companies as I'm not shilling, just pointing out the success (for one person!) of a different model.

ariekachler 8y ago

They are indeed doomed. They can easily be replaced by your local supermarket putting a kiosk and you buying it whenever you feel like it, not on a shipping schedule. I've seen it on my local supermarket. Love it.

gricardo99 8y ago
I came here to say the same thing. The supermarket was always the big looming threat to any meal kit business. And they are also providing pickup and delivery service.