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Restaurant delivery... I tend to agree. 'nonperishable food' or 'properly packed short travel' (i.e. dairy/frozen) IMO is a fairer niche of 'could be non-luxur

Restaurant delivery... I tend to agree. 'nonperishable food' or 'properly packed short travel' (i.e. dairy/frozen) IMO is a fairer niche of 'could be non-luxury with better societal outcomes', except for the 'as close to JIT as possible'. There's ways to optimize the process to where something on the scale of 10-20 homes could get their main groceries delivered two or 3 times a week and the overall cost would be lower than all of them doing so. Yeah you'd need a reefer van or an otherwise replenishable source of cold for dairy/frozen but at that scale the cost of such makes a lot more sense. Biggest problem is getting the right buy-in and mindset from consumers.

watwut 1y ago
Difference is you can stock large quantity of frozen foods any time it is convenient to shop. As in, frozen food delivery is not all that useful. When you work from home and cant cook, delivery can happen right now. Or if you are having a small gathering with friends, delivery makes your life easier exactly when you need it.
mtrovo 1y ago
I totally agree in theory, in the same way I agree that Amazon delivering everything from a nearby warehouse is far more optimal than having thousands of small bookshops or random shops in prime locations. I think that's the main vision behind Travis Kalanick's CloudKitchens since he left Uber. You could order food prep for your week from a choice of menus, and the food would be prepared in an industrial kitchen for you and thousands of other people around you. It's basically restaurant-quality food that you can eat at home and isn't frozen. Unfortunately for the meal prep market, I believe the break-even point for scale is much more difficult to achieve. Food is like hardware but with a much shorter end-of-life. You would need consistency in ordering to avoid excess spoilage and to operate at scale within small geographical pockets to make the delivery worthwhile. I really believe this could work with the right demographics and in the right geography, it's just much harder than simply delivering takeaways.
- to11mtm 1y ago
  FWIW There's a local regional chain that does in fact operate in a way similar to what you describe with CloudKitchens. The main difference is that in practice, you go to the store and pick up meals for the next 2-3 days (I'm fine with this FWIW) and then you select meals (this is where it fell apart, often the 'good stuff' that I could eat with my diet wasn't available). The overall quality after microwaving per instructions was 'like you got a local restaurant dish but it tasted better than if you reheated that'. Ironically, I actually appreciated it overall, and if nothing else it was really good portion control for myself and my partner. They were healthy meals with a proper portion for a normal adult, and frankly comparing said portion vs cost to 'leftovers' from a restaurant I think it was a... not bad value prop. Our only problem was the aforementioned 'not having the stuff that was gluten free and not overly bland in stock enough'. I think the other problem is the sort of wool over everyone's eyes, where at-home meal prep for the week can be extremely simple so long as you've got a good process to follow and are willing to make various compromises.

watwut 1y ago

Difference is you can stock large quantity of frozen foods any time it is convenient to shop. As in, frozen food delivery is not all that useful. When you work from home and cant cook, delivery can happen right now. Or if you are having a small gathering with friends, delivery makes your life easier exactly when you need it.

mtrovo 1y ago

I totally agree in theory, in the same way I agree that Amazon delivering everything from a nearby warehouse is far more optimal than having thousands of small bookshops or random shops in prime locations. I think that's the main vision behind Travis Kalanick's CloudKitchens since he left Uber. You could order food prep for your week from a choice of menus, and the food would be prepared in an industrial kitchen for you and thousands of other people around you. It's basically restaurant-quality food that you can eat at home and isn't frozen. Unfortunately for the meal prep market, I believe the break-even point for scale is much more difficult to achieve. Food is like hardware but with a much shorter end-of-life. You would need consistency in ordering to avoid excess spoilage and to operate at scale within small geographical pockets to make the delivery worthwhile. I really believe this could work with the right demographics and in the right geography, it's just much harder than simply delivering takeaways.

to11mtm 1y ago
FWIW There's a local regional chain that does in fact operate in a way similar to what you describe with CloudKitchens. The main difference is that in practice, you go to the store and pick up meals for the next 2-3 days (I'm fine with this FWIW) and then you select meals (this is where it fell apart, often the 'good stuff' that I could eat with my diet wasn't available). The overall quality after microwaving per instructions was 'like you got a local restaurant dish but it tasted better than if you reheated that'. Ironically, I actually appreciated it overall, and if nothing else it was really good portion control for myself and my partner. They were healthy meals with a proper portion for a normal adult, and frankly comparing said portion vs cost to 'leftovers' from a restaurant I think it was a... not bad value prop. Our only problem was the aforementioned 'not having the stuff that was gluten free and not overly bland in stock enough'. I think the other problem is the sort of wool over everyone's eyes, where at-home meal prep for the week can be extremely simple so long as you've got a good process to follow and are willing to make various compromises.