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Blue Apron Plummets After Amazon Files for Meal-Kit Trademark

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Re: Blue Apron Plummets After Amazon Files for Meal-Kit Trademark

#91

Post by metalliqaz »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #75
madengr wrote: post #69

Aren't meal-kits just plain expensive, compared to shopping at a local grocery store?

I don't think they are interested in competing on price, the value proposition is that they save you time, and the effort of meal planning. But they are pitching themselves as cheaper than eating out, and with at least the illusion the food is healthier (plus a pinch of the IKEA effect since you cooked it yourself).

I've used Blue Apron. They don't save any time at all. What I saved in shopping I lost in meal prep. I quickly went back to the prepped food at my local grocery store, which is also much cheaper.

People who really wish to trade money for time would just eat at restaurants.

Re: Blue Apron Plummets After Amazon Files for Meal-Kit Trademark

#92

Post by acchow »

127001brewer wrote: post #39

An article called "The Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry" relates how the meal-kit industry faces the same problem(s) as Groupon: "The problem Groupon faced was that their initial success validated a model that anyone could copy, and everyone who copied it increased both Groupon’s cost of customer acquisition and its churn rate." https://medium.com/@byrnehobart/the-slow-motion-trainwreck-f...

Wait, isn't this how capitalism works? Can someone explain what I'm missing here?

Re: Blue Apron Plummets After Amazon Files for Meal-Kit Trademark

#93

Post by bluGill »

bpodgursky wrote: post #80
pera wrote: post #19

Please Amazon, do something different about the huge amount of material waste generated by companies like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh. This is the main reason why I stopped using these services, the footprint is just disgusting: plastic bags inside aluminum+plastic bags inside cardboard boxes with more plastic. Please, invent some form of reusable container that can be easily stored and delivered back so we can stop t…

Kind of off topic, but for most of my childhood the mantra was "recycle everything, because plastic and food garbage in landfills takes centuries and centuries to break down" With the new awareness that atmospheric CO2 is the main environmental problem facing the world (rather than giant landfills, which are un-aesthetic but not really a big deal), I've wondered whether this logic makes sense anymore. Isn't a giant l…

Maybe, but they have to make a new plastic bag if they don't recycle your old one. Energy is required to make that new bag, which means CO2 is created that way too.

The best thing you can do is to not need so much energy in the first place. If you must travel use high efficiency transport. (shipping counts as travel). Make sure your housing is well insulated.

The next best thing store carbon: start forest and grass fires. A regular forest/grass fire will burn cold enough that a lot of carbon is converted to charcoal - permanently sequestrated carbon. Note that regular is key here. If you don't light a new fire every year fuel builds up until you get a hot fire.

Re: Blue Apron Plummets After Amazon Files for Meal-Kit Trademark

#94

Post by blackguardx »

bpodgursky wrote: post #89
blackguardx wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "greenest" plastic bag is the one that is never made.

Isn't plastic basically a byproduct of oil production? I'm not super familiar with the market, but my understanding was that gasoline was the main drivers of drilling, not the market for plastic. It seems to me that recycling would just drop the price of plastic and encourage use elsewhere, but burying it underground would remove the byproduct.

Every petroleum product was a waste product at some point until they discovered a use for it. If no one used oil for anything but gasoline, I expect drillers would pump the distillation remains back down into old wells.

Re: Blue Apron Plummets After Amazon Files for Meal-Kit Trademark

#95

Post by josh_carterPDX »

pera wrote: post #19

Please Amazon, do something different about the huge amount of material waste generated by companies like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh. This is the main reason why I stopped using these services, the footprint is just disgusting: plastic bags inside aluminum+plastic bags inside cardboard boxes with more plastic. Please, invent some form of reusable container that can be easily stored and delivered back so we can stop t…

I agree with this. We struggle with how to dispose of the tremendous amount of waste created by our weekly delivery as we don't have a very large trash bin at our house.

Blue Apron and Hello Fresh need to figure out how to make their services more sticky. At some point we've collected enough meals that we like where we can just go to the local grocery store to pick up the ingredients and make it ourselves.

Both of these services sell convenience, but it is hard to keep selling that to existing users who grow weary of the amount of waste and the simplicity of just grabbing everything they need to make these meals on their own. Amazon's meal-kit could help solve this if they just add the ingredients to shopper's grocery list automatically and it's ready to be picked up at their next trip. Delivery is a non-starter in my opinion. It didn't work for grocery.com back in the early dotcom days, and it's not working now.

Re: Blue Apron Plummets After Amazon Files for Meal-Kit Trademark

#96

Post by [deleted] »

chaostheory wrote: post #87
kevan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been actively working on that for almost a decade [1]. Most (all?) cushioning in my packages is now heavy brown paper or plastic air bags, a significant improvement from the days of packing peanuts and bubble wrap. I'd like to see the air bags go away too. [1] https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/zhr3q9mgfqub33r

Yeah I was refering to air bags.

[deleted]

Re: Blue Apron Plummets After Amazon Files for Meal-Kit Trademark

#97

Post by ams6110 »

acchow wrote: post #92
127001brewer wrote: post #39

An article called "The Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry" relates how the meal-kit industry faces the same problem(s) as Groupon: "The problem Groupon faced was that their initial success validated a model that anyone could copy, and everyone who copied it increased both Groupon’s cost of customer acquisition and its churn rate." https://medium.com/@byrnehobart/the-slow-motion-trainwreck-f...

Wait, isn't this how capitalism works? Can someone explain what I'm missing here?

Yes, ideally in a competitive market for something that is a "commodity" type of good, profits fall to (near) zero. Not what VC investors are looking for.

Re: Blue Apron Plummets After Amazon Files for Meal-Kit Trademark

#98

Post by viewtransform »

rtkwe wrote: post #76
erik-g wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does meal-kit distribution eliminate a lot of food waste?

Beyond normal shelf spoilage from super markets there's a lot of ingredients that can only really be bought fresh in amounts much larger than can really be used. For example cilantro or parsley generally comes in either in cheap large bunches or much more expensive individually (plastic) packaged smaller servings but the large bunches is way more than most people could reasonably use before it begins to wilt and rot…

Put the cilantro/parsley stems immersed in a glass of water. Cover the leaves with a plastic bag and it will keep in the refrigerator for at least a week without wilting

Re: Blue Apron Plummets After Amazon Files for Meal-Kit Trademark

#99

Post by ams6110 »

chaostheory wrote: post #87
kevan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been actively working on that for almost a decade [1]. Most (all?) cushioning in my packages is now heavy brown paper or plastic air bags, a significant improvement from the days of packing peanuts and bubble wrap. I'd like to see the air bags go away too. [1] https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/zhr3q9mgfqub33r

Yeah I was refering to air bags.

I received an order of towels from Amazon in a too-large box, filled with air bags. For towels.

Re: Blue Apron Plummets After Amazon Files for Meal-Kit Trademark

#100

Post by ams6110 »

bpodgursky wrote: post #80
pera wrote: post #19

Please Amazon, do something different about the huge amount of material waste generated by companies like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh. This is the main reason why I stopped using these services, the footprint is just disgusting: plastic bags inside aluminum+plastic bags inside cardboard boxes with more plastic. Please, invent some form of reusable container that can be easily stored and delivered back so we can stop t…

Kind of off topic, but for most of my childhood the mantra was "recycle everything, because plastic and food garbage in landfills takes centuries and centuries to break down" With the new awareness that atmospheric CO2 is the main environmental problem facing the world (rather than giant landfills, which are un-aesthetic but not really a big deal), I've wondered whether this logic makes sense anymore. Isn't a giant l…

Most of the carbon in plastics comes from oil, not from the atmosphere.
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