When the economy goes down, the first thing we stop spending money on is luxury stuff. See it as a sign.
This is a sign, but their entire business model is pretty much dead on arrival, regardless of how well the economy is doing.
Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time
201–210 of 336 posts
Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time
#202Always seemed a strange business model. Appealing to people who "want to cook", but doing so by turning yourself into a production-line assembler. Like saying your want to learn carpentry, by buying some Ikea flat-pack. What confused me (and makes me think I've overlooked something) is why nothing more interesting has come along from the supermarkets. In the UK at least, they're all online and deliver - but they all…
Still too much work! How about you give me a list of meals, I pick 50 or 100 of them, and then you give me a shopping list for the month including where to get it at the best price, taking advantage of bulk purchasing and overlapping ingredients. Then email/text/notify me every day with the recipe for dinner that night. I'll keep the left overs and use them for lunches. This should minimize time for planning and cost…
I came across platejoy (platejoy.com) a couple months ago while looking for a meal plan that would work around my food allergies and it check most of the boxes of what you are asking for.
The planning is week by week, and it doesn't have a best price thing, but it does pretty much everything else (recepies in app, you can tell it ahead of time you prefer to eat leftovers for lunch, each recipe has a prepare & cook time and asks for feed back). Also, it can send all the ingredient to Instacart in a single click, if that's your thing.
It's really changed the way I eat. I went from eating out for lunch and dinner almost every day, to cooking at home pretty much every night.
Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time
#203Always seemed a strange business model. Appealing to people who "want to cook", but doing so by turning yourself into a production-line assembler. Like saying your want to learn carpentry, by buying some Ikea flat-pack. What confused me (and makes me think I've overlooked something) is why nothing more interesting has come along from the supermarkets. In the UK at least, they're all online and deliver - but they all…
Still too much work! How about you give me a list of meals, I pick 50 or 100 of them, and then you give me a shopping list for the month including where to get it at the best price, taking advantage of bulk purchasing and overlapping ingredients. Then email/text/notify me every day with the recipe for dinner that night. I'll keep the left overs and use them for lunches. This should minimize time for planning and cost…
Still too much work!
Just come to my apartment and feed me like a baby bird.
Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time
#204Always seemed a strange business model. Appealing to people who "want to cook", but doing so by turning yourself into a production-line assembler. Like saying your want to learn carpentry, by buying some Ikea flat-pack. What confused me (and makes me think I've overlooked something) is why nothing more interesting has come along from the supermarkets. In the UK at least, they're all online and deliver - but they all…
I think the biggest problem for me as a single person is the way most stuff sold in supermarkets is designed for family meals. Which is fair, families probably represent a significant portion of their customer base. But it becomes problematic for me because I either have to eat the same meal 4 days in a row (or freeze it) or only use half of the ingredients and shove the rest in the cupboard, or throw it away because…
I've found that by shopping at higher end grocery stores, or at least focusing on the organic/craft-oriented departments, the quantities tend to be smaller and much better suited to my childless, bachelor existence.
There was also a learning curve to preparing food for just myself to consume. The priorities are different from the family household I grew up in, so much of what I had learned didn't apply very well unmodified, to my adult life.
Families make the costly perishable ingredients go further by utilizing carbohydrates like pastas and breads as fillers.
I now make many of the same dishes I grew up eating, but without the pasta or bread, which I've entirely stopped purchasing to the very clear benefit of my health/weight.
When you dispense with the fillers, it's a lot easier to consume the perishable ingredients in one or two meals.
It definitely seemed strange at first to eat things like lentil or chicken soup or a meat ragu with pork ribs sans pasta or bread. But once acclimated, the recipes have changed a bit to be less liquidy while more meaty/beany with more veggies where applicable, and are very tasty and nutritious. It's basically decadence, and healthier than eating all the carbs.
Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
A porterhouse alone is typically 8 to 10 dollars, so no you're meal you listed there is more like 20. Sure Blue Apron is expensive but don't go making it sound like you can have a big nice steak, a baked potato, an expensive dessert, some butter and vegetables for near the same cost.
If you buy every single ingredient absolutely but that's not how cooking-at-home food math works. You head to the grocery store and buy whatever beef cut is on sale so if you're buying a porterhouse it's because it's $4-6. Your pantry is already stocked with butter, flour, eggs, sugar, and potatoes. You had some almost stale graham crackers lying around which is why you decided to make cheesecake. You hit up the stor…
We'll have to ditch the cheesecake I think. Start slicing!
Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time
#206Always seemed a strange business model. Appealing to people who "want to cook", but doing so by turning yourself into a production-line assembler. Like saying your want to learn carpentry, by buying some Ikea flat-pack. What confused me (and makes me think I've overlooked something) is why nothing more interesting has come along from the supermarkets. In the UK at least, they're all online and deliver - but they all…
> For £5 extra would you like to add some bacon, creme-fraiche, tarragon, frozen-pastry & peas Is food really cheap in the UK? This would be impossible in the US, the tarragon alone could cost half that.
Most of the local grocery stores in Portland have bulk spices where you could get enough of whatever you needed for a dish for well under a dollar.
Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time
#207After 10 years of marriage, my wife thought it would be helpful for me to start cooking, as she was getting stressed out with our 2 years old. We used Blue Apron as the starting point. I can't tell you how much time we save in planning meals and trips to the store. My wife doesn't have nag me about what I what I want for the week's dinner. The quality of the food and the time saved is well worth the price. I know the…
So my local grocery store chain is offering what blue apron does, except it's just their in house butchers and whatnot preparing the ingredients. Then you buy the kits the way you would groceries: off the shelf or online for pickup. I'm not sure blue apron has any magic that can't be reproduced by everyone else.
I think this is their biggest weakness: grocery stores are all starting to offer this service, on demand. Grocery stores don't even need to devise the meals themselves, they can outsource that to a third party, and just handle the ingredient gathering component. On the other hand, this improves the utility of grocery stores greatly!
Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time
#208Always seemed a strange business model. Appealing to people who "want to cook", but doing so by turning yourself into a production-line assembler. Like saying your want to learn carpentry, by buying some Ikea flat-pack. What confused me (and makes me think I've overlooked something) is why nothing more interesting has come along from the supermarkets. In the UK at least, they're all online and deliver - but they all…
I really enjoyed Blue Apron. For a very long time I wanted to learn to cook, but didn't know where to start, and cookbooks where always intimidating because they usually assumed you already knew how to cook. Blue Apron doesn't assume any of that. I also liked the idea of "cooking good food", but for me it was a case of not knowing what good food was. With Blue Apron sending me tasty meals to make, I was able to learn…
I think you've highlighted a problem with the business model. I had a similar experience. I really learned a lot about cooking from my first couple of years with Blue Apron, but now I'm at the point where I don't really need it any more. So as a "training wheels" for home cooks, it's great, but they have a built-in retention problem. Also, the recipes have gotten a lot simpler (and frankly not as appealing) over time. It's probably partly cost-cutting and partly people complaining about recipes taking too long to prepare.
Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time
#209Always seemed a strange business model. Appealing to people who "want to cook", but doing so by turning yourself into a production-line assembler. Like saying your want to learn carpentry, by buying some Ikea flat-pack. What confused me (and makes me think I've overlooked something) is why nothing more interesting has come along from the supermarkets. In the UK at least, they're all online and deliver - but they all…
Kroger is starting to do these meal kits. They are within 5 feet of the door and serve two, and all cook in 20 minutes.
I just don't get the point, though. I can move past the box and into the Kroger, using the box as a shopping list, and buy the exact same ingredients for half the price, only now I must spend 5 minutes dicing a tomato instead of slicing open a plastic bag containing diced tomato.
The best way to get quicker in the kitchen is to cook with common ingredients, and prep things in tandem. Keeping your cooking within a certain cultural palate is a good way to limit the amount of different fresh ingredients you need to maintain, and simplify your cooking.
Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still too much work! How about you give me a list of meals, I pick 50 or 100 of them, and then you give me a shopping list for the month including where to get it at the best price, taking advantage of bulk purchasing and overlapping ingredients. Then email/text/notify me every day with the recipe for dinner that night. I'll keep the left overs and use them for lunches. This should minimize time for planning and cost…
Still too much work! Just come to my apartment and feed me like a baby bird.
For $30 dollars/day, you _can_ find someone to spend 3x15 minutes vomiting into your mouth.