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A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry

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Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry

#131

Post by Mz »

fusiongyro wrote: post #123
Mz wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On your subtext What subtext are you imagining my comment as having? Because I strongly suspect you are inferring things that simply are not there.

I thought you were suggesting that life was better when we had a sole breadwinner and a stay-at-home wife. I don't agree with that and read your comment uncharitably that way. On rereading it, I think you're saying there are two optimal points on this curve: having a live-in cook ("the wife") and going to a restaurant, and most of the stuff in the middle is pointless. I don't agree with that either but it's less of a…

All I'm saying is that it is a hard problem to solve. Our previous solution was full time wives. This had its good points and bad points. We do not appear to have found The Solution since moving away from that earlier model for the most part.

In my experience, when people are reading "subtext" into my comments, they are typically projecting something that is simply not there at all. I do my best to be a straight shooter. I am not big on implying anything. The internet is not a good environment for trying to imply things. It lacks voice tone, context, facial expression etc and it puts people in contact from around the globe who come from very different cultures even when they are both, say, upper class for their country. It is just a terrible place in which to try to be subtle.

Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry

#132

Post by opportune »

eropple wrote: post #89
opportune wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not thinking of anything like a subway. Having each person's food prepared individually is ridiculously inefficient. I'm envisioning a facility tied to an Amazon warehouse or something similar that might be preparing food for >10000 people every day, not a huge kitchen with hundreds of chefs running around to fill maybe a couple thousand or so individual orders per day. There's no reason the production of somethi…

So I'm not trying to pick on you, but have you ever stopped to think about how absolutely dystopic this future you're positing is? And the parts of the community--set aside "consumers" for a second, the point of being human is not to consume , is not to be an economic actor in your model--who could most use price improvements of economies of scale will be frozen out, because they're always frozen out. We don't need i…

Personally I don't mind it. I'm not invested whatsoever in involving human contact in getting my food; I don't mind talking to people to get my food or having to interact with a waiter or cashier, but I wouldn't care if I could order on a kiosk or do checkout-by-RFID.

People probably decried the automation of textile manufacturing, that clothing was losing its personal touch. Now we don't seem to have a problem with it. I'm sure food will go a similar route.

Although I do agree that removing the human element in retail/food will be weird at first, I'm sure we'll get used to it. It's more efficient, so I think it's better.

Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry

#133

Post by Symbiote »

jpindar wrote: post #65
Symbiote wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a student, the local Sainsbury's supermarket had a selection of recipe cards by the entrance. Here's the front of a newer version [1], the back is presumably something like this [2]. I wouldn't say they taught me to cook, I didn't learn any new techniques. But, I did get a lot of ideas from them, and it led us to eating a wider variety of food. I'm now curious -- what do typical American university student…

There's cooking and there's cooking . Most Americans, including students, cook standard American food such as hamburgers, hot dogs, eggs, spaghetti, roast chicken, ramen, steak etc., as well as a lot of canned soups, frozen vegetables, and boxed casserole mixes. But these kits are for people who want to eat something novel every meal, and certainly not mundane working class food. I mean, you don't need a recipe for a…

Thanks.

For us, and I think we were probably a bit better cooks than is normal, hamburgers would count as a lazy meal, assuming you mean cooking something like [1] from the fresh meat section.

Hot dogs, eggs alone, or ramen -- no; this is food for when you've arrived home alone drunk at 4:30. Or woken up hungover.

Roast chicken or steak is fine, so long as there's also some vegetables and some kind of sauce.

Average meals would be things like curries or stir-fries made with a pre-prepared sauce or spice mix, chicken/turkey fricassees, risottos, or casseroles. I think we discovered fairly quickly that £3 tetra pak wine improved most dishes, so long as one didn't drink it.

The Blue Apron recipes have fancier ingredients than we would have bought when we were 18-22, and a little more effort in the sauces. Looking at things like [2] and [3], the skill required was well within what we could make, although we'd probably use dried herbs, cheaper vegetables (canned sweetcorn, normal size tomatoes), and normal meat rather than anything special.

In fact, the "Fresh Basil Fettuccine" is almost exactly like our "use up what's left in the fridge" meal.

[1] https://www.tesco.com/groceries/product/details/?id=29239931...

[2] https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/seared-chicken-creamy-past...

[3] https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/fresh-basil-fettuccine-pas...

Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry

#134

Post by munchbunny »

revelation wrote: post #87
frandroid wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> together we consistently hit the low-end. But that's two people, so really you just hit double the low end?

Amdahl's law applies, what fraction of cooking these recipes is purely serial? What does the critical path look like? How much inter-kitchen communication is there to get tools and ingredients to/from your wife?

Cooking tends to be serial per-dish, with substantial amounts of mandatory waiting. A lot of cooking speed comes from experience and being able to intuitively schedule work for maximum throughput. After years of cooking, I can now interleave execution on 2-3 dishes of moderate complexity at a time, but that's only after years of practice.

Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry

#135

Post by ghaff »

andrewfong wrote: post #107
illumin8 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried BlueApron and HelloFresh. I enjoy cooking, and the quality of the recipes is great, but damn, it takes too long to make their recipes. Often, they promise it only takes 15-30 minutes for an entire meal, but apparently I'm not a professional chef who can wash vegetables, dice them, prepare marinades, chop garlic, and do all of this in just a few minutes. I end up usually spending between 60-90 minutes just…

I have an automatic pressure cooker. It's awesome. I'd love a service that just delivered a package full of stuff to dump in a pressure cooker and nothing else.

The problem--and this is an issue with slow cookers as well--is that dump a bunch of stuff in and walk away doesn't work all that well for most recipes. Some browning etc. does a lot to develop flavors.

Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry

#136

Post by ryanmarsh »

thedangler wrote: post #91

I feel like they should have Meal-Kits at grocery stores. They could make them with all the extra food they have. That way you can go pick up 3 of them and then grab more groceries if need be. It would be way better than all the frozen meals they have.

This is a great point. It would save the wife a ton of time. We've tried all the meal-kit services and the ingredients are mediocre. I really can't understand why the grocery stores aren't getting in on this, along with what Shipt is doing (grocery delivery). Makes no sense to me.

Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry

#137

Post by pjc50 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #14
Mz wrote: post #10

I feel like the real problem with meal-in-a-box delivery services is that they are trying to fill the empty shoes of a missing full-time wife and mom because there are more two career couples and both spouses now "need a wife" and it can't be found. The problem is that such a service has no real hope of taking the place of someone with actual cooking skill who knows you well and will tweak the recipe to your preferen…

> If you can afford a meal-in-a-box service, why would you not just go to a restaurant where the wait staff will do a decent job as a substitute for your own live-in cook previously known as The Wife? I always say that these are for people with more money than time. The reason they don't go to a restaurant is because you like cooking - or at least, you like the idea of being someone who cooks. But the ad copy is righ…

> you're not a wifemom, and you don't know how to combine those things into a meal

I think people could do this, but for whatever reason don't. Possibly the excessive media-isation of cooking has raised what the expected skill level is; people are no longer content with something edible but unspectacular, or food that's too ugly to Instagram. We've come a long way from Fanny Cradock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O5WDPSpI1A

e.g. the other day I ate what was left in my fridge: pasta with mangetout and Polish ham (+garlic, onion, rosemary). Entirely reasonable but not quite dinner-party quality.

(Bonus piece of extremely 60s period outfits and gas cookers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsdvL6TCX6k )

Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry

#138

Post by dragonwriter »

Mz wrote: post #82
komali2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to catch myself from saying "what the fuck" out loud. I don't want to be rude to you, but I find this to be hilarious: >Such a service has no real hope of taking the place of someone with actual cooking skills who knows you well and will tweak the recipe to your preferences, possibly without you even having to explicitly ask or remind her. Sounds like a job for a... maid! Which really puts a delicious spin on t…

I'm a former homemaker and full time mom. You have failed in your stated goal of not being rude to me. I am merely describing the problem space. If people wanted to, you know, tweak it themselves, then there would be no food services of any kind, not restaurants and not take out food and not meal-in-a-box delivery services. We would just all cook for ourselves if everyone just loved doing that and didn't want this so…

> If people wanted to, you know, tweak it themselves, then there would be no food services of any kind,

Er, no. A desire for customization does not imply that a baseline around which to customize is not a viable product.

> We would just all cook for ourselves if everyone just loved doing that and didn't want this somehow magically taken care of by some other means.

Meal kits are cooking for yourself. They simplify shopping, inventory management, and recipe discovery, but the customer still does all the cooking, and, depending on the kit, most of the prep other than portioning out bulk goods to the quantities needed.

Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry

#139

Post by mr_tristan »

mr_tristan wrote: post #57

The long term trend for "meal kits" is very likely just going to have massive local and regional competition. I'm already seeing this in Portland with several meal delivery services that cater to different lifestyles: gluten free, whole 30, extra protein, etc. These are successful "complete meal delivery" businesses. I see no reason why there can't be "meal kit" variations in the future. The cost of starting up a loc…

Another turn of thought: the Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods could play into supporting these small businesses. Amazon likes to think of things as "primitives" that get turned into other businesses. Today, your small businesses can use Amazon tools for product warehousing, selling, and even all the associated web properties.

Now, with WF, Amazon may be able to treat fresh produce in a similar way. Sure, Whole Foods could produce and distribute meal kits. But I'd suspect the components of what goes into the meal kits could also be made available, such that the "local restauranteur" could come up with the creative bit - the recipe - and then have parts like the supply chain of high quality produce, distribution, sales, etc, basically available via Amazon.

It's a little scary thinking about how far ahead Amazon is from it's competition.

Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry

#140

Post by ABCLAW »

Mz wrote: post #104
ABCLAW wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think your reasoning in the second paragraph is accurate. People aren't a uniform congealed mass of preferences that match your own. You don't like cooking. I do. It is really fun for me. I enjoy cooking new things and learning new techniques. I enjoy learning new ingredients and new dishes. I, however, hate going grocery shopping and looking up new recipes. This service deals with the issues I have. What's e…

People aren't a uniform congealed mass of preferences that match your own. Generally speaking, when people make generalizations, they are not assuming that 100% of the world will exactly fit their statements 100% of the time. Saying that it is generally true does not presume that people like you do not exist. It just presumes that you are probably in the minority.

Sure, but if you do that, then your following statement doesn't actually hold true.

>If people wanted to, you know, tweak it themselves, then there would be no food services of any kind, not restaurants and not take out food and not meal-in-a-box delivery services.

Turn that statement into one about a minority's preference, and suddenly you discover an underserved market that likes preparing their own food. Kind of like the poster you replied to was stating. Kind of like everyone in the thread that has a different problem than you did that this service is a solid solution for.

Edit: I won't extend this comment chain any further. Please look at the comment I critiqued. I think you've glossed over your own statement.

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