OT: When did Medium start showing bottom-feeding Taboola ad content? That's a massive disappointment. Update: Oh, that waas content. My error.
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A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry
171–180 of 320 posts
Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really, no. When Dropbox applied to YC, they had to fill in a section that specifically dealt with how hard it would be to enter their space. It was much harder than it looks, and they convinced YC of that. Groupon always suffered from being easy to copy and having no appreciable network effects.
Were any of the Groupon copycats successful? Maybe it just wasn't that good an idea.
No. Living Social was the most successful runner up to Groupon. The problem was that "email deal-based marketing for small businesses" was going to be worth something, but there would only be one valuable winner and no one knew how much that would be worth. So Groupon, Living Social, FB, Google, Yelp, and hundreds of clones all threw in tons of money, slogged it out, and now they're all gone and GRPN is worth $2B, 1/8th of its IPO price.
Exactly the same thing is happening with ride-hailing now. It's harder to copy, but there's too much investment subsidizing it so no one knows what the market will be worth once riders have to pay sustainable rates. But they know being 2nd place will suck.
Citation: I worked at Groupon before and after the IPO.
Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technically Whole Foods does not themselves do delivery (it's Instacart), while Amazon actually does (Fresh)... Amazon's also working on grocery pickup, which seems perfect for meal kits.
Okay, looks like that is true today, but Whole Foods was doing home delivery before Instacart even existed, at least in NYC. Amazon Fresh outsources their actual delivery, as well, so no points for that one.
> Amazon Fresh outsources their actual delivery, as well, so no points for that one.
In my neighborhood there's an Amazon delivery truck that drops off Amazon bags by people who have Amazon uniforms on... Perhaps they're 1099, but for all intents and purposes it is Amazon doing the delivery.
Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I'm cautiously optimistic about Tovala. They are the first one of these that has a fairly unique system where the food just needs to be popped into their combi-oven (bake, broil, and steam) and you just wait until it cooks." Isn't that just the old TV dinner promise dating back to the 1950s and the invention of the microwave?
Sure, but because a combi-oven can steam as well as bake and broil, you can cook things like vegetables, which would normally be dried out husks in a standard oven. Also, you can broil and get a nice crisp finish. It's just like a TV dinner or a microwaveable dinner, but hopefully better because you have more cooking capabilities.
I have a super fancy combi-oven. It cooks some things nicely, but it doesn't speed up dinner overall. I enjoy cooking and spend a lot of time doing it. The benefit of this expensive oven is better baking, but it is definitely overkill.
Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you considered the knock-on effects of minimizing human interaction with regard to actually creating an empathic community ? That the people who you would like to avoid interacting with (sorry, "don't care" about avoiding, while you implicitly cheer it on) are a part of the local community around you--generally of a lower social class, which emphatically does not make them less important but does make them less…
What do you suggest to do to prevent things from moving this way? Do you think that it will never take off because people are uncomfortable with the idea, or that this is simply not technologically going to happen? I of course would respect anybody's right to vote with their wallets. Just as there are premium goods such as Rolls Royce that are hand-crafted versions of products that are normally mass-produced, I'm sur…
Sorry, dude, you're not getting me. I'm not talking about the jobs. I'm talking about the profound dehumanizing isolation that the future you posit implies.
It's not about jobs. It's about people. It's about not encouraging the shrinking of individuals into tiny-little-boxes where they don't have to interact with people unlike them. Epistemic and social-stratifying closures are pernicious and dangerous to society in ways "inefficiency" never, not once in human history, has been.
Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This seems kind of niche, but a service could do the browning in-house before they package and send the meal? I have to think a browned cut of meat would last just as long, if not longer, than a raw cut?
Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry
#177> Really, if you wanted proof that there was a bubble, you’d look for a refrigerated warehouse REIT.
I know someone working on a roll up of refrigerated warehouses. A REIT might be part of their exit plan but I don't think these meal-in-a-box companies even register on their radar.
Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry
#178It seems that there's more potential for meaningful differentiation than in the case of the Groupon-type services but the rush to be one of the few winners who IPO and damn the customer acquisition costs seem like valid points. These services just seem very niche-y to me. I'm not really the target market but, for any given service, there's a pretty narrow profile of cost-sensitivity, interest in prepping/cooking but…
I agree. It seems like these will eventually lose to just normal automated grocery delivery. You will always need other food than just the kits even if they are cost competitive in NYC, etc.
This. Amazon Fresh already lets local markets sell their
raw ingredients, cooked foods, half-cooked, or just prepped stuff. Those markets could (might already) just include some instructions on the package. The familiar search/browse UI and "no subscription" factor will be a huge AF advantage IMO. (I have used AF about 5 times, all good experiences so far, but just for ingredients, not prepared foods)
Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmmm... what other activities would "couples with disposable income" like to have "at home a few nights a week", but which could improved with "some structure"?
Now there's a good bit of harmless innuendo getting downvoted because HN doesn't get jokes :(
Thanks! I figure I'm ahead on the submission, I might as well burn some valuable internet points on entertaining those of discerning tastes such as yourself. Normally the only time I get downvoted that much is when I complain about WaPo's obvious-but-never-mentioned conflicts of interest.
Re: A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry
#180There are businesses with network effects: the more people using them, the better off everyone using it is.
There are businesses with scale advantages: doing it bigger makes it much cheaper.
There are businesses with required huge capital investments: if you don't have the $25 billion silicon foundry, you don't make CPUs.
There are businesses where a national brand is a big advantage, and businesses where local is a selling point.
The meal-kit industry looks like it's halfway between grocery stores and delivery restaurants, and that means economies of scale aren't hugely important, but a reputation for quality is. Local/national can go either way, but most people are willing to experiment every so often and have strong preferences about what they like -- which means that having a lot of players in the market is to their advantage, and long-term contracts are not.