A Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by puranjay » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 5:42 AM UTC

pchristensen wrote: post #172

eli wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

Werent a lot of these acquired by Groupon/LivingSocial? In theory, that would make them "successful" since they had good exits.

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

#262

Post by mstaoru » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 5:44 AM UTC

vitaminbandit wrote: post #257

mstaoru wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! Didn't want to provide details that aren't relevant to the parent topic. We built a system to calculate science-backed meal plans based on customer data. Calories, macronutrients, micronutrients, vitamins, probiotics, fiber. Water. We have over 5000 cookbooks from all over the World from which we curate our recipes, input them and get full nutritional breakdowns. It is probably THE most important part of any die…

Ok, so your product is a niche fitness meal plan rather than a traditional meal plan. Your primary objection to existing options was that "The food is very meh." You can see how that can be confusing.

I think that's a big misunderstanding about meal plans in general. What is a "fitness meal plan"? Why "traditional" meal plan cannot count macronutrients? It's not necessarily to lose / gain weight, any food is important and should eventually be tailored to specific people.

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

#263

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 5:44 AM UTC

resf wrote: post #220

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your key concern with restaurant food should be nutrition, not hygiene. Hygiene in restaurants is typically good enough to not be much of a problem (and the human body is resilient enough to take a bit of occasional rough treatment). But you don't know how much sugar, fat, or just empty calories are being put in your food to make it just a little more presentable or appetizing. That is what you have better co…

There's nothing wrong with sugar when eaten as part of a meal, it's when people down Coca Cola on an empty stomach that there's a problem. And fat is actually essential to life. At the risk of stating the obvious, when you eat a meal, all of it goes to the same place. So as long as the meal as a whole provides sufficient nutrition (and if you are eating a varied diet then it absolutely will do), no part of it can be…

Continuing the trend of stating the obvious, it is absolutely possible to load food with too much sugar or fat that offers practically no marginal nutritional value. I say marginal because of course to a starving person the calories brought in by sugar are valuable, but probably not to a person who is generally able to get their calories from a wide range of sources and in general wants to control their caloric intake.

Empty calories is not a moral judgment. It is a statement of fact.

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

#264

Post by deathanatos » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 5:51 AM UTC

gdulli wrote: post #168

dredmorbius wrote: post #163

OT: When did Medium start showing bottom-feeding Taboola ad content? That's a massive disappointment. Update: Oh, that waas content. My error.

That was part of the content of the article, not an ad slot.

When I first saw it, with the lead of,

> the ones responsible for, say, this:

I thought that was the end of the article, and a very cleverly placed transition into the ad content.

I almost wish the sites that run these ads would do this now; it would be more entertaining.

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

#265

Post by batbomb » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 6:00 AM UTC

s73ver wrote: post #202

vec wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started using these services (originally Blue Apron; more recently Hello Fresh) with the express goal of learning to cook. I originally planned to continue the service until I had a catalog of recipes I knew I liked and enough skill to do for myself. I met my initial goal six months ago, cancelled my subscription, then restarted it a couple of months after that. I found that when I had to choose a recipe to cook, I…

What about the services that just sell you the meal plan/recipes, instead of sending you the whole package? Or, now that you have presumably a good set of those recipes, just repeating the order in which you got them?

I'm gonna let you in on a little secret, it's called "The Joy of Cooking"

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

#266

Post by batbomb » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 6:09 AM UTC

illumin8 wrote: post #20

pavel_lishin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

You should try out this book:

https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Fast-Better-ebook...

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

#267

Post by BertPhoo » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 6:11 AM UTC

frandroid wrote: post #68

wrsh07 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, after > 2 years on plans like this, either my wife or I can usually cook in the amount of time specified, and together we consistently hit the low-end. I'm not sure at what point we got this efficient, and our kitchen is also easy-to-work in. [I don't imagine that's the case for lots of apt-dwellers] I think you're definitely right that there will be a significant amount of automation that will be able to make…

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

I can usually get it done in about half an hour and it's not much faster, if at all if I get the SO to zest and juice the lime since I would always plan to do stuff like that while waiting for something else to finish.

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

#268

Post by wiz21c » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 6:36 AM UTC

munchbunny wrote: post #134

revelation wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same for me. Scheduling is crucial and takes practice to get to the "intuitive" level. But, once you've got scheduling, right there are almost no wait time (except for long cooking dishes, says 3 hours or so).

What bothers me a lot down in this whole thread, is that many people seem to forget that spending time feeding oneself is actually spending time taking care of oneself (and one's family if any). And that seems to me a very important part of life.

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

#269

Post by motles » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 6:53 AM UTC

The one difference between Groupon and meal kit services to me is that the meal kit services actually provide value over and over for something I actually need to do every day, 3 times a day: Eat.

If I don't use the meal kits, that's fine, but I'm just going elsewhere - restaurants, delivery, take-out, grocery store.

I don't need discount yoga classes or buy one get one froyo coupons every day. You don't need discounts to survive. You can just buy less. Discounts are not a commodity that I wish to purchase often. I have used groupon once, and have been innundated ever since with constant spam about new deals for things which sound like good deals but probably I wouldn't even give them a second look at full price. So I don't bother. I don't need half that stuff anyway.

I hope meal kit services continue to thrive, despite negativity from investors. They are a service that I truly value and will probably keep my subscription to BA going until BA service quality drops or the food stops being as good. So far, they haven't done either.

But for god sakes BA, EASY ON THE GARLIC. You don't need to send me a whole bulb every time when the recipe just needs 2 cloves.

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

#270

Post by fraserharris » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 7:36 AM UTC

arambhashura wrote: post #108

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…

Gobble addresses the prep time. From their FAQ: "You can cook Gobble meals faster than you can order takeout. Your meal will go from kit to table in under 10 minutes." In my experience with around 10 different (vegetarian) dishes from them, I've found that to be somewhat true. Most dishes only required some combination of: an oven (oven heating time not included in the "10 minutes"); a sauce pot for pasta/noodles; a…

Data point for a Gobble consumer with around 60 dishes (3 per week) and very little prior cooking experience: they usually take me 15 - 20 minutes (which i'm perfectly happy with).