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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

#281

Post by notyourday »

pm90 wrote: post #185
criddell wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Granted, the food is much healthier than restaurant food I wouldn't automatically grant that. I cook Blue Apron with my teen-aged kids and it's fantastic. I've become a much better cook while helping them learn how to cook. The recipe cards are a big part of what makes it work for us. I don't always know what medium dice or chop means, but I can pretty much always match what's in the picture.

> I wouldn't automatically grant that. While this deserves qualifications, most of the time restaurant food is simply not as hygienic as meals prepared at home. And its not some deliberate plan to make it so. Despite their best efforts, a somewhat large scale food establishment just allows a lot more opportunities for food contamination. And I say this as a person who eats out everyday (Lunch out, dinner and supper a…

It is actually amazing that we have not yet freak outs in the media from cases of food poisoning of the meal at home services. Someone touched every single thing in every single unit that a customer receives. If you got five twigs of cilantro, then someone touched each one of those five twigs. If you have received six pepper corns of some fancy pepper, someone making minimum wage touched every single one of them.

This is a massive contamination incident waiting to happen.

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

#282

Post by just4themoney »

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…

It's tastes and expectations that have changed.

When I was growing up and when my parents were growing up dinner was best described as "edible." Nothing fancy, nothing artisanal, not bland but also not usually very exciting. Simple meals with simple ingredients.

Now people want (and expect) fresh and "fancy" artisanal food all the time - you can see it in here with people complaining about the quality of Chipotle.

I always think of these services as more used by young higher earning childless people, not so much families.

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

#283

Post by Paul_S »

I tried hello fresh back when they were promoting it aggressively. The only good thing about it were the neat recipe booklets. I actually kept them and made the meals again later. Everything else was bad. The produce quality was worse than from my supermarket, missing ingredients, stupidly expensive (outside of promotion). I'm amazed they still exist, I assume it's running on investors' money.

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

#284

Post by Chris2048 »

tomjen3 wrote: post #253
munchbunny wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant wall-clock time. You have a point that there are lots of recipes that don't need much hands-on time - I personally do that a lot. However, since wall-clock time often does need to go up to an hour, you have to schedule it into your day. You can't put the chicken into the oven if you're not home. I think the allure of 15-30 minute recipes is that 30 minutes is sort of the upper threshold for spontaneity: "I'll…

I have a sousvide cooker and a slow cooker so that I can have the machines make food for me when I am not at home. Throw some meat into the sousvide in the morning, come home to a really nice piece of meat that you can take right out of the machine. Save any excess and reheat out the next day.

You need a pretty good (tight) container though, or the water evaporates.

I intend to get one of those blowtorch attachments to sear afterwards, although I suspect griddle/thick base pan might do just as well.

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

#285

Post by pjc50 »

jessaustin wrote: post #179
pjc50 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

:) I think they've started being explicit about the conflict of interest: https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/06/27/the-washington-post...

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

#286

Post by Chris2048 »

btilly wrote: post #215
munchbunny wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 to cook a recipe, which is way too much labor for a meal that is already priced about the same as a restaurant meal. I think this is one place w…

Are we talking your time, or wall-clock time? Melt butter, add lemon juice, salt and a dash of hot sauce to make a liquid. Rub liquid over chicken. Put chicken in oven at 400 until done. (How much you need and how long you take depends on whether you did this with a whole chicken or pieces of chicken. Let's call it an hour. Use an oven thermometer if you don't know how to tell.) Put some water in the bottom of a pot,…

I think what we actually need is a recipe site that sticks to just a few curated recipes like this:

- low downtime, meaning personal time prep/etc were you are unable to do anything else.

- healthy, obv. (I note the above recipes seem to have quite a bit of salt and fat..)

- easily obtained ingredients. special consideration for those that need to be fresh, or go off quickly (vs pantry), and those that are hard to obtain in meal-size quantities. (as a side-note, Asian markets are treasure troves, if you can figure out what things are, and if they're healthy).

- Not too difficult to wash up after. If it uses 5 different pans, 10 different utensils etc, and I have to spend 30 minutes washing up, then that needs to be considered as part of the "downtime".

- Another possible consideration, other than ingredient price: energy price. Ovens can use a fair bit of electricity. If you use it for 45 min every day for your evening meal, could the costs add up? I say this because I'm currently trying to reduce my monthly energy bill (my last one was 50 EUR), and the immersion heater is the first suspect. Generating heat tends to use a lot of electricity, although the high heat capacity of water probably means water heating is more costly, consider that one you are finished with the oven, all that excess heat is just wasted (unless it happens to be winter).

Plus, it might seem basic, but an app or something that can A) produce possible meals-to-make based on what you have, and present a choice (or even choose at random) B) produce a shopping list in advance for future meals. An "Who's turn is it to cook" tracker would be nice too.

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

#287

Post by Chris2048 »

r00fus wrote: post #212
rhizome wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a personal chef you don't get the 'zazz and dopamine hit from the process of shopping. Skinner boxes take many forms.

Wow I never would've thought someone could get a dopamine hit from shopping. Shopping either bores or irritates.

Depends on if you like what you are shopping for. I love browsing e.g. watches, or computer parts. I hate shoe shopping - even the shops themselves - I'm immediately brought back to the times as a kid I had to shop for shoes, and my brain just goes "nope" and switches off.

I hear some people, women in particular, quite like shopping for shoes. It's possible there are people that dislike shopping for computer parts?

Of course shops can play up to the dopamine hit through promotion, fantasy-encouragement and packaging etc, but if you like a type of product, you'll probably like seeing what's available.

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

#288

Post by Chris2048 »

mr_tristan wrote: post #139
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…

I think the future is supply chain automation - where a product/service delivery requires multiple sub-services (packaging, storage/indexing etc) and the use of these can be fluid and automated - Why can't I redirect stock to a different packager at the click of a button?

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

#289

Post by agentgt »

mattnewport wrote: post #258
agentgt wrote: post #164

Been to a Wholefoods lately?... seen the prepared foods section or any grocery store prepared foods lately.... seen how many people buy prepared foods? Ever see a family eat the same thing. I mean a family of say five and not DINKs. Amazon acquiring WFM will just make it worse if instacart wasn't already.

> Ever see a family eat the same thing. I mean a family of say five What do you mean by this? When I was growing up the whole family (of 4, plus dog eating leftovers) ate the same meal. Is that not the norm? Is it an American thing?

>> Ever see a family eat the same thing. I mean a family of say five >What do you mean by this? When I was growing up the whole family (of 4, plus dog eating leftovers) ate the same meal. Is that not the norm? Is it an American thing?

Yes most likely (American Thing).

I'll give you a rough anecdotal example I have seen:

A 13 year old that is a vegan, A father who is a pseudo body builder (eats lots of meat), a picky 8 year old that will not eat certain colors and of course a gluten, organic mommy.

And of course there is the toddler/infant age where god forbid you don't follow the pediatricians recommendations (despite that humans have survived this far and produce 8 billion people).

Oh and I haven't even got into timing considerations (ie some individuals eat earlier and others later).

Yep its probably an American thing :)

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

#290

Post by upvotinglurker »

notyourday wrote: post #281
pm90 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't automatically grant that. While this deserves qualifications, most of the time restaurant food is simply not as hygienic as meals prepared at home. And its not some deliberate plan to make it so. Despite their best efforts, a somewhat large scale food establishment just allows a lot more opportunities for food contamination. And I say this as a person who eats out everyday (Lunch out, dinner and supper a…

It is actually amazing that we have not yet freak outs in the media from cases of food poisoning of the meal at home services. Someone touched every single thing in every single unit that a customer receives. If you got five twigs of cilantro, then someone touched each one of those five twigs. If you have received six pepper corns of some fancy pepper, someone making minimum wage touched every single one of them. Thi…

Right. If the definition of "healthy" is "unlikely to be contaminated with food poisoning agents[0]," then meal prep services would seem as bad or worse than restaurant meals. They are "prepared at home" only for the last few steps, the food has been handled extensively by meal prep service employees, and has been shipped and possibly left at a delivery location for an unknown period of time in warm weather (I understand it is shipped in an insulated container, but the temperature control still must be less reliable than an actual refrigerator).

[0]Though I think GP and most others in this thread are defining "healthy" as matching their preferred fat/carb/salt/weight-control etc. parameters, and aren't even thinking about food poisoning.

[edit: formatting]

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