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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

#41

Post by harryh »

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'll get much faster with practice. I never take more than 45 minutes to prepare a BA meal now and generally do it in about 30. And I'm no professional cook or anything either. Just learned by doing (and watching an occasional YouTube video).

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

#42

Post by eli »

moomin wrote: post #22
pavel_lishin wrote: post #12

Isn't this sort of issue faced by 99% of any new business that sells a service or a product? Unless your idea is something patentable, or you have a trade secret that's locked up tight, or you control your product vertically (e.g., you own the only Unobtainium mine on the planet) - can't your business be copied fairly trivially? (Quick edit: who else remembers everyone and their nephew offering website hosting/coloca…

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.

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

#43

Post by bradleyjg »

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…

"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?

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

#44

Post by digikata »

marssaxman wrote: post #7
snarf21 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not just acquiring the ingredients; there's value in having someone else plan the menu for you. Deciding what to cook can be a challenge! I host an ~8 person dinner party roughly once a week, and it is not unusual for me to spend as much time digging through recipes, trying to decide what to cook, as I put into actually preparing the meal. Yes, of course you need other groceries beyond the meal kit itself, but t…

So where's the moat for the meal service vs something like a recipe pick + shopping list service directly linked to the delivering grocery? That seems like something Amazon or some other grocery delivery service could rapidly expand into. On the other hand, perhaps the quality of the curation and customer relationship does count for something here too.

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

#45

Post by opportune »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #40
opportune wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right, and that people are downvoting you because they are confusing your references to pre-feminism gender roles as you supporting them. As delivery services become faster and more perfected, specifically when we can start using drones to deliver almost anything (which isn't heavy) to anyone in an urban/suburban area in an hour or less, I think we will see the rise of food being ordered and delivered…

> What there is really a market for is a service that can deliver fresh or at least reasonably high quality food, which is customizable to individual preferences, for a reasonable cost (~$5 or so), on-demand, and in a timely manner. Does that also come with a free pony?

Did you read what I wrote? Of course I acknowledge that this is not feasible yet. I'm saying that this is the product that the market is actually waiting for, and that the technology isn't there yet (automated drone delivery). So what we have in the meantime are awkward solutions that only meet a few of these requirements.

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

#46

Post by canada_dry »

draw_down wrote: post #6

Switching is different in this business though. In the group deal business, as a customer you're buying individual deals all the time. As soon as not-Groupon has a better deal than Groupon, you switch. In meal-kit business, you're a subscriber of one service. Switching to a new one means entering all your info again, choosing from the list of options, and waiting for the kits to start shipping to you.

It's true that churn will be slightly lower in comparison to Groupon et al (due to the subscription aspect)... but the barrier-to-entry is very low and it's likely the subscription part will dissolve to being effortless as competition heats up.

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

#47

Post by Mz »

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…

I always say that these are for people with more money than time.

That generally fits my assumption that the target audience is two career couples, generally speaking.

They just want to buy a pre-configured lego set, and build a spaceship they can eat.

That's an awesome description. Thank you for that.

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

#48

Post by pavel_lishin »

opportune wrote: post #45
pavel_lishin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What there is really a market for is a service that can deliver fresh or at least reasonably high quality food, which is customizable to individual preferences, for a reasonable cost (~$5 or so), on-demand, and in a timely manner. Does that also come with a free pony?

Did you read what I wrote? Of course I acknowledge that this is not feasible yet. I'm saying that this is the product that the market is actually waiting for, and that the technology isn't there yet (automated drone delivery). So what we have in the meantime are awkward solutions that only meet a few of these requirements.

I don't think drone delivery is the bottleneck for incredibly cheap, yet personalized food that's delivered to you on the order of ~15 minutes. Ingredients, chef's time, kitchen space, etc. are going to eat that five bucks right up.

A six-inch sub from Subway is already nine bucks, and that includes the Sandwich Rembrandt personalizing it for me with an extra slice of provolone for a dollar extra.

The market isn't waiting for it, people are waiting for it - who doesn't want super cheap, super good food, super fast? But there's a saying about picking two.

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

#49

Post by ghaff »

bradleyjg wrote: post #43
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'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?

And they say this as something so wild and wacky it's worth an exclamation point :-/ "The Tovala doesn't just cook Tovala meals - you can program it to cook your own food too!"

So it's some sort of programmable combi oven. They're apparently (sorry) hot in modernist etc. cooking circles. I've read that keeping them free from mold etc. can be a problem but I haven't looked into them in any great detail.

I have to say that the example meal shown on their site is really not something most people would find at all challenging or time-consuming to prepare using supermarket ingredients.

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

#50

Post by jessaustin »

ghaff wrote: post #19
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…

I tried Blue Apron just to see what the deal was. It was "OK" but not really a fit for me. I do know people who like it though. There's a category of (especially) couples with disposable income who really want to cook at home a few nights a week but appreciate some structure to make it happen.

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"?
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