Albertsons snaps up meal kit startup Plated • Hacker News Board

Re: Albertsons snaps up meal kit startup Plated

#51

Post by chimeracoder » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 5:27 PM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #50

chimeracoder wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live midtown, and yes, it is incredibly easy to find prepared food for dinner that is cheaper than what these meal kit services charge, or even cheaper than the equivalent in groceries. I'm not talking about street carts either.

If heat lamp slop is your thing, by all means. Not sure it's that comparable, though.

> If heat lamp slop is your thing, by all means. Not sure it's that comparable, though.

Not sure where you get the idea that that's what I'm eating.

High-quality prepared food is pretty cheap in Manhattan, compared to the price of groceries and compared to the price in other places in the US. When you think about the underlying economics of it and the region, it's not surprising.

Re: Albertsons snaps up meal kit startup Plated

#52

Post by foolfoolz » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 7:57 PM UTC

tclancy wrote: post #22

foolfoolz wrote: post #19

maybe just me, I don't see meal kits going away but I think they are niche and temporary subscriptions at best. people are paying for convenience. an obligation to making a big dinner is not convenient if they were much cheaper, and give you more choice on what says its active, and faster activation turnaround (maybe at 3pm I decide if I want the dinner kit for tonight) then it might make more sense. I do not buy the…

>an obligation to making a big dinner is not convenient As someone who likes to cook (and has test-driven 3 or 4 of these services), I don't see them as that at all. Blue Apron, et al are paint-by-number compared to actually cooking from a normal recipe where you have to measure and prep. I liked having them as an option, but they didn't scratch my "cooking" itch at all. They were more like a convenient way to put a…

I think you are the niche. my friends cancelled blue apron because the recipes were too complex, took too much time, and had too much to clean. they would rather spend the same amount of money on delivered food ready to eat and throw away the containers

Re: Albertsons snaps up meal kit startup Plated

#53

Post by ethbro » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 10:07 PM UTC

amigoingtodie wrote: post #45

ethbro wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious what the value proposition would be. I mean, I can see delivery + pre-existing logistics network. Or selling better kits in stores. Or a segue to delivered groceries. But it seems kind of antithetical to how grocery stores make money. They're low margin, high volume businesses. And this directly attacks volume. Buying a grocery delivery startup seems like it would make way more sense as a first step.

There is money there. People are willing to pay a premium for convenience. Not having to travel to the grocery store, not having to wait in line, not getting mad at the person who cannot bag your groceries, and not having to buy excess amounts of ingredients, nor measuring them, I consider valuable. Also, Plated offers meals w/ ingredients that would take me a full day of travel to source. If somebody is already will…

The question is whether a grocery store doing meal prep can extract more profit than they already get on selling food. And I'm not convinced people are willing to pay enough to make that worth the meal prep companies' time.

Furthermore, we already have folks who are experts at that: we call them restaurants.

So I see meal prep from grocery stores (so losing the "secret organic small farm ingredients" sauce a lot of them bandy about) as being targeted at: (1) people who want a price point lower than restaurants, (2) are willing to pay more than grocery stores, (3) derive enough benefit from "cooking light" that they prefer meal kits over restaurants.

... That doesn't seem like a huge demographic. Which makes me think most of the meal companies are Uber-like unsustainable VC-propped up businesses, except without end-to-end automation on the horizon to save them.

With grocery delivery, the key would be regularizing logistics for some portion of their stock a la Amazon subscribe and save (and thereby optimizing inventory and saving on waste).