
Recipe for disaster: The meteoric rise and ongoing demise of Blue Apron - kwindla
https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/recipe-for-disaster-the-meteoric-rise-and-ongoing-demise-of-blue-apron
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o_nate
From a user's standpoint, the main noticeable change has been the steady
decline in the quality and amount of food included in the box (along with
increasing simplification of the recipes). In the early days, you'd definitely
get your $10 per person worth of ingredients, and the recipes were often quite
complex, requiring multiple stages and up to an hour of time to prepare. There
was also a clear effort to showcase different cuisines, prep techniques, and
unusual ingredients that you wouldn't find in a typical grocery store. I can
only speak for the vegetarian recipes, but recently it seems like a typical
week is some variation on: a grilled-cheese sandwich, a pasta dish, and a
grain bowl. Coupled with the fact that my skills have steadily increased with
practice, there was little reason to continue and we finally canceled a few
months ago (after a year or two of skipping most weeks). I can imagine an
alternate history where they raised prices instead of cutting quality. We
might have stayed with them longer, though it probably wouldn't have helped
their bottom line any.

