
Inside Blue Apron’s Meal Kit Machine - JumpCrisscross
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-10/inside-blue-apron-s-meal-kit-machine
======
fernly
I and my wife have given month-long trials to HelloFresh, HomeChef, and Blue
Apron. We stayed with HelloFresh longest; its recipes suited us (we added a
couple of their dishes to our family repertoire and use them regularly). Blue
Apron's recipes seemed too complicated and I don't remember what we didn't
like about HomeChef, probably meal choice generally.

Something not noted in the linked article is that all three let you select
your 3 or 4 meals from a wider menu with at least 6 choices. So if you don't
like sweet potatoes, as someone noted here, you could usually avoid them.

The linked article ends with what is probably the most common knock on all
these companies: the uncomfortable feeling that the packaging is a huge first-
world-privileged waste of resources. For example: if a recipe calls for
balsamic vinegar, there will be one little plastic bottle containing 1.5oz of
balsamic with a twist-off metal screw cap and a tiny label. Or there will be
three, one-Tbsp tear-open foil packets of soy sauce, or exactly two green
onions in a zip-lock baggie. And so on.

All the companies will claim with marginal truth that all the packaging can be
recycled. The little plastic bottle goes in the blue bin. The baggies go in
your plastic-film bag (if your recycler takes plastic film). You break down
the big cardboard box and fold that into the bin.

But for temperature control the box is lined with an insulating blanket.
That's usually a "space-blanket" type foil and plastic thing that is not
recyclable, or else it's an inch-thick paper-and-jute blanket that you can put
in with your garden-trimmings green bin.

And the freeze bags! Two or three plastic bags of frozen gel. You have to drop
them in the bathtub and let them thaw, which takes hours (they are very
effective), then you can cut them open, pour the gel into the toilet and flush
it, and only then put the deflated bag into the plastic-film bag for recycling
(if supported).

That's a lot of work to assuage first-world-privilege guilt. It's the main
reason we finally gave up on the real convenience and interest of the meal
services.

~~~
mdesq
Packaging is exactly my main issue with these as well (HelloFresh has been our
favorite too). I go to the local farmers' market every weekend and could go to
another nearby one more frequently; I wish someone would coordinate the
recipes, instructions, and quantities from local ingredients. I'd happily pay
extra to just pick up the raw ingredients collected together with some
instruction sheets on what to make when.

~~~
fernly
They could cut some of the packaging by requiring the user to have a wider
range of stock items. They could send you an email on Saturday saying, "to
prepare your menu selection arriving Tuesday, you will need: Soy Sauce, White
Wine Vinegar,..." If you have 'em, fine, if not, you have a couple of days to
stock up. That would eliminate the fairy's bottles of vinegar etc. (and lower
costs?).

But there's no way around the insulation and frozen gel-packs, and I think
they should close the loop on those and take them back. Just say, throw the
gel-packs in the box with all the plastic containers, slap this label on the
outside, and UPS will take the box away when they drop off next week's food.

~~~
karlshea
> I think they should close the loop on those and take them back. Just say,
> throw the gel-packs in the box with all the plastic containers, slap this
> label on the outside, and UPS will take the box away when they drop off next
> week's food.

They do: [http://origin-blog.blueapron.com/recycling-faq/](http://origin-
blog.blueapron.com/recycling-faq/)

You collect a couple of shipments worth of packaging, stuff it in a box, and
print out a label for it from your account.

~~~
rspeer
I don't know about you, but to me, packing, label-printing, taping, and
shipping a box of trash a couple of times a week, sounds like a less enjoyable
chore than going grocery shopping.

------
perplexes
I work for Good Eggs. If you you live in the greater bay area want a dinner
kit with local ingredients and focus on minimizing waste and packaging...

[https://www.goodeggs.com/sfbay/dinner-
kits](https://www.goodeggs.com/sfbay/dinner-kits)

We use produce and groceries we were already selling as parts of our kits, as
well as partially prepared food we prep/cook in-house. 80% of what we sell is
made within 200 miles of SF.

We also assume you have things like olive oil. Hah.

Also worth mentioning is that we hold onto produce for usually less than 24
hours from the farm to your door.

[http://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Good-Eggs-hatches-
ne...](http://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Good-Eggs-hatches-new-plan-for-
online-food-11060438.php)

Let me know if you'd like a beta invite to try the kits out. (Or to talk
Operations Engineering (my team), it's fascinating and full of classic compsci
problems)

~~~
Dwolb
I think assuming people will have a base set of ingredients (i.e. olive oil
like you said) is a great idea.

It's probably a good idea too to offer these ingredients through your service
as an upcharge. "Buy your kitchen starter pack".

For meal kit customers who may not have the time or knowledge to stock the
basics, this could be a win-win.

~~~
perplexes
Oh, totally - it's one of the very next things we're implementing
(personalization/recommendation, etc)

~~~
Dwolb
Super interesting. It's a shift from straight meal kits that are more "healthy
meals that you don't have time to shop for" to more wholistic kitchen
foodstuffs management.

It's more like a personalized Instacart in that way. Could see this going the
way of "Trunk Club for the kitchen"

------
jraines
As someone who doesn't care _too_ much about the health aspect (if it was all
greasy blobs, I'd care) of it -- just taste and convenience, with some price
sensitivity -- I'm a fan of Blue Apron.

It seems like the quality has gone up, too. Our last several boxes have been
all hits, no misses, where 18 months ago there's always be at least one miss.

That said, we're slowly building a repertoire from our favorites, and with
that knowledge combined with which "special" or "rare"* ingredients can be
reused/replaced, we'll probably eventually stop using the service. But that
date gets pushed into the future more to the extent they keep quality high.

*I know they're not "rare" to foodies, but we're pretty basic grocery shoppers.

~~~
freehunter
It seems like I'm getting sweet potatoes every other meal. My wife and I
aren't big fans of sweet potato but I don't think there's a way to tell Blue
Apron not to send them to me. I just throw them away and buy my own regular
potatoes to supplement.

~~~
alphonsegaston
Throwing away perfectly good food, hand-delivered at a premium because of a
preference, has to rank among the peaks of American excess. Après nous, le
déluge.

~~~
linkregister
I fail to see what "Après nous, le déluge" has to do with the rest of your
statement. I think you're misusing the quotation.

~~~
alphonsegaston
We have to be really doubling down on the irony if we don't understand the
relevance of a quotation for "I don't care what happens after I'm dead" in
this case.

~~~
cardamomo
I think I agree with your general sentiment, but can you explain what you mean
more precisely? It seems you're trying to tie together food waste, economic
privilege, and global warming.

~~~
alphonsegaston
Yeah, that's about it. A massive spike in food insecurity for wide swathes of
the world is almost a guaranteed outcome of our current climate trajectory.
Talking about needlessly disposing of overly packaged, hand-delivered food
just struck me as...well, you read the quotation.

[http://wfp.org/climate-change/climate-impacts](http://wfp.org/climate-
change/climate-impacts)

------
bearcobra
I've always been curious about the waste concerns highlighted towards the end
of the article. What is the cost of the individualized packaging? How much
does it's recyclability matter. Does it create less food waste? Less pollution
from car trips to the grocery store? Less waste & pollution than the
operations of those stores themselves? My uneducated guess is no, but I'm
curious if there are any studies out there measuring these kinds of impacts.

~~~
VLM
That's an interesting idea and could be extended via a comparison to CSA
shares, which are pretty much the same idea without any recipes or tech or
phone apps, but similar energy, packaging, and distribution (financial and
enviro) cost problems.

It even has the same end user complaints. The guy in the thread complaining
about what he's supposed to do with a 4000 calorie quesodilla is pretty much
the same as me pondering what to do with nine pounds of delicious kale,
delicious, but... nine pounds?

I would imagine CSA shares are not just a heartland thing and even "food
desert" coasties have CSAs although shipment costs must be higher?

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Well, I have belonged to a couple of CSAs and they didn't do any packaging at
all - shares were in reusable plastic stacking boxes, and you had to go to get
them in person at a farmer's market (I typically biked there, so no extra
emissions). There are some 'organic to you' delivery services here in Portland
OR that bring you your fruits and veggies in a waxed cardboard box, but I
believe they reuse those.

~~~
lfowles
Similar experience, the first time you picked up the produce it was in an
insulated bag which you were expected to return in exchange next time.

------
maxaf
I have no complaints about Blue Apron's food, which is usually delicious and
almost always challenges us to learn techniques we wouldn't otherwise try.

Where it falls down is shipping: they use LaserShip, which loses multiple
packages every year no matter where they originate from. As we rely on Blue
Apron to provide our weekend meals, it can be quite frustrating when LaserShip
makes packages simply vanish without a trace or any explanation. For a while
we've managed to convince Blue Apron customer service reps to exclusively use
FedEx when shipping our orders, however this stopped being an option for
inscrutable reasons.

I wish vendors would stop using LaserShip. I've no idea what's wrong with it,
but I also don't care because all I want is for my packages to stop
disappearing!

~~~
sokoloff
We enjoyed Blue Apron for quite a while and had the same experience as you
with trying new recipes and techniques. After about 6 months, there was a lot
of almost-repeats in the menu and so we dropped it because:

My big problem with Blue Apron was the quality of the meats, especially the
beef, was often horrific. I get that they need to hit a price point, but meat
that is inedible is not a value at any price. A few packages of chicken were
high-quality but arrived compromised making for a dicey "do we still eat it
anyway, because it seems like it's still cold enough?" and "rotten chicken
juice smells awful until the trash pickup day". We never got sick from it.

Ultimately, it was an OK experience. Very good for variety and giving us new
ideas. Bad for value-for-price, ultimate protein quality, and wasteful (by
necessity) packaging.

Probably a dozen of the dishes served as inspiration for on-going meals we
continue to make with higher quality, locally procured ingredients, so we
definitely got something out of it, but probably should have cancelled
earlier.

~~~
CardenB
In my experience with blue apron, the meat was high quality. Did you just
throw it away because the chicken smelled bad?

~~~
sokoloff
The chicken was generally very good. We ate both packs where the pack was
compromised and it was good.

The beef was often better suited for the soles of shoes or wear strips on a
snowblower, especially disappointing given the per-meal net cost.

------
M_Grey
You have to wonder if the bright young things who've been "disrupting" food
really understand just how poisonously hard the food service industry is? Even
if all they ever did was read _Kitchen Confidential_ I feel like they could
have seen some of these issues (supply chains, employees, vendor issues)
coming a mile away.

~~~
draw_down
It's OK, they'll make up the losses in volume!

------
pdelbarba
The descriptions of the conditions at the processing facility are kind of
entertaining. It seems that the author has never really seen the manufacturing
sector before. I'm not saying this is a good thing necessarily, but this is
actually pretty par for the course, even up through high tech electronics
manufacturing.

------
letsbechefs
I created Let's Be Chefs to help solve a lot of the pain points of Blue Apron
and other such services. We don't deliver the ingredients, so you're free to
buy organic/regular, swap ingredients, alter number of servings, etc. as you
wish. (Receiving ingredients never really reduced my grocery shopping anyway
because I still have to buy milk, bread, eggs, etc.). We don't have the
associated waste, and the service is much cheaper ($6.99/month after a 7 day
free trial - no credit card required for trial). Best of all, we'll learn your
likes and dislikes and will send you weekly menus through the app of meals
that you'll enjoy.

If you'd like to try it out for free for 7 days, check out
www.LetsBeChefs.com. We're a new startup, so we'd really appreciate any and
all feedback as well!

~~~
ThisIsUnfair
People with two jobs and kids are still able to make it to the market to shop
groceries and what nots yet our lazy generation always redefine the
opportunities for into the most inexplicable realms.

(Disclaimer: Im pretty old so I could be wrong)

------
rmorrison
Blue Apron's been good, but takes way too long for us to cook. I highly
recommend you look into Gobble
([http://www.gobble.com](http://www.gobble.com)) which is as healthy, much
quicker to make, and the recipes are delicious.

------
grogenaut
Summary: it's a machine powered by people. Aka it's just another factory
floor.

------
krallja
Blue Apron is much cheaper than culinary school. Over one year of using it I
learned a bunch about cooking and food. I have mostly stopped using it, but I
still get a delivery for weeks I know I'm going to be too busy to grocery shop
well. It's comforting to know I can have at three delicious meals each ready
in under an hour.

------
bertlequant
For me, Blue Apron is more something to do every once and a while, as a treat.
First, to me at least, the 6 to 9 dollar meal average isn't cheap. Second,
like others have posted about, I wonder about the message of pure, fresh,
clean food that was rushed to me in a delivery truck with everything packed up
all nice and neat.

------
paulcole
>When they arrive for their eight-hour shifts they wade through a trough
filled with powdered disinfectant

The Aristocrats!

------
dbg31415
Here's a sample video of an unboxing. Not what I made... just the first one
that came up. Useful for anyone who hasn't tried it yet.

* BLUE APRON UNBOXING & REVIEW | MakeupByMegB - YouTube || [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX_aEuUVKP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX_aEuUVKP4)

Some general comments I have after trying the service for 2 months.

1) The portions aren't generous. Which, look... if you're trying to lose
weight it's not a bad idea... but I think I spent about an hour preparing the
last meal I had from them, and even the friend I was eating with, a girl who
maybe weighted 120 soaking wet, complained that it wasn't much food. Put it
another way, I've never seem leftovers after a meal with Blue Apron... so it's
not like you can spend time cooking and at least take the leftovers for lunch
the next day.

2) The recipes are satisfying to make, you really feel like your cooking
skills and food prep skills go up. It's nice to know what all is in the food,
everything is from scratch. Great for dates, with everything measured out and
how detailed the instructions are... you will look like a creative pro chef.

3) Meals are, I feel, more expensive than a restaurant (I'd say about 1.25X
cost, compared to sit-down places in Austin). You're paying for health, and
convenience of delivery [1]... Quality is on par with Whole Foods.

For me... was nice to try it for a few months and get a sense for what all is
out there. Try some new vegetables. Gain some confidence when I go to farmer's
markets around what various things taste like.

I will probably never use the service again, or any similar service... far too
often I'd make a meal and then have to hit up the pantry for a bit more food
-- "Hello Pop-Tart, my old friend, I know that box has been sitting in my
pantry for over a year... but I think you'll make an excellent after dinner
snack... (Goodbye health benefits...)"

My recycling bin and trash bins were always overflowing when I used this
service... I didn't like how much waste a meal generated. I think all the
packaging was recyclable, but just massive amounts of packaging. No clue how
to compare waste to a restaurant, but like with a pack of eggs... you get 18
eggs at Costco in a container, and with Blue Apron you get 2 eggs in a
container, wrapped in a paper bag, in a paper box, inside a sealed insulation
bag, inside another paper box...

My total food spending was about 30% higher than normal during the months I
was using Blue Apron.

[1] Ultimately even when I had Blue Apron meals, I'd still run late at work
and instead of having like a turkey sandwich or something simple I could grab
out of the fridge... I'd just go grab Chick-fil-A on the way home -- that's on
me for bad choices, but I made the call "Go grocery shopping or use Blue
Apron." If I have to go to the grocery store anyway... not that much time to
shop for things I like.

TL;DR: Improved my food diversity, improved cooking skills, didn't save me
time, didn't save me money, questionable health improvements due to opting for
frequent meal augmentation.

~~~
karlshea
> The portions aren't generous.

This was my biggest problem. ~700 kcals/meal is not enough for two guys,
especially ones that usually skip either breakfast or lunch.

Plus, it's only three meals a week, so I had to either order out or go to the
store anyways, so there wasn't really much point in using the service at all.

~~~
dbg31415
A friend and I were joking about how small the Blue Apron meals were... so we
played a little game where we compared the size of the Blue Apron meal to the
amount of free samples we could stuff into a to-go box at Whole Foods without
getting caught. The samples won.

~~~
karlshea
They were pretty ridiculous. After one meal I was looking around in the
refrigerator within an hour, and after another I could have literally eaten
another whole portion as soon as I finished. We cancelled after the first
week.

Now I'm using The Fresh 20, which makes portions for "4", but we usually eat
most of it and have some leftovers for a small lunch. I have to actually buy
the ingredients but since I needed to go to the store either way it's been
working out fine.

------
muninn_
Not a fan of Blue Apron. Meal's are incredibly unhealthy, at least the trial
that we used. Why am I adding sugar to a quesadilla? Why is this meal for two
nearly 4,000 calories? AND it's expensive? I'll stick to walking over to the
grocery store. Thanks.

~~~
criley2
Which recipe did you have? A quick search turns up this recipe:
[https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/sweet-potato-
quesadillas-w...](https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/sweet-potato-quesadillas-
with-green-chiles-arugula-avocado-salad)

In this recipe, they pickle shallots and use a little sugar with the pickling,
to create a more "sweet" pickled shallot than a "sour" pickled shallot.

This is Standard Operating Procedure during pickling to make a sweet pickled
product.

The downside to Blue Apron is you MAKE this stuff without understand why.

The upside is that you are exposed to things you wouldn't try.

For example, you should at least try pickling as described, but if it's not
for you and you prefer a different flavor: that's a great lesson! And it makes
you a better cook who now learned something about pickling, formed and opinion
on pickling shallots and gained experience doing that. And that's kind of the
power of Blue Apron for many of us.

Also for the record that quesadilla is 750 kcal per serving, even with the
sweet pickled shallot.

~~~
muninn_
You do understand that 750 calories/serving is a ton, right? I guess I can see
the appeal if you like don't really care about money and can't go to the
grocery store and buy some ingredients on your own? If I'm thinking of cooking
for dinner, then I just go online and look around for some recipes and walk
over to the store and grab something, or plan a day ahead and buy stuff for a
couple of days ahead of time at 1/5th the cost and where I can better control
for caloric intake.

And I mis-typed the quesadilla/shallot etc... I was thinking of the meal
package as a whole. Adding that amount of sugar is not healthy anyway.

~~~
criley2
I guess 750kcal is a ton for small people or people whose diet strongly
deviates from a standard diet.

For a standard human near a 2000kcal/day diet, 500-500-1000, 400-1000-600,
1000-600-400, are all normal and healthy meal breakdowns depending on which
meal of the day a person goes bigger on.

For someone who has a standard large lunch or large dinner, 750kcal is NO
WHERE NEAR "a ton" but is rather an extremely healthy meal when we look at the
breakdown of ingredients and their nutrients.

Of course, the only portion control that truly matters is PERSONAL. If 750kcal
is too much for you personally, it's your own responsibility to eat half of
that meal and save the other half for a future meal. There, it's only 375kcal
and twice the servings!

"then I just go online and look around for some recipes and walk over to the
store and grab something, or plan a day ahead and buy stuff for a couple of
days ahead of time at 1/5th the cost and where I can better control for
caloric intake."

That's what we all did before Blue Apron.

Then in 2 months of Blue Apron we'd tried dozens of new ingredients and
cooking methods we'd never thought to try, that we'd never have picked off the
internet, that our favorite food bloggers never wrote about, that our local
grocery store never stocked.

I admit the cost is very large and not a long term solution, but as an
educational tool I have not found anything which gets remotely close to Blue
Apron.

And I love food bloggers, food Youtube, trendy cookbooks, and yet I still
learn something new from every Blue Apron that I incorporate into my future
diet plans.

Plus, it's convenient to get perfectly portioned amounts of rare and expensive
ingredients. If you have to shell out $15 for $2 worth of an ingredient --
you're not going to make that meal ever. Plus, some of the ingredients they
send me are not found at local grocery stores and require planning and
tripping to massive farmers markets and buying in large bulk.

EDIT:

[https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/usda_food_patt...](https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/usda_food_patterns/EstimatedCalorieNeedsPerDayTable.pdf)

Men 20-30 should be around 2000-2600 kcal a day on average depending on
activity, and women should be 1600-2000 depending on activity on average.

So perhaps women should consider eating only ~75% of a portion and giving
their extra to a man, who could consider eating ~125% of a portion, to ensure
that kcal goals for differing bodies are still met.

~~~
muninn_
The standard 2000kcal diet is not realistic, and the standard 3 square
meals/day narrative is not either. Both are nonsense suggestions. Yes the FDA
publishes them. These are general guidelines that you should not be following
if you actually want to be fit and healthy. If you want to become fat, you
could follow these sure.

> For someone who has a standard large lunch or large dinner, 750kcal is NO
> WHERE NEAR "a ton" but is rather an extremely healthy meal when we look at
> the breakdown of ingredients and their nutrients.

No. Looking at the ingredients for many of these meals does not tell you much.
Well, except in some cases where you are eating a pound of cheese over two
meals. That should be telling you a lot.

>Then in 2 months of Blue Apron we'd tried dozens of new ingredients and
cooking methods we'd never thought to try ... And I love food bloggers, food
Youtube, trendy cookbooks

These are contradictory, or your sources here are the fault of your own poor
research.

> If you have to shell out $15 for $2 worth of an ingredient...massive farmers
> markets and buying in large bulk

Why would you do any of that? Do you not have grocery stores? Even generic big
box grocery stores carry everything that I've seen. And why would you go to a
farmer's market? You don't actually think that the food you're getting from
Blue Apron is like, fresh food from independent farmers do you?

~~~
jack_pp
2000 kcal may not be realistic for short females who want to stay thin but
it's certainly realistic for the average population.

~~~
muninn_
Keyword is average. It's a general guideline that should not be followed if
you have any interest in nutrition. Just as it's not good for short females
who want to stay thin (who doesn't want to stay thin?) it's not a good line
for men who are 6'5'' 260lbs.

