
Gobble (YC W14) Raises $10.75M for Its 10-Minute Dinner Kits - confiscate
http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/29/gobble-series-a/
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etep
To me, the highest cost of cooking for myself is planning and shopping. The
value, therefore, is to offload the thinking, planning, and shopping part of
this. The prep and cleanup is actually fun and easy to fit into my schedule.
Therefore, solid value prop and great idea.

Further, imo, the cost and packaging "waste" is nothing significant. When I
shop for myself I still get packaging. Worse yet, a lot of food gets wasted
anyway, i.e. because the grocery store doesn't sell me exactly as much food as
I need, whereas Gobble does. I suspect this is actually more efficient, i.e.
on all frontiers, especially given the waste I always generate from shopping
for these ingredients.

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JTon
> To me, the highest cost of cooking for myself is planning and shopping

I agree with shopping. But not so much with planning. Once you've been cooking
for yourself for a couple months you can pretty much nail down a rotating meal
plan that requires no substantial planning

On the packaging waste, I was delving through the Gobble website and found out
they offer a free "Return & Re-Use Program" [1]

[1] [https://gobble.com/faq](https://gobble.com/faq)

~~~
etep
I think a better comparison is the planning it would take to get to the
variety that Gobble offers. I've been on that rotating meal plan and it is
pretty narrow in my experience. Every once in a while I find a new recipe,
euphoria ensues, and then I spend two hours going to whole foods and trader
joes - lesson learned, don't do that!

I don't think it is you and I appreciate the honest comment, but from the
other comments it seems that everyone here has mastered the art of fitting in
the planning, shopping, prep, cooking, and cleaning. Truly amazing! Or simply
surprising that they can't hypothesize about the poor folk like myself who
just can't quite get there in their life.

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masonhensley
Serious question - Why don't grocery stores make and market these ready to
cook fresh/healthy boxed meals? They already have the inventory & could use
last mile uberRush type delivery services that are expanding.

I know I'm over simplifying this - but if I was wanted to be in this space,
I'd partner with grocery stores to build their tech, and charge the groceries
incremental fees off each sale without taking on inventory / capital risk.

I'm just not sure about Gobble, blue apron, hello fresh et all... how are they
differentiating themselves operationally? (Besides throwing money at having
their own refrigerated distribution centers)

FedEx-ing food around seems like a gigantic waste of resources and seems at
odds with "changing the world" for better. But that's just me.

*I'm a "busy millennial" with a good tech job who enjoys cooking - so I guess I'm in their target market?

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rootedbox
They do have this at the grocery store.

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masonhensley
Can you provide an example? Preferably one from a regional or national chain
that's not exclusive to the Bay Area or NYC

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Kluny
Bags of frozen prechopped veggies in sizes appropriate for a family of four
for one meal, plus containers of fresh soup to go in the deli, plus a
selection of fresh ready-to-heat entrees. A nice meal for two with enough
leftover for someone's lunch would come to around $16 at my local Save-On.
(veg $5, entree $7, soup $4).

~~~
masonhensley
Ha, I know that - I'm talking about these boxes of fresh & fancy ingredients
with recipe cards that are all the rage with these startups

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marcusgarvey
>The company says it currently has 1 million subscribers in California, so the
round will help fund its national expansion.

Paying subscribers? Or people on their email list?

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macNchz
I've always been a bit curious about the market for these services, if you
consider:

\- Price sensitive novices: likely realize fairly quickly that they can save
quite a lot of money by shopping & chopping on their own.

\- Price insensitive novices: likely find that the meals push the limits of
their cooking skill, take longer and have more cleanup than they expect, and
will either learn enough cooking skills to make the meal packages feel
restrictive, or just go back to takeout.

\- Price sensitive with cooking experience: likely realize how much cost is
added for something that is not a big hassle if you have a little experience
(i.e. basic knife skills and knowing where to find things quickly in the
supermarket).

\- Price insensitive with cooking experience: likely feel restricted by the
ingredients and menus, and can get halfway there with grocery delivery.

A former roommate of mine (price insensitive novice) had a Blue Apron
subscription for some time and I was always shocked at how incredibly much
packaging there was, from individual foam wrappers around vegetables and tiny
baggies with a glove of garlic to huge ice packs and layers of cardboard. It
seemed like such a waste to me.

~~~
twakefield
My wife and I use Blue Apron and I am a big fan. I have to admit the packaging
is extensive but at least they are trying to reduce the net waste [0].

A few other positives:

\- You get the experience of making the dinner (chopping, cooking, mixing,
etc.). It's a good entry point for novices.

\- Many of the ingredients are somewhat exotic, so you wouldn't usually buy
them in the grocery store. Or if you did you end up with a lot left over that
you won't use again.

\- $59 for six meals actually seems like a bargain to me. Maybe we were doing
it wrong but when we used to go to the store for all our meals, we spent a lot
more and ended up wasting a lot of it.

The downside is that you don't save that much time (other than the shopping
trip). So I could see how Gobble is great for more time-constrained people.

In the end, I think all of these services are trying to own the space,
starting with their own niches. Once they get enough traction they can land
and expand to take over the other services' niches. This comes at a cost to
them (poor unit economics initially), but we the consumers benefit...for now
at least.

[0] [https://support.blueapron.com/hc/en-
us/articles/202510818-Ho...](https://support.blueapron.com/hc/en-
us/articles/202510818-How-do-I-recycle-my-Blue-Apron-packaging-)

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onedev
I've got an idea.

Step 1: Throw some rice in a rice cooker, add water, press button.

Step 2: Cut up 2 sausages, throw it in the microwave for 2 minutes

Step 3: Put one or two cups of frozen vegetables in a bowl, add water, and
steam in the microwave for 4mins.

Step 4: Throw the sausages and the vegetables on the rice, add Soy Sauce to
taste.

Optional: Feel free to make some eggs on a pan. Should only take 2-3mins. You
can add that into the mix of Rice/Sausage/Veggies.

Aaaaand that's dinner!

~~~
Alex3917
You can also just cook any meat and vegetables in the rice cooker with the
rice.

~~~
onedev
Wait what, are you serious. You might have just changed everything I thought I
knew about life and cooking....

I'm gonna try this out.

~~~
chaosphere2112
Yup, Roger Ebert wrote a cookbook on it: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Pot-How-
Use-It/dp/0740791427](http://www.amazon.com/The-Pot-How-Use-It/dp/0740791427)

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boldpanda
$12/meal + shipping. Price is obfuscated on the website. I'd imagine that
Gobble will struggle with the same things that every food delivery business in
the world struggles with - low margins.

People just aren't willing to pay high margins for food that gets delivered.
There is constant pressure to offer more food at lower prices.

Their most likely exit strategy is to build a brand strong enough that they
can get a line of frozen prepared meals picked up by major grocery retailers
or sign a licensing agreement to do something similar.

~~~
shostack
Thanks for putting that front and center.

My biggest issue with these services is that for a regular home-cooked meal,
that is quite a premium for something where the portion size is quite often
way too small or the ingredient quality isn't justified by the price.

I know I'm looking for something that may not be able to exist because of the
razor-thin margins, but if someone came out with a service at the <$10 price
point with decent ingredients and portions, and healthy (read: low sodium, low
sugar, low processed-crap) options, I'd likely switch a significant percentage
of my weekly meals to them.

As it stands now, it is just hard to justify at that price. But perhaps I'm
not the target market.

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sjclemmy
This strikes me as tech bubble stuff. There are already shops that sell you
ingredients. And cooking is not that hard. In fact, part of the fun is
spending time cooking, with friends. Also - most people in the world can't
afford this kind of thing.

~~~
patio11
First world problems are still problems; this is "What's the most convenient
way to deliver a home-cooked meal without dispatching a chef to cook it for
you?", which is a thing that well-off professionals historically buy.
Systemize the human labor there and it makes it affordable to more of the
middle class while allowing people to cook for themselves, which at least some
people want to do.

Cooking is not hard like reading is not hard: if you grew up doing it, you
might not remember having learned it at all. The historical expectation that
at least half the population grew up cooking has fallen apart, particularly
among some social classes. I would not suggest contempt of business models
which only succeed by helping more people learn to cook.

(Cards on table: can cook, do so rarely, would be very open to doing more
_and_ very willing to trade money to decrease time investment required.)

As to the economics of it: doesn't strike me as having unit economics
compatible with investor expectations but oh well capitalism happens -- if it
does they make a bundle, if not they're sophisticated rich people who can
afford to lose money while buying food for less-rich people at a loss. "Even
the poorest Americans will have cooked food prepared by servants" was once
science fiction, too. That business worked out pretty decently, modulo latter-
day concerns that "Well maybe poor Americans _shouldn 't_ have their food
cooked by servants."

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orthoganol
? At their $14/ meal price I can just order something healthy on SpoonRocket
for a few bucks less, with almost instant delivery.

Why wouldn't I do that?

~~~
dogma1138
The price goes down the more meals you order their service is intended for
people that would want to have "ready to cook" meals rather than an unplanned
take-away.

They can offer more verity in their menus over time and some people actually
enjoy cooking even if the majority of the work was already been done.

Their kits are also intended to be able to stored up to 5 days in
refrigeration and up to 2 weeks if frozen which means you can use them on your
own schedule which you can't do that easily with take-away or order-in.

Another important fact is that when you are cooking you can adjust the recipe
yourself add or remove ingredients, over cook or under cook the veggies
depending on how you like them, add or replace seasoning etc.

Oddly enough I don't understand why these types of kits aren't available in
grocery stores I can go down to Marks and Spencer or Waitrose and get pre-cut
veggies, meats, pre-cooked pasta/noodles and rice or whole premade meals
including ready to cook steaks, fish, poultry, pasta dishes, pies, soups even
deserts...

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Patrick_Devine
I was a little skeptical about Gobble, but I used it when my wife was out of
town at a conference a few weeks ago. It was pretty easy to do. Prep work is
definitely the most time consuming part of cooking.

My only gripe is the amount of waste it generates. I definitely have a feeling
of guilt with how much of the packaging gets thrown into the garbage. Gobble
really needs to address this.

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jaxomlotus
I wish instead of: "we shop, chop and deliver to your door" on the homepage
they modified the expression to "we shop, chop and drop it off at your door"

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code4tee
On the plus side the meals do look quite good.

On the downside when I see such a business racking up silly valuations like
this I see lots of bubbles floating around.

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pbreit
I think Blue Apron has set the price ceiling on this sort of thing:
$10/portion.

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notjustanymike
Blue doesn't do any prep work though. You gotta chop those onions yourself.

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bmm6o
It's true, step 1 of a Blue Apron recipe can take 20 minutes. Green Chef does
a lot of the prep and is only slightly more expensive.

