
Are Mail-Order Meal Kits Doomed? - prostoalex
https://www.eater.com/2019/2/26/18239767/meal-kits-bubble-grocery-stores-blue-apron-hello-fresh-doomed
======
jVinc
I've tried 3 services now, and what they all seem to not get is that they are
not selling food. I can get food in the local supermarket. They are selling
convenience and peace of mind. Whats the difference? The difference is that if
you screw up my order 2-3 times, then I will quit your service and never look
back. Sure you deliver food to my door most the time, but you are not
providing convenience and peace of mind.

I have never had the issue where going to the supermarket to shop for dinner
unknowingly left me without crucial ingredients or return boxes crowding my
driveway. I have never had the issue where a supermarket sneaks shellfish into
my order even though I am allergic and explicitly did not want shellfish when
I entered the supermarket. The tolerances on these services are just much much
harder than a brick and mortar store and it feels like none of them take it
seriously at all. You need to provide near 98% for every single customer or
they eventually drop off as they lose patience with you and switch service,
and after a couple they just don't want to bother any more.

~~~
grahamburger
I wish that there was a meal kit service without the meal kit. Provide curated
recipes for X days a week and add the necessary ingredients directly to my
Walmart grocery pickup or Amazon foods order or whatever. Would eliminate a
lot of waste and shipping issues and give me all of what I like about meal
kits.

~~~
papa_bear
Check out my service Eat This Much
([https://www.eatthismuch.com](https://www.eatthismuch.com))

It’s pretty much what you describe, and we offer instacart and amazon fresh
integration.

Since we have a big emphasis on hitting your nutrition targets, it’s a bit
tough to guarantee you’ll love the first meal plan we generate for you. It
takes a bit of refreshing meals to get everything perfect for your tastes, and
it’s definitely the #1 thing we’re working on improving.

~~~
pests
Hey! This is yours?

Huge fan for a long time. The app actualy solves problems verses just a fancy
design or a wish for how things should be.

Thanks!

~~~
papa_bear
Glad to hear it! I started it a bunch of years ago as a side project, and now
we have a small team working on it. Still a lot of work to do before it's as
useful as we want it to be :)

------
brink
I quit Blue Apron for a few reasons.

    
    
       1. My plastic trash output doubled overnight when I signed up.
       2. Excessive amounts of carrots and other "cheap, but filling" substances.
       3. My life doesn't need another subscription service to think about and manage.
       4. Going to the store once a week isn't that much of a hassle, the food quality is higher, and it's cheaper.
    

Edit: The variety was nice though. Trying something different every time was
an adventure, though most nights I wasn't feeling adventurous. Most nights, I
didn't really feel like cooking something I may or may not like.

~~~
TuringNYC
>> Going to the store once a week isn't that much of a hassle, the food
quality is higher, and it's cheaper.

Not sure how common my take is, but not only is going to a store not a hassle
-- going to a grocery store is an absolute pleasure. It is a timeboxed task
with a sense of accomplishment at the end that takes me away from my computer
and gives me exercise (I usually walk.) I tend to do 2x a week to break up the
task and do it more often because I like it. Shorter cycles also helps with
freshness and error correction.

~~~
biocomputation
Totally agree, and I don't know why more people don't say this. I actually
enjoy going and looking at the food I'm going to buy. Most stores have nice
extras like coffee shops and small cafes that can turn the 'chore' into a nice
outing.

~~~
freddie_mercury
Most people don't say it because most people don't feel that way.

Not sure where the mystery is.

~~~
flak48
The non-bot interpretation of the comment you replied would be that he/she was
wondering why more people don't feel that way.

~~~
freddie_mercury
Do we really need deep discussions explaining why people have different
preferences in life?

I'm sure there are people who wonder why the OP doesn't enjoy spending time
shopping for clothes.

Most supermarkets in America do not have nice cafes.

Most people go to a cafe if they want to go to a cafe, they don't go to a
supermarket.

Many people have to drag kids along and keep them under control when grocery
shopping.

It is a repetitive task.

For most people there is no creativity or joy in it.

Most people do not live within walking distance of their supermarket.

Most people wouldn't walk there anyway, since they are shopping for a family
of three or four.

Most people don't see it as a break from other things, they see it as one more
thing that has to be fit into a busy weekend (or even worse, an evening after
work).

And many more.

Really the entire subthread reads like yuppie single men wondering why other
people don't have the same preferences they do and being completely unable to
figure it out.

------
deadmetheny
> That’s where making one-off meal kits available at retail locations like
> grocery stores and membership clubs comes in; according to Seifer, moving
> beyond the mail-order subscription model seems pivotal to meal kits’ long-
> term viability.

This is the money quote. The people who subscribe to these things and figure
out cooking is not hard and just requires a bit of initial guidance are almost
certainly going to keep recipes and do their own shopping. And now that it's
proven viable and so many supermarkets deliver groceries, they're going to
swoop in and eat mail-order kits' collective lunches.

~~~
davis_m
I have long thought that there is an opening for local grocery stores to take
a lot of this market. Many of my local supermarkets (HyVee, Walmart) allow for
online ordering, but they all require the user to input items one-by-one. If
they added a feature to add entire recipes in a single click, I think they
would do very well for themselves. The additional cost of adding a recipe card
would be negligible.

The customer's cost isn't increased over regular online ordering, and there
isn't the issue of increased packaging. The food is fresh from the local
supermarket and doesn't have to be shipped, beyond at most a local delivery.

~~~
brandonscott
H-E-B does exactly this in Texas. They have packed-daily boxes for $12 - $30
depending on the serving size.

~~~
dvtrn
H-E-B is a truly remarkable grocery phenomenon that I can't really quite
describe, and I was hoping to see someone mention it here.

But also, yes their packaged dinner meals have saved several of my nights as a
night-owl student at Baylor, studying for hours and looking up to realize it's
suddenly 1am and everything's closed.

~~~
MandieD
H-E-B: similar quality and better prices than Whole Foods on specialty items,
similar prices and better quality than Walmart on commodities. Consistently
good groceries, physically and financially accessible by just about everyone
in Central Texas.

~~~
dvtrn
I Thought it was a statewide story not just localized to Centex?

------
koverda
My wife & I used to use some of these services, but switched over to the
following process:

1\. cookinglightdiet.com for recipe ideas & meal planning. They are typically
quick, simple, and healthy recipes. Costs $4 / mo

2\. Generate shopping list on that site.

3\. Populate my shopping cart on the grocery store's site - we go to Ralph's
typically. Pick a time to get the groceries. That service of theirs is called
Clicklist.

4\. Pick up groceries at the designated time ($8 fee).

Picking meals is easy, generating the shopping list & filling the cart takes a
little bit of time, picking the groceries up takes minutes (way better than
spending an hour and a half searching for ingredients yourself). It's like
normal grocery shopping some of the perks & convenience of meal kit services.
Credit to my wife for coming up with all of this.

------
mxcrossb
My only fear is that the podcast market will also collapse without their
advertising money.

~~~
kalleboo
I just heard an ad for "the world's first subscription electric toothbrush".
Just startup fee cost more than a Braun one.

There's still lots of dumb VC money to advertise on podcasts left even without
the food boxes.

------
Animats
Probably. Meal kits may become available in supermarkets, though. They have a
big advantage - a cold chain. They can keep something cold from the plant that
made it to the moment the user takes it out of the cold case. The mail order
people can't do that.

The Doordash/Uber/etc crowd can't even keep things warm.

~~~
epochwolf
One of the Kroger stores near me has meal kits next to the salad bar.

~~~
jcims
I really think Kroger should just release recipes to their ClickList service.
Why limit it to 5-6 pre-packaged meals with dubious produce selections visible
through the plastic.

------
patentatt
I’m seeing a lot of the negatives of meal kits here, but let me counter with
my experience. I have little kids, and delivery meal kits are great for us.
Shopping with a toddler and an infant is HARD. The cognitive load of keeping
food stocked is hard. With a meal kit subscription, it’s set and forget, I can
always be sure that I have at least 3 solid meals for that week with fresh
food. It takes half of the thinking and shopping and automates it.

------
maxxxxx
I also don’t think it’s interesting long term. It may be interesting to learn
cooking but once you know a little you see quickly that going shopping is not
that hard. I want either ready made foods or cook from scratch but not this
weird thing in the middle.

Is this the “uncanny valley” of food preparation? Almost looks like it but not
close enough.

~~~
treis
>once you know a little you see quickly that going shopping is not that hard

Planning meals is still a somewhat significant cognitive load. I think that's
the value proposition here. Getting a bunch of single meal portions is
convenient, but not really any better than getting groceries delivered. It's
not having to go through the process of finding recipes and then generating a
shopping list that's the killer feature.

I think the ideal thing is the ability to click and say I want to make these
four meals this week. It adds a list of perishables (meat, veggies, etc.) to
my cart and a spits out a list of staples (spices, flour, soy sauce, etc.) for
me to check to see if I have. Then I either have it delivered or it can print
me out a shopping list.

~~~
moreira
Check out [https://www.eatthismuch.com](https://www.eatthismuch.com). Does
exactly what you're describing, and it's brilliant. I picked it up last year,
I couldn't believe it existed.

~~~
maxxxxx
Ideally I would like to feed my own recipes into the system. Or even better,
have recipe sites use a shared data format for their recipes. We could call it
"RecipeML" or "RecipSON".

~~~
paulgb
MealLime might be what you're looking for, I think you can add your own
recipes but I haven't tried it
[https://www.mealime.com/](https://www.mealime.com/)

~~~
treis
This looks very promising. The only thing missing off my list is integration
with online ordering.

------
groby_b
All of the ones I tried had a significant drawback - they somewhat forced your
selection by grouping meals together, or restricting choice otherwise.

Which... no thanks. There are foods I don't like, and I won't buy them just
because you need to get rid of your supplies.

Meanwhile, I'm very happy with freshly - no cooking except "microwave for
3:30", mostly decent food quality. They still have the same last-mile problem
as everybody else, though. (Seriously, could somebody just nuke OnTrac from
orbit?)

~~~
eeeeeeeeeeeee
I also did Freshly for a bit. The convenience is clearly there because like
you said, no cooking. I found them to be even better when you reheat in the
oven too.

I eventually cancelled Freshly because I grew tired of the lack of variation.

------
datademon
I would pay a LOT for a meal kit or pre-made meal service that placed
allergies/intolerances as its priority.

I suspect the reason this is so difficult is also the reason that I would pay
a lot for it: it's a huge pain to come up with many recipes when you're
allergic to many things. I'm allergic to almost all legumes. That includes
soy, peanuts, lentils, edamame, most beans, peas, licorice, etc. However, I'm
not allergic to black beans. This combination of allergies is highly unique:
I'm sure there aren't that many people out there who share the exact same
allergies. Sure, maybe some people have overlap, but it's likely only a
partial overlap.

This means that any meal kit service would either have to 1) Provide bespoke
sets of kits for almost every allergy combination possible or 2) Provide a
limited number of meal sets that hit the big categories. Option 1 is nigh
impossible since that's too many combinations to gain the benefits of
economies of scale. Option 2 also sucks because my allergies might get lumped
into a broader category and I miss out on ingredients. (Eg. I actually can eat
black beans, but since they're legumes, they would likely be banned from a 'no
legumes' set of meals)

The closest service I've found is [https://paleoonthego.com/collections/aip-
bakery](https://paleoonthego.com/collections/aip-bakery)

However, I think they fall prey to my option 2's issues. No nightshades???
What the heck? I love tomatoes! Additionally, I haven't even bothered ordering
anything from there because the items are so expensive. Just look at some of
the prices: $22 for 4 pop tarts! So in fact, not only did they fall prey to
option 2's issues, but they also fall prey to option 1's issues! (lack of
economies of scale)

I have no idea if this issue is ever solvable in a way that provides a stable
business model. Frankly, if normal meal kit services can't make it work, I
doubt one that artificially limits its customer base would work either.

~~~
adamisom
So.. I'm guessing it's not as simple as it sounds for the biz to tag each
recipe with each allergen-ingredient, and then exclude recipes on that basis
for a given customer's list of allergens?

~~~
datademon
Maybe I haven't looked hard enough: but I still haven't found a service that
can reliably do that at the level of detail I need. (Eg. Blacklist all
legumes, except for black beans which are whitelisted)

Plus I think that unless the business is focused around these bespoke allergy-
friendly recipes, then me blacklisting a large swath of ingredients will lead
to me missing out on most of / their best meals.

------
bluedino
My wife thinks they're fun to make. People get to try new foods and
ingredients.

Cheaper than going out, but obviously not cheaper than buying the groceries
yourself.

Plenty of people spend $5 at a coffee shop so I can see a subset of the market
continuing to pay $8/serving + shipping for this stuff.

------
secure
I learnt about Hello Fresh a few weeks ago, signed up, and have been a happy
customer since.

For me, not having to pick a recipe and do the shopping is the biggest
convenience. The results range from meh to awesome (certainly sometimes due to
me botching the recipe).

Price-wise, the service is between eating out and buying groceries myself,
which I think is fair.

Shipments have been on time and usually okay (had rotten tomatoes once).

I’m not sure how long I’ll stay with them, but for now, I have no intention of
canceling. I have eaten healthier food with more variety, and learnt a bunch
about cooking and recipe tuning in the process.

~~~
borgchick
I've been with HelloFresh for a year and a half. Before joining, I could only
make the most basic meals, spaghetti, grilled cheese. Now, I feel like the
training with HelloFresh and I'm a much better cook. The variety of meals has
got me to try numerous things (and combinations of spices, ingredients, etc)
that I normally would never buy for myself in a grocery store, or order in a
restaurant.

I have to say that one thing about HelloFresh meals, they always plate so
well. Over the time I've been with them, I've certainly collected a number of
favourite recipies. But unfortunately, recipies are definitely repeating now.

There are a number of reasons I am still with them.

1\. Having everything needed just show up is really nice. I waste way less
food with HelloFresh (either over buying ingredients that go bad, or making
too much due to poor portion control and no one wants to eat left over 3 days
after). Having just the right amount of fresh herbs for a meal can really make
or break the flavour. I do still go to to grocery store for some basic stuff
that I use to supplement some meals with, as some meals are occassaionally
small. For example, if the meal comes with 1 potato, I may add a potato of my
own. I leave the meat portion alone, and I think this has gotten me to eat
smaller portions as well.

2\. Having a constant stream of different meals is nice. Before, my husband
and I'd settled into always making the standard rotation of around 10 meals.
That gets dull really quick. It was leading us to ordering pizza more than
once a week, which is definitely not good (it is tasty, but not good).

3\. I enjoy making the food, and like I said, it always looks great when it is
plated, so I take pictures of each creation and proud to show friends and
family.

The over packaging issue, so the box and the meals within is cardboard and
paper bags, I recycle both. I noticed recently they no longer plastic bag the
garlic or shallots, which is just fine by me. The biggest waste right now is
all the small plastic bags the sauces and spices come in. I suppose if I
wanted, I could recycle those as well since they are plastic. The ice packs
are non-chemical, and reusable. I've given many many away to friends and
family. Basically no one I know ever has to buy an ice pack again. And even
then I have too many of them, so once in a while I cut a bunch open and wash
it down the drain (they say it is a non-toxic salt solution, and safe to wash
down the drain)

The boxes I've also given away when people want moving boxes, but I recycle
most of them.

I think recently some of the meals have gotten a little "meh". I paused my
subscription on some weeks when really nothing on the list excited me. I hope
that trend doesn't continue. I have not tried other services like BA.

------
nubbins
I found that Blue Apron did pretty much all I could have expected on their
end- better recipes and ingredients that I usually got in my neighborhood and
new techniques I hadn’t tried. I quit because of the fundamental problem that
a subscription food service requires an unknown time commitment (recipes were
quite involved)3x a week as well as worry about missing the delivery and
having food spoil.

~~~
nilkn
This was the same issue for me. Maybe I’m just inefficient at cooking but I
discovered quite quickly that cooking complex meals at home multiple times per
week is actually _not_ something I wanted to do. I found myself spending what
felt like an inordinate amount of time on dinner between prep, actual cooking,
eating, and extensive cleanup.

I don’t know if this is really Blue Apron’s fault. It’s more that I thought I
wanted their service, then discovered I really didn’t.

On the logistics side, there were also numerous times when the delivery time
was just not convenient for me. Again, I don’t think BA really did anything
wrong here per se, but it was frustrating needing to plan around expecting a
big box of fresh food to show up sometime on a particular day. This was
further complicated by living in an apartment complex where deliveries
sometimes go to the door... but also sometimes to the leasing office, which
closes before I even get home.

~~~
Marsymars
> Maybe I’m just inefficient at cooking but I discovered quite quickly that
> cooking complex meals at home multiple times per week is actually not
> something I wanted to do. I found myself spending what felt like an
> inordinate amount of time on dinner between prep, actual cooking, eating,
> and extensive cleanup.

The way to be efficient is to cook in bulk so you have leftovers. I typically
cook in bulk every Sunday, freeze six portions, and remove a portion from each
the six prior weeks from the freezer.

~~~
nilkn
This is what I prefer to do, but it's exactly the opposite of how Blue Apron
works, which is why I found myself frustrated. BA portions are designed for a
single meal (for one or two people [edit: two or four]), so there are no
leftovers.

~~~
dragonwriter
> BA portions are designed for a single meal (for one or two people)

Actually, BA portions are designed for a single meal for two or four people,
(two people for the regular plan, four for the family plan.)

~~~
nilkn
Thanks for the correction. It's been a while since I used it. We used the two-
person plan and I wrongly remembered the other option as being for one person
as opposed to four.

------
nateburke
BA can execute at 100% and they will still not get around the fact that they
are selling groceries + additional food packaging services and neither the
grocery business nor packaging has ever had real margins to speak of in the
past 30 years.

------
ariekachler
They are indeed doomed. They can easily be replaced by your local supermarket
putting a kiosk and you buying it whenever you feel like it, not on a shipping
schedule. I've seen it on my local supermarket. Love it.

~~~
gricardo99
I came here to say the same thing. The supermarket was always the big looming
threat to any meal kit business. And they are also providing pickup and
delivery service.

------
throwaway-1283
I don't necessarily need to eat something different every day, which is what
these Meal Kits provide (i.e. variety in cooking).

I actually think meal kits for bulk meal prep would be more interesting. Meal
prep has become a "thing" especially for those with some fitness goal - and
getting a shipment that allows you bulk prepare 1-2 weeks worth of 1-2 dishes
for lunch and/or dinner that fits a particular diet or fitness goal would be a
lot more interesting to me (e.g. for weight loss, keto, bulking up, marathon
training, etc.)

~~~
davis_m
Does the group of people who meal prep line up with those that don't want to
think about meal prep? One of the benefits of these meal prep kits is that you
end up with a freshly cooked meal. If you are going to be eating a prepared
meal, why not just let the service send it fully ready to go?

~~~
throwaway-1283
I haven't tried a prepared meal prep food delivery service before, but I would
imagine that a successful "bulk meal prep kit" would need to be cheaper per
meal than one that is pre-made.

I also think a major part of the appeal of meal kits is not really in having a
"freshly prepared meal" as much as in helping people more easily achieve a
level of satisfaction out of making something homemade. That, and the
convenience of not 1) having to go to the grocery store to buy meal prep goods
and 2) not having to find decent recipes for meals that fit your nutrition or
fitness goal

------
11thEarlOfMar
Makes me wonder how Gobble is doing.

It seems to be likely that there is a percentage of customers who will try and
use these services for the long run. The trick will be for these companies to
build up enough profitable customers so that they can spend on marketing to
new customers and still make a profit. I'd expect some consolidation and in a
few years, a handful of sustainable businesses.

~~~
warbaker
I use Gobble and still like it. Unlike BlueApron etc, Gobble is intended to be
quick and easy. Like, rather than giving you potato and expecting you to mash
it, Gobble gives you the damn mashed potatoes and you microwave them.

------
sumoboy
First selling most perishable items online is difficult, but to believe home
meals are doomed is shortsighted. The market exists otherwise because not
everybody wants to play Gordon Ramsey every night. These companies are mostly
doing everything themselves when in many cases they should partner with local
grocery store chains and create branded meal plans. It's no different than the
flower industry, where you partner with local florists who build your bouquet
and deliver it under a national brand. It's extremely tough to deliver flower
bouquets from a central fulfillment facility, been there did that.

People are lazy, nothing changes there anytime soon. Yet these are the same
people who drop $75 for dinner a few times a week like it's no big deal yet
will compare that to a meal subscription like it's a ripoff. The audience is
out there, just a matter of finding them.

------
jseliger
I've tried various meal kit programs, chiefly because of their various free
offers, and almost all of them start out strong and then their food quality
declines overtime. My biggest complaint is not cost but the low quality of
most of the food itself.

~~~
fetus8
I have also tried various programs, and not only do I find the quality of the
food to be an issue, but the menu and variety of food is really lacking. Even
with little to no dietary restrictions, I often found that by week 3, meals
started to feel the same and there was a lack of variety.

I've kept the recipes that I really liked and just buy the ingredients myself
at my local grocery store, no sense in paying for the food to be delivered at
this point.

------
darkport
Would people here use a similar service, but the ingredients are automatically
sourced from your local supermarket and delivered to your door? Almost
supermarket prices with still the convenience of not deciding what to eat and
buying the separately.

~~~
roel_v
"Almost supermarket prices"

This is the problem - it's not going to be 'almost supermarket prices'. It'll
be a 10-20% markup, which is _a lot_ for food.

~~~
Uhhrrr
But it's not necessarily so much if it saves me an hour of driving and
shopping.

~~~
roel_v
People don't value their time like that, at least, most of them don't. I mean,
some do, but at my hourly rate the time I spend on driving and shopping is
much more than its cost and I still balk at paying e5 for grocery deliveries,
and I program economic models for a living! (instead I always order a few
products that give me free delivery, and/or select a not so popular delivery
time slot).

Point being, economic modeling and naively assigning a time value equal to or
even just related to people's normal hourly wages is - well - naive, and does
not yield accurate representations of real world behaviors.

Here's another example: I used to have a cleaner who I'd pay e10/hour. She'd
park across the street from my house, paid parking, e6 per day. There was free
parking available at 10 minutes walking distance. So for 20 minutes of
walking, she'd save 6 euros, i.e. e18/h, almost double what she could make
from her actual work! And yet she continued to pay for parking, even after I
did this math for her. Point being: people are sensitive to costs in very non-
intuitive (some might say: irrational, but I don't like the connotations of
that word) ways.

------
ohiovr
I just stick to a single cultural cuisine for a while and fold my leftovers
somehow into tomorrows meal and try not to have too many left overs to begin
with. This works pretty good with Mexican, and most cultures know something
about leftover management. If I need to be entertained while dining I'll do it
at a restaurant now and then.

Picking out ingredients for a random recipe is going to leave you with little
surpluses here and there. It can be hard to work it all into what you cook if
you vary widely in what you cook. Though I do love cooking a variety of
things. It can be wasteful unless your planning is on par with a chef.

------
fraudsyndrome
Does anyone just use these websites for meal ideas and just go shopping on
their own?

My issue is finding a good recipe which also doesn't have 15 separate
ingredients to buy - these companies I'd imagine would try to have as little
ingredients as possible - and have similarities that picking a few recipes
means you already have crossovers.

Most recipes I see are sometimes way too much trouble or take too long to
prepare (sometimes overnight!) - I thought I'd be okay eating the same thing
but when you're living with others and cooking together you want some variety.

~~~
ghaff
Try one of Roxanne Gold’s cookbooks. One of her Schticks is recipes with just
a few ingredients. If nothing else, it helps get you into a mode of knowing
that recipes can be pretty simple.

There are also regional cuisines that require more ingredients but there’s a
core set that get reused a lot.

------
radicalbyte
Hello Fresh levelled me up as a cook and greatly reduced the amount of waste
we generate.

Our bin is emptied once a month now (from twice a month) - it would be once
every two months if it wasn't for the diapers.

------
tick_tock_tick
Meal kits are doomed but fully prepared meal delivery services like freshly
are here to stay. Even if freshly itself dies I really think Amazon is going
to expand into the pre-made meal market.

~~~
petra
I think frozen meals will make comeback.

I'm thinking about non-cooked frozen meals , which you'll cook at home in some
one-click cooking gadget , like an instant-pot or a smart combi-oven, or maybe
some basic cooking robot[1].

That way you could get high quality, high-convenience at a cheaper price.

[1]you get pre-cut ingredients.

You put each ingredient in a bin at your home cooking machine.

The machine adds each ingredient to a pot at the right time, and mixes when
needed and controls the heat.

~~~
lapnitnelav
Might as well buy a Thermomix or equivalent

~~~
petra
The Thermomix doesn't offer a great amount of value.

If it was, a competitor would be offering it for a mass market price($300-400
or cheaper), and have a hit.

------
nyc_pizzadev
For me, the quality had gone downhill considerably. First, missing ingredients
or completely mis-boxed orders. Then, the actual ingredients started becoming
low quality. Stuff that would remain on the shelf at the grocery store. Then
stuff started coming damaged. And all the sides are cheap (high) carbs. I was
ok with the packaging, it never bothered me.

Going to the store, you get exactly what you want, good to high quality
choices, and no damage! Plus, endless variety. And its way cheaper. So for me,
there was little value left.

------
djitz
I subscribed to Blue Apron for a few months and was unhappy with the service.
Boxes would come missing important items or with incorrect quantities.
Recently, I purchased a Tovala oven (and subscribed for the meals which go
along with it.) So far so good! I only use it to supplement meals we cook at
home or for lunch when certain dinners we cook won’t have leftovers, etc. It’s
surprisingly good and we use the oven to cook our own food, as well.

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djsumdog
I never tried any of these services. None of them offered keto-friendly (low
carbohydrate) meal options. I probably would have if at least one of them did.

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logfromblammo
I never understood the appeal behind them in the first place, so take my
opinion with that bias in mind.

I think that a user-adaptive program to procedurally generate a weekly meal
plan, break that down into a unified grocery shopping list, and maybe even
forward said list to the picker services that some grocery stores are running
now, would remove every last speck of competitive advantage the mail order
kits have. Instead of getting a dinner-in-a-box delivered to your door every
day, you can park in a pickup spot at the grocery, pop the trunk/hatch, get
your order, and take it home. Every night, your phone can alert you when to
start dinner, what foods you'll need, and pull up a recipe card or checklist
if you need it.

If you know how to make tacos, and like to eat them every Tuesday, you'll get
taco ingredients on your grocery list every week, and will likely get frequent
suggestions for recipes that also contain cilantro, chiles, lime, tomatoes,
sour cream, and green onions, to use up the leftovers. Cilantro-lime chicken.
Pad Thai. Crunchy ramen salad. The most efficient meals divide your grocery
store haul across multiple meals, so you don't end up eating a whole head of
lettuce in one sitting, but can eat a little in every meal for which lettuce
makes sense, until it's gone--ideally the night before you pick up your next
load of groceries.

But the biggest advantage is that I wouldn't have to think about food until
it's exactly the time I need to deal with it. There're no tedious exchanges
like: "Whaddya wanna eat? Dunno; whaddyou want? Don't care. Pizza? No, not
that. Mexican? Nah. Sushi? Yyyyeah... okay. Sakura or Honada? I thought we
weren't going to Sakura any more? Oh yeah." &c. &c. &c.

Remember when Mom and/or Dad said "We're having meatloaf and Brussels sprouts
tonight. Siddown, shaddap, and eat."? That was easy. All you had to do was
show up. It even worked okay after Mom/Dad got sick of your kid complaints and
said, "Fine. _You_ make dinner, and I'll unload the dishwasher." The menu was
already planned, and the food ready to cook. So a program that would select a
partially randomized meal, composed of stuff that I already told it I like,
and can cook, would eliminate a lot of time wasted on thinking about food. The
mail-order services do that, but they're not the only ones who _can_ do that.

~~~
gorbypark
This would be a great service. I'd pay a few bucks a week to have a service
that sent me a weekly shopping list, and the corresponding recipes. I hate
wasting food, so if it could know that "well, he needs blackbeans for this
recipe, but an entire can is too much, so we'll chuck in the other recipe a
few days later to use up the beans..."

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0xname
It would be nice if grocery stores had a more descriptive/accessible way of
searching for and buying items online. Choosing a recipe, then getting a list
of required ingredients - perhaps even delivered automatically to your door -
seems like a much more environmentally friendly and practical solution
compared to these meal kits.

~~~
ericcholis
Wegmans (mid-Atlantic and New England) has this in their app and on their
website, it's quite nice. Sample: [https://www.wegmans.com/meals-
recipes/meals/main-course/asia...](https://www.wegmans.com/meals-
recipes/meals/main-course/asian-cauliflower--rice--lettuce-wraps.html)

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Someone1234
I recently purchased one at a Kroger (store branded). It is good to know that
Costco will also stock them soon.

Buying them at local stores has most of the benefits with less of the
ecological impact or high costs. In fact the one I purchased had less overall
packaging than buying the parts individually, there was still a price premium
however.

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gumby
Mealkits haven't worked for me at all (I have tried a few), but boxes of fresh
veggies and of meat have been great.

Not naming companies as I'm not shilling, just pointing out the success (for
one person!) of a different model.

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larl
I tried a couple of blue apron kits when they were in Costco. Some nights you
have the time and energy to cook from scratch. Some nights you order pizza.
Other nights a meal kit is just right.

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Havoc
Much prefer the Huel / Soylent route.

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dominotw
Too expensive. I make software engineer money and I can't justify it.

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giacaglia
I've wrote about this some time ago here: [https://medium.com/@giacaglia/the-
end-of-the-meal-kit-ffc707...](https://medium.com/@giacaglia/the-end-of-the-
meal-kit-ffc707a1957)

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appsonify
Long time ago I wouldn't have minded. But cooking itself is an enjoyable
process....and those are the people these guys are targteting....

it's not a sustainable model because once you realize you have a measuring
spoon and the right beakers, its just following directions, sort of like a
series of linux commands you would normally copy & paste

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FussyZeus
I never found these attractive, the amount of trash you generate using them is
just heinous, and I'm not even usually a pro-environment person.

~~~
wetmore
Not only do they generate trash by requiring a lot of small bags and such for
the ingredients, they also create food waste by bundling together ingredients
with different expiration times. I spent some time digging around in dumpsters
behind a grocery store in Vegas which carries their own meal kit offering.
They throw out huge boxes of meal kits with expired meat in them which contain
a bunch of food which is good for longer, like rice, herbs, potatoes, etc.

It was great for me because its a lot of clean, unexpired food for free but
the amount of waste it created blew my mind.

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niftylettuce
___

~~~
youeseh
Hey, just a suggestion. You asked me to enter my zip code first and then told
me that you don't serve my area. Might I suggest A/B testing the following:
show us your service areas and ask for our zipcode / email to notify us when
the service will be available in our area. This is a bit more transparent with
less of a letdown. But I'm not sure if it'll net you more useful data (thus
the A/B test).

