
Blue Apron to Sell Meal Kits in Stores to Buttress Sagging Deliveries - uptown
https://www.wsj.com/articles/blue-apron-to-sell-meal-kits-in-stores-to-buttress-sagging-deliveries-1521118800
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atonse
Ever since I got my FIRST Blue Apron box (two years ago maybe?), I felt they
should've sold boxes in stores. I simply don't understand how they had such a
blind spot for something so obvious.

We used Blue Apron on and off for 2 months and just got tired of it. We loved
the food but sometimes we just wanted to have our native cuisine. But some
nights, you want to try something new impulsively, which is where having them
available in grocery stores would've been great.

Blue Apron also had seemingly slimy tactics (even if they weren't, they felt
that way). Like for example, you had to cancel a week in advance for a
delivery, but you could opt in for a delivery 2-3 days before the new week
started. Also you couldn't just say "stop until I say start," but rather you
had to login every 2 weeks to keep clicking "Skip delivery." All these things
leave a bad taste in your mouth (pun fully, and proudly intended)

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Mantipath
Do you still have to e-mail them for a link to cancel your subscription
completely? That's the dark pattern I couldn't stand from them. Unforgivable.

~~~
rrdharan
I think you can click through to it now.

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ndaiger
I use Blue Apron sporadically; it can be a good thing on a busier week because
it removes both menu planning and shopping while still letting you make home-
cooked meals (take-out more than once a week or so gets really old).

It can also be a great break when your go-to recipes feel too repetitive.

But often one of the three recipes ends up being a dud, and if you forget to
skip a week and get a bunch of stuff you don't feel like cooking it's an
expensive and _annoying_ obligation to prepare meals you didn't really want or
make an ersatz recipe out of the ingredients they sent.

There is absolutely zero chance I would go to a store to buy a Blue Apron box.
Without the convenience of home delivery, it really loses its appeal.

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013a
I agree. The biggest annoyance with Blue Apron is planning your deliveries.
There might be a week you were planning to skip, for cost reasons or "too busy
to even cook" reasons, but you forget until its too late. Or, you might forget
to go in and select the recipes you want, so you get a couple good ones and
one that you never would have ordered, wasting at least $20.

But I think it depends on the cost of these in-store kits. It does remove the
huge convenience advantage, but I still like the idea of meal prep kits. The
problem with in-store is that this space is so easy to compete in, and now
you're asking to go up against every other company that can find space on a
store shelf, which is easier than maintaining a delivery network.

Blue Apron's food isn't especially high quality and the recipes aren't
especially amazing. They're great, but not great enough that I wouldn't switch
to a competitor if the price or quality was better.

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AdmiralAsshat
Not a bad idea in spirit, but the store's mark-up might be too much to make it
worthwhile. I like the idea of Blue Apron in spirit, but the sheer amount of
waste it produces in the delivery boxes turned me off.

One thing it does well is providing only as much of said ingredient as you
need. I recently tried to get into Chinese cooking, and before I made my first
two or three dishes I had to run out and buy Hoisin sauce, chili garlic sauce,
oyster sauce, Chinese rice wine, and minced ginger. That's quite a bit of an
initial investment before I even decide whether I like the food or not. So if
I can pay a little extra upfront just to get whatever amount of those sauces I
need while I'm still in the trial phase, that would be nice.

As someone else said, local grocery stores could probably do very well just by
providing their own meal kits. Wegmans does this on occasion, although their
stuff is usually assembled to the point where you simply bake it.

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skynetv2
but ... the cost of all those ingredients will still be significantly less
than what you pay any meal delivery service, is it not? for a $1, you can get
a bottle of Hoisin sauce.

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dmschulman
All of those ingredients, with the exception of the garlic, will stay good for
years as well.

I find it infinitely more resourceful to have a well-stocked kitchen with
ingredients that last a good while than to go out and buy a single serving of
anything. I would never consider buying a specific spice or sauce "an
investment" in a single type of dish given both the small cost and the
viability of those items in other types of cooking. Hoisin is great when
making hamburgers or chilis, for example.

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berdon
We just cancelled our Hello Fresh (which we loved) but if we can buy similar
kits at the store we'll probably do so.

Hello Fresh boxes are great but their subscription and forced delivery model
just doesn't work with our schedule. We sporadically shift between cooking and
eating out. They're not having a "send me a box now" option forced our hand in
cancelling.

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mertd
> "send me a box now"

So instant food delivery but you still have to cook it? That would be a very
narrow market.

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berdon
I had meant "Send me a box this week".

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atomical
I've ordered pre-made meals before. Having ingredients delivered doesn't make
sense to me though. Enough energy to cook but not enough energy to go to the
store? I'm sure there are a million excuses, but just buy some produce at the
store people.

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wgerard
To be fair, for New York (where Blue Apron is based out of) it actually makes
some sense. Grocery shopping in New York can be (heavily depending on where
you go) a taxing experience. Especially in Manhattan.

Space is expensive, so stores often have pretty narrow aisles in order to cram
in as much as they can. You're almost always blocking people the second you
stop moving for any reason.

Trader Joe's is so popular that it's not uncommon for there to be a line _just
to get into the store_. The checkout line moves quickly, but because it's so
large you'll still probably spend 20-30 minutes waiting in line to check out.

Anyway just shining a bit of light on why people might hate grocery shopping.
I still think grocery delivery services make way more sense than something
like Blue Apron, though.

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damontal
just in general grocery shopping drives me crazy. find your item on a shelf.
put it in the cart. take it out of the cart. put it on the belt. put it back
in the cart. take it out of the cart. put it in your car. take it out of the
car. put it on a shelf.

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pfarnsworth
Stuff like this is a death spiral. It’s clearly a case of audience and
revenues being bought by VC money, and is unsustainable without cash
infusions. Yet early investors were able to sucker mutual funds and retail
investors to buy their shitty stock. Another case of VCs winning and the
general public losing. At some point we have to hold the mutual funds
responsible for perpetuating this BS because they are the enablers for VCs to
profit no matter how terrible the stock is.

I wonder what this means about ride sharing. I actually believe it’s a game
changer and it’s sustainable to profitability but stories like this make me
wonder.

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zwieback
Wow, you sound bitter. It's true that huge amounts of money are wasted and
perhaps investors being gypped but the question is whether crappy business
models would be shaken out as quickly with conventional investment/banking
strategies.

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ggg9990
They can do whatever they want, it won’t matter in a few years when Amazon
flattens them.

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xbryanx
The second Amazon starts offering these in Whole Foods I'm all over it. And I
bet a bunch of other people will to.

We do meal kits (Local Crate) and they're great, but always need a little
augmenting (extra veg. mostly). So I'm already at the store a few times a
week. The meal kits just simplify the process enormously. Marry the two and
you've got a killer product.

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ghaff
It seems like something Whole Foods is missing out on. There's a local Whole
Foods-like store I've swung by in town that carries their own kits.

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5555624
A store can easily undercut Blue Apron by providing homegrown meal kits, as
soon as they see that they sell. Some grocery stores already do this
([https://www.thefreshmarket.com/specials/little-big-
meal](https://www.thefreshmarket.com/specials/little-big-meal)).

~~~
scrooched_moose
Another:
[https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/2017/...](https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/2017/07/20/hy-
vee-wants-tax-breaks-new-64-million-facility-ankeny/496951001/)

Some individual stores have been doing it independently of corporate since at
least 2016:
[https://www.facebook.com/events/968415496617260/](https://www.facebook.com/events/968415496617260/)

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DoreenMichele
I'm wondering if this (these meal in a box services) is just one of those
wrongheaded approaches. There's some saying about "Cheap, good or fast: pick
two." And it seems like services like this are shooting for all three or
something.

Yes, if you could do all three, sure, people would like to get that. But I
don't see how there is profit in it. It seems like the target market is people
who don't have time and energy to cook and don't have money to spare either.
It's like they are secretly trying to solve the problem of the harried,
overworked, underpaid 99 percent. And that's not really a business model. It's
more like something that needs to be addressed by charities or government
policy.

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harlanji
Excellent. I can’t read it because of the pay wall, but the key value it
brought, being one to always live blocks from a coop, was the sack of
seasoning and the like in the right amount. Previous attempts at learning to
cook had always lead to 80%+ waste in bottles of perishable sauces,
seasonings, et. al. BA/Plated overall are a Godsend, this headline sounds like
a good step given the holiday pileups/reschedules and sometimes
missed/misplaced deliveries.

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sylens
I tried Blue Apron but didn't stick with it because the recipes were actually
pretty time consuming for the amount of food you prepared, and also because of
the unreliable timing of the deliveries. If you live in the city, you need to
be home for the deliveries to be made, and waiting for a FedEx truck to show
up whenever is annoying. FreshDirect was much better since you can schedule a
two-hour window for delivery.

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freshyill
Blue Apron is sooo time consuming. Everything arrives just rolling around in
the box. You need to sort it, then find a place to put it in your own cabinets
and refrigerator. Their time estimates for cooking are often off by half, and
the recipes are hard to follow. I really don't like Blue Apron.

Some of the others I like have the food for each meal all come in a single
bag, so I don't have to keep track of it in my fridge. My wife usually handles
these and she switches them up frequently, so I can't remember all of them,
but my favorite is Terra's Kitchen, because it has the least waste, and short,
accurate prep times. All the items are numbered to match the meal they're for.

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heavymark
I had Blue Apron and at first loved it, but ultimately, their calories where
far too high and didn't have any offerings for people on a diet or other
health conscious concerns such as low sodium and such. Their food was tasty
but by missing out over health conscious options, they missed a growing niche,
and once Amazon or someone comes in with more options they will be done.

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ukyrgf
Publix already sells meal kits near me, including slowcooking kits and baking
bags you just open one end of and toss in the oven. Seems like any grocery
store with actually fresh meat and produce could easily compete with this,
right?

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Aloha
Its a service I might be interested in signing up for - but I refuse to make
an account, so they can email me and nag me, to find out how much it might
cost.

