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Comment by gigatexal | Hacker News Reader

Shopping is mind numbingly tedious. Getting the best quality food for the least cost can take a couple hours. Why do that when a company, for a nominal fee, can do that for you? My only reservation is portions. I tend to eat more than the average person. So I will continue to waste time in the market shopping.

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Why not use instacart to solve this? Some recipe sites are even starting add a "purchase this recipe on instacart" button.

What would you consider a nominal fee? Blue Apron costs about $10 per person per meal for modest portions, I can easily buy ingredients for half, if not a third of that.

This is based on their podcast ads I'm always hearing; I didn't research it.

> What would you consider a nominal fee? Blue Apron costs about $10 per person per meal for modest portions, I can easily buy ingredients for half, if not a third of that.

This is excellent logic! However, it's possible that it only really works ideally if you consider shopping to not be a cost or do it for zero time. When shopping is both a time and complexity sink, some people choose to consider the option of spending money instead of time and effort.

Don't forget to include prep time, which can vary depending on the recipe and the number of ingredients. I'm assuming Blue Apron takes care of most of the prep?

I haven't used it, but from what I've seen they take care of at least some of the prep and much of the measurement.

Sure we can get into the details of it if you like, my point was just that it's not a trivial cost. It saves you the effort of shopping.

If you shop for groceries once a week, and make, say, 10 meals at home for an average of $4 each, then you're paying Blue Apron $60. It takes me about an hour to go shopping, but I live near the grocery store and enjoy being able to pick things out. Others might be in a different situation and be willing to pay a hefty fee to not bother.

How much is your time spent shopping (including round trip travel time, gas or taxi/bus fare) worth? What's the quality on their ingredients like? It's not a simple comparison between the receipt price of the raw ingredients.

I must be lucky, but for me walking 10 minutes to Aldi each way. Ingredients are probably £3-5 ($4-6) for two people. Makes these delivery things really expensive

Damn. I get already-cooked meals delivered for $13/each on Macro Plate's high protein plan. And the meals are really good. Lots of vegetables.

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