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Comment by harryh | Hacker News Reader

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harryh

If you can afford a meal-in-a-box service, why would you not just go to a restaurant

Because I'd rather eat at home. Especially if I have kids. It's easier.

Because it's a lot cheaper.

Because it's better for me from a health perspective.

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One thing people miss out: at home, I have complete control over portion sizes.

I tend to end up overeating at restaurants because the portions are bigger.

At home, I can only serve as much as I want and keep the rest in the fridge.

In theory, I can - and do - do that at restaurants as well, but somehow, the restaurant environment promotes eating more. If I have four bites left, I might hesitate to ask for a takeaway box. But in the house, I can just throw that into a tupperware and pop it in the fridge

But the point has been made several times in this thread, it's not much cheaper. Unless you're referring to some Michelin-starred restaurant, it's quite possible to eat fast-casual for the same price of many of these kits (especially if you live in a suburb where restaurants tend to be much cheaper than in e.g. SF)

> But the point has been made several times in this thread, it's not much cheaper.

Yes, it is.

> Unless you're referring to some Michelin-starred restaurant, it's quite possible to eat fast-casual for the same price of many of these kits (especially if you live in a suburb where restaurants tend to be much cheaper than in e.g. SF)

Blue Apron is $8.74 (family plan) or $9.99 (couples plan) per plate for complete dinners. I live in the suburbs in the Central Valley (not the Bay Area) and it's well below fast-casual prices for comparable composition meals (also, better quality than most fast-casual places.)

Now, if you are talking about fast-food rather than fast-casual, that still is cheaper.

This doesn't hold true for the rest of America. Go build a chipotle meal at some other zip code.

South East: 1 chipotle burrito bowl, chicken, black beans, brown rice, guac, hot salsa, cheese 1 22oz drink Total - $10.20

> Go build a chipotle meal at some other zip code.

Chipotle is much lower quality than anything I've had from Blue Apron (this is typical of low-price national chain fast-casual restaurants; the fast-casual restaurants that are worth comparing are independent or local-chain places).

So, yeah, if that's the kind of food you want, it's price comparable to BA (but you wouldn't be looking at BA if you were satisfied with that kind of food I the first place.)

Chipotle is nowhere near the quality I can produce in my own kitchen, even setting aside its recent correlation with e coli outbreaks. This price is also precisely the same price point (around $10 per person per meal) that these services provide. And when I cook at home, I don't have to drive anywhere, or accept the enormous amount of extraneous salt and cooking fat that tends to get used in those situations.

I thought Chipotle was straight-up fast food, and that's already more expensive than Blue Apron. To me, fast-casual means Chili's, Applebee's, etc. You're talking easily $15/pp without alcohol or tax or tip. Plus at least 90 minutes out of your day to get there, wait for your waiter, get the menu, order, wait, ask for the check, wait, get the check, pay the check, wait for the check to come back, leave, go home.

> I thought Chipotle was straight-up fast food

I tend to think of it that way, but it's pretty much, among national chains, the one that is held out as the archetypical fast-casual (IME, it's pretty bottom of the barrel for partial-table service, and no more fast-casual than Carl's Jr., which also has partial table service.)

Anecdotally from what I've read on reddit AMAs from restaurant kitchen workers, most fast casual places cook only a few items from scratch, a majority at a place like Chili's or Applebees is prepared from a pre made portion supplied by Sysco. One pretty much has to have a source in the kitchen to know if someone is cooking a dish from scratch for you or if you are paying to essentially have someone else heat up your food like going out for a Blue Apron meal. Even somewhat fancier restaurants serve a lot of Sysco dishes. http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2016/food/farm-to-fable/res...

Blue Apron meals are significantly better than what you'll find in a fast casual restaurant.

> it's quite possible to eat fast-casual for the same price of many of these kits (especially if you live in a suburb where restaurants tend to be much cheaper than in e.g. SF)

Sure, but now we're not making an apples-to-apples comparison anymore, given the quality of fast-casual food vs even nominally home-cooked food. I don't like fast-casual food, and I don't think I'm alone in this. I enjoy home-cooked food and I enjoy food from restaurants above a certain quality bar.

What you're saying isn't that far off from saying "why does anyone cook _or_ go to restaurants when they could just have Soylent?". Quality matters to people.

I highly doubt any of these claims are true on the low end. Maybe if you only go to expensive restaurants.

You're ignoring that the GP comment is working on multiple axes. For a given level of healthfulness, these services may well be cheaper and easier. Sometimes cost is not the primary constraint.

even for a given level of healthfullness preparing your own food is faster and cheaper. what's your point? the only thing meal kits have on making your own food is variety. that's ultimately what you're paying for.

Meal kits are making your own food. What you are paying for is, well, the "kit" part: not having to shop with potentially inconvenient sizes, and getting everything pre-measured for the meal.

sure. however meal kits are inferior to just going to the grocery store in most ways.

I use the time I used to spend grocery shopping posting on HN. So I like the meal kits. Obviously ymmv.

I just do my grocery shopping online. The company I use charges $9.99 for delivery and you have to order more than $45, but otherwise it's basically just a regular grocery store (they're owned by one). You have to do some planning since you won't get it until at least the following day, though. I order once a month.

I disagree entirely. I cannot get the ingredients for most of Plated meals for what they charge. I end up with lots of spoiled food, unless I make huge batches and eat the same thing all week.

do you not have a fridge with a freezer?

There are certainly restaurants where you can spend less than $10/person but not for the quality of food in a Blue Apron box.

Well, I'm in Canada and every restaurant near the university is less than $10/person. While a number of them are the normal fast food, both the Indian, Chinese, and Thai/Vietnamese places have excellent food. Last I checked, the Korean and Arabic places were good too, but since my dietary restrictions changed, I haven't been there.

I'd likely never buy a Blue Apron box for the simple fact that I have pretty tight dietary restrictions that I loosen a bit when I eat out (but not a lot). If I cook at home, I'm going to follow those restrictions pretty closely so most regular recipes won't work.

As I said in my other comment, my total cost per meal per person with hello fresh is £5. You literally can't eat that cheaply at a restaurant. Even if you have the cheapest item on the menu and only ask for tap water to drink, it will be more than £5/person, and then you have to include the cost of getting to the restaurant and back. I was going to say that maybe you could eat for less if you were happy with a frozen burger or hot dog, but even cheap pub food will cost you more than £5 per person.

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