Blue Apron Tumbles After Losing Customers in Second Quarter
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
The second was an issue I had repeatedly with the meat and fish ingredients: I had several weeks where meat/fish packaging was open when I got the shipment and the contents went bad. I emailed them every time, but at some point I got tired of having to immediately go to the grocery store to find the right quantity of pork or cod or whatever to complete the meal.
Realistically, their 35 minute meals always took me closer to an hour once all was said and done. There almost never were any leftovers (yeah two medium sized sweet potatoes don't go too far for four people). Finally, the price was just a little too high.
I keep a few of the recipe cards and try to make those once in a while, but mostly I am just back to regular grocery shopping now.
At any rate, wanted to point out that they recently expanded the number of meals you can choose from in a given week and introduced new "faster to prepare" meal options, so they are definitely listening to that criticism. Note that I haven't tried any of these.
Meanwhile I've found that what helps a lot on cutting down extraneous dishes is just to read the entire recipe card a couple of times before starting so I know what's coming up and which steps can be cut down or combined to save dishes. It also helps to make the whole thing go quicker and feel less stressful during time sensitive portions.
>I'm not going to chop everything up front just to realize that the garlic goes in at the last step
This is the concept of "mise en place" and is actually a great habit to get into, I understand the concern about dishes though.
The tradeoff is dishes; sometimes you can get around this by just using a giant cutting board and setting pre-chopped ingredients off to one side of it (instead of in separate bowls).
Just say: chop these 3 things and add them to the same bowl you are going to marinate next
source: frustrated Blue Apron customer :)
I dunno, I've followed many where they explicitly tell you to put in same mixing bowl. Things are written in a more logical order.
> It's not hard to just read the next step
It's not always the next step, sometimes its one of the last as its a raw salad of some sort with a quick marinade or simple dressing.
> Hell, it never even actually says to put things in individual bowls.
On every recipe they provide you it is formatted with picture on left and steps on the right. Every recipe prep shows individual bowls of cut ingredients.
So it may not _say_ to put them in individual bowls but it always shows you you should put them in individual bowls.
It's a minor gripe the original poster had (and I share) you shouldn't have to study the recipe. It's not hard to just say cut up x,y,z and place into same mixing bowl. I want to pull out all the ingredients and start cooking and do my best to meet their advertised time, not spend more time planning their recipe.
I'm sure many people have made the same mistake, pictures speak a 1000 words after all.
It's good to write this yourself since you work it into your head...and also because such instructions could appear a bit batshit if you didn't write them!
I also cleanly distinguish the "shopping list" part of the recipe (which has it's own standard structure organized by pantry, fresh, spices, and unique ingredients) and the "cooking" part, which provides measurements in the cooking text without needing to refer to the ingredient list. It's a small thing, but I really hate scanning ingredient lists every time I need a measurement in the middle of cooking.
>Here is my theory, though: Blue Apron is a tech company in the sense that its product is not meals, or ingredients, but simulacrum. What it delivers is the idea of creating a home-cooked meal from fresh ingredients, without the tedious shopping and chopping work that that would otherwise require. What Blue Apron delivers is not exactly convenience -- ordering takeout is a lot more convenient -- but the perception that you are doing something complicated and real and primal while you are actually, through the miracle of technology, doing something much easier. Blue Apron is a virtual-reality company.
https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/view/articles/2017-08-09/yogur...
Cooking & cleaning is a much bigger time investment than shopping for ingredients. In 10 minutes in a grocery store I can buy enough food for 10-15 meals, which would take hours to cook (in aggregate). The comparison stands even when you include driving to the store (before any pedants try to be contrarian)
Blue Apron is optimizing the smaller part of the time pie required for eating, but at a higher cost than delivery (that optimizes the larger part of the pie for less money, usually)
That's why takeout is a decades-proved business model and Blue Apron is a VC-subsidized non-business.
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That being said, I do agree with it being a virtual reality company. And by that I mean a company that can't really exist in actual reality.
I've never used it but I've heard people say how they like it because
- they get to learn new recipes using less-common ingredients
- have good quality meals (which take out often doesn't provide, if we are considering time saving)
- they, sometimes at least, prefer eating at home.
If it's not, it'll eventually become a non-business.
1. There's nothing that suggests the ingredients are less common. But if you're a Blue Apron user, feel free to list some of the ingredients you were not able to find at a grocery store.
1.5: you can learn new recipes 10 different ways already, without having to subscribe to any "X as a service".
2. Nothing that suggests an average person can cook better or faster than takeout, which suggests the takeout provides value to the customer.
3. Completely irrelevant to the points at hand.
Regarding 1. It's not that the ingredients are less common per se. It's that using BA means that people ended up using some less commonly used ingredients. They were introduced to new things that they hadn't used before and wouldn't have sought out on their own. They liked that.
Regarding 1.5 - obviously, but the thing is there is greater convenience (that some ppl prefer) with not having to select the recipes, get the ingredients, portion them out. For some people that different in convenience makes the difference between whether they do it or not. So treating this issue as if it was purely a matter of whether it was possible or not doesn't make sense.
Regarding 2, I have heard people say they have been able to make high quality meals that they wouldn't usually have made that are better than most takeaway.
3 is most definitely relevant, because it's an example of a non-speed-based kind of value it provides to some people - getting the kind of meal they would only otherwise get at a restaurant but at home. Most takeaway can't do that.
What they did was provide daily dinner recipes for fancy-restaurant type meals, with instructions, wine pairing, and shopping list. If you're an omnivore, you could simply print the day's page, stop at the grocery store on the way home, and cook whatever it was.
It seems to me that this represents about 80% of the value of Blue Apron at no cost (I think they had a for-pay email service, or something?).
In the universe I inhabit there's no way that's true. I spend a great deal of time in the grocery store just finding things, then looking at the choices to figure out what's the best deal / doesn't contain Yellow #5 / isn't expired already and on and on.
Oh and...add to that the time to phone the wife to find out if when she wrote "Onion" on the list did that mean Yellow Onion or White Onion or Red Onion or Sweet Wallah Wallah Onion or Scallion and how many of them...
"What making meals from store-bought ingredients delivers is not exactly convenience -- ordering takeout is a lot more convenient -- but the perception that you are doing something complicated and real and primal while you are actually, through the miracle of technology, doing something much easier [than harvesting your vegetables, slaughtering and butchering your own animals, grinding your own flour, etc]"
The miracles of technology and labor specialization! You can pay someone money in order to have them partially process your food before you cook it!
Preservation matters - the cutting up of vegetables for meal kits is a form of processing that reduces their shelf life, and therefore increases cost and waste.
So, for similar meals, is Blue Apron. At least where I live.
Clearly, he's never used Blue Apron, since they have you do the chopping work.
> What Blue Apron delivers is not exactly convenience -- ordering takeout is a lot more convenient -
Takeout requires me to leave my house; that is often less convenient than Blue Apron.
Delivery is arguably more convenient, though where I live the non-pizza choices without hefty delivery fees on top of restaurant prices are limited.
That's what I was referring to already.
I just can't see paying a delivery fee for McDonald's
For special “eating out, but at home” events, no.
After I quit Blue Apron, I tried Hello Fresh. Their recipes were a lot simpler to follow, and tasted just as good, but I had serious quality issues. By the time I quit, I determined that 11% of the meat packages I had received were punctured, and started leaking when they defrosted. If the punctures happened after they were frozen and sealed they were probably safe to eat, but I had no way of knowing that.
We chose the 2 person meal plan because if our (even if nutritionally adventurous) 5 & 7 year olds didn't like the meal, we didn't want way too much leftovers. I'm the only person who has any dedication to leftovers (lunch about 3 times a week).
Portion wise, it felt like 2 person meal plan was usually ok for 3 adults so we'd often supplement with an extra chicken breast or something and spread the sauce thin.
Nutritionally, if felt like a TON of SALT & OIL. Mind you, it's not always bad thing, but I'm currently trying to keep my blood pressure, A1C, HDL, & LDL numbers in check and this always felt like it was harmful to that goal though I didn't check and measure if it was. I did lose weight however, on those weeks which is an odd dichotomy maybe.
In terms of recipe selection, sometimes, it felt like the recipes were just one or two minor ingredients off from being copies of a previous recipe. It did change the flavor, but for me, is that really a different recipe?
I too also had issues with the produce. Bad garlic, bad potatoes, etc.
And yes, there was the cost. $60/week felt just a little high to do that much of the work yourself as well as all of the clean up.
My wife is a one pan/pyrex/crockpot kind of cooker (and she did a stint in cooking school!). I'm more adventurous with the techniques, cooking styles, and willing to try foods of other origins. But, like IgorPatola mentioned, sometimes, specifying early on that you need so many prep dishes and/or X more are recommended, would be a huge help to the clean up part of the process or doing some pre-planning.
For that you may also explore a vegan diet, though you do need to continue to be aware of salt and oil in recipes, but in general avoiding avoiding mal products goes a long way
I got exactly the reverse impression; the recipes go out of their way to minimize the number of pieces of cookware required (both per recipe, by reuse, and across recipes), which both caters to those without a well-studied kitchen and minimizes the work of dishes.
They are obsessive about mis en place, which can use a few more prep bowls than strictly necessary, but prep bowls are easy cleanup, pots and pans are the time consuming items. (OTOH, mis en place is pretty much the secret key to efficient meal preparation, especially with multiple components, that many home cooks overlook. It's better to be slightly overboard with it than the alternative.)
My biggest problems were that #1 it's expensive relative to what I would pay to buy my own ingredients (especially for no leftovers), and #2 a lot of waste in the process. Specifically regarding waste, a lot of extra shipping packaging and each individual item is often individually wrapped in plastic. I get that they might not have any easy choices, but it seemed excessive and after a while it didn't sit well with me.
At the end of the day, I view this as an occasional luxury and not an everyweek thing like they want it to be. It's considerably more sustainable to go to the local farmer's market and grocer to pick up healthy, locally-grown produce and meats that are fresher and cheaper.
The recipe cards are by far the best part and I will give them a lot of credit for crafting some real tasty meals. I have made several meals more than once on my own with the recipe card.
However your comment about preprepping everything, aka mise en place, actually does improve your cooking experience in the long run once you get used to doing it. Sure some things you can multitask on but it's not always possible to say how long it'll take you to chop up that garlic and maybe you timed it wrong
Again this is all theory and I could be super wrong.
You're absolutely correct that a true mise en place, for most dishes, is more of a hyperoptimization for people who aren't cooking on a line. Things like quick stir fries are an exception, mind you.
I started, as most people do, prepping as I go. My cooking sucked. Not just because I prepped as I went, but partially so. I'd get to step 3 and see for step 4 I needed chopped onions, so I'd start chopping onions. But step 3 was supposed to cook for less time than it took me to chop onions, so step 3 went on too long. In this sense, a full mise en place helped me get better at the actual cooking parts.
As time went on I developed better cooking habits. I'd understand the full recipe prior to cooking. I had a better body of experience to estimate how long chopping those onions would take so I could plan ahead on if I should be doing it ahead of time or while some step < 4 was going on. I also had a better conception of the economies of scale in that perhaps it would be faster prepping items A, B, and C at the same time instead of separately but item D didn't matter.
Once you get to that point I think you're absolutely correct in that a hybrid model is better overall, but I think one needs to go the full mise en place route first to develop better cooking chops (pardon the pun) prior to going that route.
If someone can make a service that focuses on using a single pan/dish per meal, I'm interested.
The objective is to show you that, "hey, cooking great stuff is within your realm of capability! It's fun and empowering. You don't have to be like Waterluvian over there who walks past all the produce and butcher every time because he has no clue how to make something of it all." After meal 10 or whatever, that's it, there's no more, you've graduated the "Get a Taste of Cooking" program. Now you move on to more traditional grocery shopping with your new added confidence and practice that will ideally see you buying more produce and fewer frozen dishes.
That being said, I wish we at least had what you describe :)
I love when people/companies with money are trying an idea I have. It makes me feel smart ;)
On the plus side, it put me in the regular habit of cooking together with my wife. We love many of the recipes, which are freely available on their website...we've already started "re-doing" many meals by picking up the ingredients on regular shopping trips.
EDIT: One other thought - the whole market seems a lot like the GroupOn craze in some ways. It's an idea that consumers are attracted to, but the economics and excess competition make the whole concept fragile.
Yeah, Groupon is a great comparison IMO. Huge initial growth, but spending a bunch of money to acquire each customer doesn't work once a bunch of copy-cat competitors enter the market.
I also wonder how many folks drop off once they've learned some basic cooking skills from the recipes - chopping, searing, getting the right proportions, etc.
They've also been spamming me with discounts to the wine club only to tell me that they can't legally deliver in NY when I tried to sign up. Don't they know where I live?
I hope they can recover because I do truly like the product and I think they're the best right now (a margin better than Hello Fresh, leagues better than Plated)
Some of the rejected candidates before they settled on Blue Apron: "Orange Orange", "Sky Aubergine", "Yellow Spatula", "The-color-of-a-lawnchair-that's-been-out-in-the-rain-too-long Cucumber".
Second, the company produces enormous amounts of plastic pollution from packaging. Why should we pollute our planet so the CEO can make $1 more on the stock market?
If the world switched to services like Blue Apron/Hello Fresh/etc. rather than shopping in super markets, I wonder if we would overall produce more or less pollution? Super markets use a lot of energy and have a lot of waste.
If people switched to shopping at local farmer's markets - so food wouldn't be shipped around at all - we would produce much less pollution and have much sustainable agriculture than either of those options.
I don't remember which recipe it was, except to say it was a chicken recipe - probably with quinoa. Six of the eight steps included "Salt and Pepper to taste". Fortunately, my wife and I both cook regularly, so we knew that would have been a terrible idea.
I only seasoned the chicken once, and nothing else, and the dinner came out great. My friend cooks often as well, so I assume he just skips the unnecessary steps if they show up as well. His wife is just learning, though, which is why they were using Blue Apron. I'd have to assume she may end up over-seasoning from time to time if that's how the recipes normally go.
As someone who already eats home-cooked meals almost daily, I couldn't imagine paying that price. But overall the idea makes a lot of sense, provided execution is perfect. It seems, reading the rest of this thread, that hasn't been the case of late.
Additionally something seasoned at the start of cooking won't be "salty" like if you were to add salt directly on the food after its plated.
You don't add a crap ton of salt 5 times, just a pinch here and there and the outcome is great.
A little less than a decade ago, I went almost a month eating only home-cooked meals without any added salt. It wasn't a health thing, but rather an effort to try to learn what my food actually tasted like.
After that, Everything tasted far too salty (including my own cooking when adding any salt) - to the point where I could barely taste the food properly. My tolerance has risen since, but I like to keep my seasoning moderate for that reason.
Then again, I'll also throw a whole stick of butter into pasta sauce on rare occasion - a trick I learned from another chef friend. It took my wife a while to realize why she liked my pasta sauce so much more than her own, and she's definitely a far more seasoned cook than I am.
While yes, I can spend time researching things, picking things out, etc. all for free, sometimes I do just want the experience to be catered. Add on top of that an automated, weekly/bi-weekly grocery list was pretty damn cool. Otherwise, I typically end up making the same boring meals I already know.
I didn't continue with them because my boyfriend is a pretty amazing cook, so I just leave cooking to him instead haha
Though it needs a CSA mode so you can tell it I got way too much swiss chard and it needs to be cooked..
I was tempted just so I didn't have to think about what to cook, but I find Yummly [2] to be a great inspiration and helps me to try new dishes.
1. https://www.hellofresh.co.uk/ 2. https://www.yummly.co.uk/
BTW, Hello Fresh is actually one of the companies funded by the infamous Samwer brothers and their Rocket Internet. They operate in several European countries, and they have been offering large discounts. I don't imagine they're not burning through a lot of cash because of that.
I just come home to matching ingredients and can start cooking at any time (which I mostly enjoy doing and is relaxing). It also saves time that I would need to decide on recipes and make lists and go shopping (all of which I don't like and stresses me out).
Its not about saving the maximum amount of time, but getting rid of the unpleasant parts around cooking at home. And eating out is much more expensive (where I live, maybe except the junkiest of junkfood), so this is an acceptable compromise.
It's possible that the pro forma looked nice based on quotes from suppliers. I've tried several of these meal kit companies and they all suffer from basic logistics and quality problems. I suspect it's a hard business with hidden costs and lots of unknown unknowns.
This is why I and others[0] believe Amazon will use its purchase of Whole Foods to change the fundamentals of this business and provide the infrastructure companies like Blue Apron need to do this profitably. Before Amazon fulfillment existed ecommerce was a logistical mother fucker. I worked at a number of startups in the late 90's and early 00's that struggled with this. I think there are a lot of similarities here.
If there's one thing Amazon has going for them, it's figured out logistics at scale. The economics of a service like this start to look a lot better when your delivery rates are dirt cheap _and_ you can selectively serve zip codes with highest demand.
Serving sparse suburban or rural areas doesn't make sense with ingredient delivery.
Everyone complains about the lack of convenience but it saves me mind capacity more than anything and I never have to go to the store. We also like variety in food. Recipes show up, I cook for 30 minutes and we have family meals.
$20/meal to feed three adults and a toddler is a bargain to me as well.
I prefer Blue Apron to others and cringe to think they might make it easier. Note, I could barely cook before and took twice as long. I just use a giant cutting board and a favorite spatula and knife and occasionally use more than one pan. I also overlap things like preheating the pans and chopping while things cook.
We recreate some of the meals but have a hard time getting the quantities to match up. It usually means I have to make a double batch for guests or have leftovers and need to stock the pantry with various sauces and vinegars.
Execution issues are just adding fuel to the fire.
Meal kits are going to be a big business. But they're going to come from your grocery store, your office cafeteria, or Amazon. That's it.
In light of that news I can see why Matt Wadiak, their previous COO, recently "stepped down".
If I still worked as an AIB inspector I'd be going straight to their warehouses right now and running a top-to-bottom run-through.
I really enjoyed the product, and never had an issue with quality.
for me cost was primary reason for cancelling. Buying ingredients saves me about $100 a month. Even with Blue Apron I had to go to the grocery store weekly for lunch and breakfast food, so it was a "nice to have luxury", not something that saved time or money.
I worry that Blue Apron is going to have a hard time making the economics of custom acquisition vs. life time value work if high churn is a permanent thing.
Then I found freshly, which sends pre-made meals, and I love it.