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Comment by x2f10 | Hacker News Reader

>But it seems kind of antithetical to how grocery stores make money. They're low margin, high volume businesses. And this directly attacks volume.

Not necessarily. The margin on meal kits are stronger than the ingredients alone (e.g. sliced fruits & veggies). In relation to the volume, meal kit buyers still need to eat. The hungry buyer must cook at home (w/ groceries), go to a restaurant, or buy a second meal kit. To me, this sounds like an attack on the fast food / restaurant industry. Grocery stores can market these meal kits as more affordable, healthier, and 'hip'.

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>Grocery stores can market these meal kits as more affordable, healthier, and 'hip'.

I did a meal kit service for a little while, and my biggest complaint was that it was not any cheaper than if I were to go out to eat, but I still had to cook the meal and clean up afterwards. If there were a cost savings versus going to eat at a restaurant, I would have kept the subscription.

Where do you live?

I had the same experience with Blue Apron, but I also live in Manhattan, where it's about 20-30% cheaper for a single person to get takeout/delivery than it is to buy groceries and cook - and that's before accounting for the cost of time.

Comparing the prices in the suburbs, though, that's not the case. And as soon as you add a second person (or more) to the mix, of course, it becomes cheaper to cook.

Where can you eat for less than $10 besides McDonald’s or a pizza place?

> Where can you eat for less than $10 besides McDonald’s or a pizza place?

Depends on where you live. In New York, for example, it's incredibly easy to find good food for under $10, even for dinner.

I live in New York (four years in Manhattan and a couple more in Brooklyn).

I think "incredibly easy" is a gross exaggeration. I supposed you might be talking about the street carts, but street meat is questionably healthy / "good". The deeper you get into parts of Queens it's certainly possible, but I think the previous poster had in mind some sort of sit down establishment rather than street food.

I live midtown, and yes, it is incredibly easy to find prepared food for dinner that is cheaper than what these meal kit services charge, or even cheaper than the equivalent in groceries. I'm not talking about street carts either.

If heat lamp slop is your thing, by all means. Not sure it's that comparable, though.

> If heat lamp slop is your thing, by all means. Not sure it's that comparable, though.

Not sure where you get the idea that that's what I'm eating.

High-quality prepared food is pretty cheap in Manhattan, compared to the price of groceries and compared to the price in other places in the US. When you think about the underlying economics of it and the region, it's not surprising.

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