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Comment by ryanmercer | Hacker News Reader

"Company with absurdly expensive food that still requires considerable preparation gets rejected by non-tech workers".

Federal minimum wage is $7.25 and median HOUSEHOLD income is around 59k so let's look at their pricing: the cheapest plan they offer is $39.96 a week for 4 servings a week ranging to $143.84 for 16 servings a week for $143.84.

That means 1-day's kcals for someone on a 2k kcal diet is $25.68 to $39.96 a day depending on the plan. PURE INSANITY.

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I had an interesting conversation with colleagues about this. They are all well educated people but for some reason they compared these services to eating out, rather than buying food at a grocery store.

Many of my colleagues thought $10/meal was great! My mouth dropped when they claimed how good of a deal this was.

you measure your food's value by cost per kcal?

Of course comparing celery to a McDouble using just kcal/$ is not really appropriate but when comparing two reasonably nutritionally balanced meals it's an ok way to compare value.

At their pricing 1-day's kcals for someone on a 2k kcal diet is $25.68 to $39.96 a day depending on the plan.

I spend $45-60 for a WEEK (depending on sales and meat close to sell-by date) and I'm a 300+ pound powerlifter!

Cost for the delivered food and spices may be high, but I think blue apron missed out on the larger opportunity of food preparation education, aka cooking. They could have gamified the whole system to offer more difficult meals as the subscriber gets better, with points for free perks and all that.

This is a good idea, but wouldn't that essentially ensure that you churn out your best customers eventually? They get so good at cooking that they don't need your perfectly portioned and pre-prepped but overpriced meal kits.

That's already happened with me, I mainly look up recipes and buy in store.I believe that adding "perks" for best customers would help keep them around a big longer.

That’s actually an average meal price for that size meal in NYC. That said, there’s no cooking involved for that $10, unlike with Blue Apron.

What food has the most calories per dolar?

>What food has the most calories per dolar?

For DIY food my wild guess would be butter. My somewhat educated guess for prepared food would be something off the value menu at McDonalds/Burger King/Wendys.

I thought someone measured twinkies to be the best... That was a few years ago though, we may have found something by now that's even better. (or worse, depending how you look at it)

Pizza, esp with sausage on. It's basically just fat, and costs very little to buy.

A Big Mac is actually only 500 cals, a double Whopper 1100.

Pizza can end up being 6000.

My first guess would have been rice. Rice is super cheap. According to [1], it's oils and flours, followed closely by rice and sugar.

Butter is around $5/lb for 32 x 100-Kcal servings, so it's only around 640 Kcal/$. That would put it pretty far down the list, below milk and eggs, and on par with lentils.

[1]: https://efficiencyiseverything.com/the-highest-calorie-per-d...

Soybean oil from CostCo https://efficiencyiseverything.com/the-highest-calorie-per-d...

That's going to depend but if you mean something that isn't highly processed stuff like rice, beans, wheat, potatoes.

Check out subs like

- https://www.reddit.com/r/EatCheapAndHealthy/

- https://www.reddit.com/r/7dollardinners/

- https://www.reddit.com/r/EatCheapAndVegan/

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