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Comment by thrwy_918 | Hacker News Reader

Everyone I know (30something urbanites) uses meal kit services when they get an attractive sign up offer, and cancels shortly after the subsidized initial period has finished. Then after a few weeks or months they might sign up with a different meal kit service when a sign up offer becomes attractive enough. They cycle through the services in this way, because the same service seems happy to give the same customer a new sign-up offer if enough time has passed since they were a subscriber.

I don't know anyone who is a loyal customer to any meal kit service and is paying full price.

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Well, hi, here's one.

Once a week we (my GF and I) quickly pick 5 meals (Netherlands, HelloFresh). If it comes in we spent 5-10 minutes checking and organising and then we have food for most of the week. Since we have a 6-month old baby we pick the meals with a shorter cook time, this week is 'the weak without meat' (is it national or international) so we pick veggie.

NO effort in deciding what to cook, NO effort in making the shopping list (let alone go out for groceries) and (almost) NO leftovers. I agree this is highly personal but all three are a big win for us. The meals are relatively easy to prepare, healthy (it seems, I am not an expert) and varied.

I like leftovers, get to skip one round if cooking. The shopping list is always the same over time, it doesn't take effort. Just write down when something runs out.

Deciding what to cook at time is challenging.

At full price it's cheaper to just order takeout. Less healthy, at the places where it's cheaper, but still. Then you don't have to cook or clean up the mess from cooking.

I've also, personally, found these kits to be no less work than cooking normally. Sometimes, more, because the recipe will be more complex than something I'd have cooked on my own. It saves you meal planning and ordering the ingredients from the store (or going shopping), which isn't nothing, but it's not really that convenient—it'd have to also be cheap for me to want to do it very often, and at full price, they're not cheap.

Exactly, been bouncing between HelloFresh and Gusto for over a year. I honestly think the services are great, excellent way to have a variety of home cooked meals that I would never have considered. As long as I don't have to pay full price for it.

I'm sure I'm the reason every speaker at Microconf says don't do B2C.

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