If they guarantee delivery in 2 hours and they don't have these costs, they're paying someone else who has these costs, right? How can they really be a competitor to Amazon, then? I have to think that Amazon is operating on such razor-thin margins precisely because they think they can do a much better job than using someone else.
Obviously, as your volume increases, it makes sense to own more steps along the value chain yourself.
While that's just fine - I would love to see a service that lowers the cost to me as a consumer for food.
Actually, let me rephrase that: I, personally, need a service that helps me reduce the amount of food I waste. With a family of (5) in my household, we waste a lot of food - and it drives me nuts.
I hope that something along the lines of Blue Apron could help me throw out less/buy less.
I would love to be able to shop based on meals - where I say "on Wednesday night we are going to serve turkey meatloaf with broccoli and salad for 4 people" and understand the ingredients and proportions that match that.
I wind up having stuff rot because I only use a portion of it for whatever I make, and I don't have a set menu so the food is random/too-often-the-same etc...
I want the entire experience to be optimized.
Maybe I have just been too lazy? However, I am not 100% convinced that food is not sold in the wrong proportions.
In the case of a single lime it isn't really possible to buy less (and at least limes are cheap), but with other items I could benefit from more exact planning.