Terminalcoffee discussion

Blue Apron is a food company/service that mails fresh ingredients in a box to your door, and you cook dinner for yourself. Has anyone tried it?

https://www.blueapron.com/

I keep reading lifestyle articles in which random people reference how they use it. Seems like a lot of extra work to me, considering what you're paying....if I'm paying $10/serving I might as well get takeout and not do any work at all.

It's kind of like...I saw this boxed French bread (1 long loaf) at the store yesterday. It was uncooked. You were supposed to take it home and bake it yourself. But it cost twice as much as the already baked French bread (fresh) they were selling. Why would I spend twice as much for uncooked bread and have to contribute the labor myself?

Haven't tried it, but one would have to have more money than sense to subscribe to one of these services.

This meal kit business is madness. It is preying on people in the most terrible fashion.

First watch this little video (in the linked article) from CNBC:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/11/its-no...

Noooo, this is NOT going to change the way I eat hopefully. I'm not interested in this type of food poisoning by post.

Now look at the link to the Martha Stewart Thanksgiving dinner:

https://www.marthathanksgiving.com/

Are you $*(Y$T freaking kidding me? $179 dollars for the ingredients for 8-10 people??? Have you never been to a grocery store? From the information easily available without calling or chatting with the site, to prepare this is going to require pots and pans and several items that may not be available in everyone's kitchen. If the turkey cookers have them, they probably already know how to do this without the instruction card.

Free Range Turkey? I got your free range turkey. Give me a day or two notice and I'll head out to the wood and bag you a real fresh free range gobbler. Nah. That's not what you want. You want a farm raised bird from Butterball. Much better. And most of them come with the pop up indicator that is necessary to not give your family and friends the joy of the holiday trip to the emergency room.

It's interesting that the title of the article is It's not a fad. Meal kits are going to change the way you eat. but most of the article contradicts that. At the very end you have a financial analyst saying "I wouldn't put meal kits in the fad category."

Yet the article says: only 3 percent of American adults have even tried the service. Half of those have already canceled their subscription! The industry has "exploded" - there are 150 companies - yet none of them are profitable (or their profit margins are super super tiny). AND they are limited by what they can charge; people are only going to pay so much for a meal kit because they are calculating how much their other options cost: cooking at home from scratch and going to a restaurant. So there is really no room for these companies to become profitable because they can't increase the cost of the product.

I've seen mainstream marketing for this. I guess people with lots of disposable income might see this as an in-home fast food option, but that same demographic probably has a person who shops for fresh ingredients and prepares them. I don't see this as being profitable.