Anyone do the new food ordering websites? BlueApron, etc?

[dank69]

I have no idea how there is a market for this shit. Like grocery shopping is the biggest barrier to entry to cooking. Gosh, I really have time to cook and clean up but can't find time to go to the fucking store.

 

[MrSquished]

I have no idea how there is a market for this shit. Like grocery shopping is the biggest barrier to entry to cooking. Gosh, I really have time to cook and clean up but can't find time to go to the fucking store.

It's easy to understand the appeal. It cuts down on shopping and prep time, and helps you be creative in the kitchen. Some things people lack more than others. People hire others to cut their lawns and clean their homes when they can just as easily do that too. Same vein.

Never used a service but I am comfortable in the kitchen trying out new things and have many cookbooks to reference as well. I'd try out a meal delivery service for shits and giggles for a month anytime, but it's definitely not in the budget for anything longer than that right now, prefer to spend the money elsewhere.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I have no idea how there is a market for this shit. Like grocery shopping is the biggest barrier to entry to cooking. Gosh, I really have time to cook and clean up but can't find time to go to the fucking store.

And 10 years ago the same was said about....almost everything else you buy on the internet. Why are the majority of these replies like old people still living in the 50's? Going grocery shopping isn't exactly enjoyable. If you're a professional cook, I can see the negativity, but honestly, these things are damn good (assuming you get the right thing) and I'm sure most people here are not 'great cooks'. It's like cooking classes - w/o dealing with a class. And no waste.

 

[dank69]

It's easy to understand the appeal. It cuts down on shopping and prep time, and helps you be creative in the kitchen. Some things people lack more than others. People hire others to cut their lawns and clean their homes when they can just as easily do that too. Same vein.

Never used a service but I am comfortable in the kitchen trying out new things and have many cookbooks to reference as well. I'd try out a meal delivery service for shits and giggles for a month anytime, but it's definitely not in the budget for anything longer than that right now, prefer to spend the money elsewhere.

I still don't get it. The internet has billions of recipes and ideas. Even if we grant 90 minutes for each shopping trip, once a week and maybe an hour planning meals, you're going to spend 2 to 3 times that cooking for a week. Just does not justify the premium to me.

 

[dank69]

And 10 years ago the same was said about....almost everything else you buy on the internet. Why are the majority of these replies like old people still living in the 50's? Going grocery shopping isn't exactly enjoyable. If you're a professional cook, I can see the negativity, but honestly, these things are damn good (assuming you get the right thing) and I'm sure most people here are not 'great cooks'. It's like cooking classes - w/o dealing with a class. And no waste.

I could understand it if the prices were right, but they aren't even close. I go to Amazon for the prices, not the convenience, for the most part anyway.

 

[ponyo]

And 10 years ago the same was said about....almost everything else you buy on the internet. Why are the majority of these replies like old people still living in the 50's? Going grocery shopping isn't exactly enjoyable. If you're a professional cook, I can see the negativity, but honestly, these things are damn good (assuming you get the right thing) and I'm sure most people here are not 'great cooks'.

Grocery shopping is one of my favorite activity. My wife and I grocery shop and cook together. I find both activities relaxing and enjoyable. I look forward to Wednesday and Friday when local stores release their new grocery sales flyers. I make it a habit to visit the websites to check out what grocery items are on sale and plan my meals and cooking around the sale items.

 

[vi edit]

My typical day is this:

Get up at 4:30 and run. Get back in from run around 5:40.
Shower.
Get kids up at 6:00 and get some coffee breakfast started.
Kick kids in the ass @ 6:15 and get them downstairs for breakfast.
Spend the next 30 minutes trying to get them to eat.
Get kids loaded into van @ 6:48 to catch 6:52 bus stop.
Drop kids off. Head into work.
Get into my office around 7:30.
Work until 4:15-4:30.
Pick kids up around 4:45 from school (it's a 15 minute walk to get from my office to my car)
Shuffle them to practices that start at 5:15.
Get home from practices at 6:15.
Throw something together for dinner.
Work on homework, baths, and bedtime and have them in bed around 8:00.
Catch up on bills, dishes, an episode of something on netflix.
Crash and burn by 10PM.

Repeat.

That's basically my M-F life. If I want to spend an extra $5 or $6 a meal for convenience, quality and less shopping, I'm taking that offer once or twice a week for something nicer. We meal plan most weeks and go shopping on weekends. But sometimes it's nice just to grab a boxed meal and spend 20 minutes cooking it.

 

[sactoking]

I checked out Chef'd and at $40-70 per dinner for four servings the economics are terrible for my family of 5.

 

[Kaido]

I have no idea how there is a market for this. Like grocery shopping is the biggest barrier to entry to cooking. Gosh, I really have time to cook and clean up but can't find time to go to the store.

When these types of mealkit-in-a-box services starting showing up, I was initially excited and thought "oh cool!" until I saw the price tag. Then I wondered how they would ever survive, but they've turned out to be a multi-billion-dollar business annually & I have a ton of friends who use them at least monthly, if not more often.

I think the big draw is the reduction of the mental load. Food is complex. It took me a long time to realize that. You have to think about how you want to handle your diet, you have to do meal planning, create a shopping list & go shopping on a regular basis, spend time preparing the meal, eat it, then clean everything up & put away the leftovers. And if you're doing the bare minimum 3 meals a day, that's 21 meals per week to plan for, or at least 80 meals a month to figure out, not to mention snacks & dessert. Couple that with work, school, kids, maintaining your home/car/finances/etc. and it all adds up to create this mental load that can make cooking unapproachable, especially if you don't have a background in cooking or don't intrinsically enjoy it.

I mean, I literally didn't know how to boil water for pasta when I first got married, my wife had to walk me through the process lol. But I got deeper into cooking & developed an interest for it, and that's helped me quite a bit. But even if you're not "into" cooking, you still have to deal with eating, and unless you're going the liquid diet route with Soylent, there's typically more involved than you'd think in food prep: planning, shopping, preparing, cleanup, etc.

I think the meal kit approach is pretty genius because the convenience lets you take baby steps. Got kids & need a babysitter to go out, but want a nice meal at home? Get a meal kit! Want to try something new & delicious? Try a meal kit! Don't want to figure out dinner tonight? Use a meal kit! I've come to realize that meal kits do have their place in the world, and especially when you're kinda fried from the week, you can unbox dinner, follow the instructions, and have a great meal without having any thinking involved, and that's a powerful driver. And not necessarily a bad thing, either! I mean, I can cook pretty decently these days & have a lot of great kitchen gadgets, but I hit up McDonalds tonight because I just wanted some hot food that didn't require any work. So I don't think meal kits are a bad thing at all...they have their place, for sure, especially because everyone's situation is different.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Figured this was worthy of bump since I've recently tried a couple.

1) I just tried HelloFresh first. Ingredients were nice and fresh. Recipes were pretty damn good. After 2 weeks of $25/off, I quit to go on to the next. Honestly, until there is an established market here that is exactly what I plan to do.. keep switching between them as the previous ones give me retention offers and such.

2) Currently on BlueApron. So far had 2 meal kits delivered. On the first order, one of the 2 meals apparently had some cartilidge in the chicken. They notified us and immediately refunded us the entire order for 2 meals... even though it only affected 1 of the meals. nice.... and I ate it too and didn't detect any heh. Also - same game as HelloFresh - first 2 weeks were $25/off - I'm moving to another one when the promo is up.

But anyhow - that gets back to one of the original subjects of basically "why can't you just make meals yourself from the grocery store?" and it's really just a matter of logistics and planning that I don't really have the time for. I don't have an encyclopedia of great recipes - in addition to the fact that they all have obscure ingredients that are a "one time" purchase that are often hard to find in the grocery store. When I go to the grocery store, I don't have a list of shit to buy. I just quickly scan up and down a few isles of stuff i need and get the hell out. I fucking hate going to the grocery store.

On top of that, wife and I are plenty busy with work. I sometimes travel during the week, and both of us are typically working 45-50 hours + commute time.

Anyhow, so far the meal delivery has been pretty good. Like I said, they are overall a little overpriced - but with the initial customer discount I find it to be acceptable. I don't spend as much at the grocery store since I'm only buying basics now (eggs, milk, bread) - and the meals are meant for 4 people so we always have leftovers.

 

[Alpha One Seven]

Nope. We buy fresh produce, often from local farms and meats from a high quality butcher shop, not the market, and make the best tasting foods you have ever eaten right at home.

 

[DigDog]

No, because:

1. I shop for food for the same reason i cook, "i like to". Going to the market and seeing whats available is part of the fun.
2. They cost more than the market. Getting good deals in the market may take effort, but a great deal of chef work is dealing with suppliers, ordering special cuts, and getting special deals.

Also most tend to have too high mimimums and shipping costs too. It's just not worth it.

I dont even consider places that sell ready to eat food; cooking is most of the fun ...

 

[nOOky]

We have tried Hello Fresh and Home Chef. The wife still orders meals against my protestations. We tried these meal services hoping to expand our cooking horizons, and indeed we learned a few good meal prep and flavoring tips. I don't think the value is there, sometimes I look at the ingredients and calculate the actual cost (for example a couple chicken breasts and sweet potatoes and the condiments may add up to $3) and it annoys me. Also the amount of packaging they come with to keep them frozen and cold is extensive, it seems wasteful.

Making the meals does get us together in the kitchen, but it always takes us longer than expected and we are both usually tired and just want something quick and easy, not more work. I am not a chef by any means, so little things like the prep work take more time than I'd like.

Bottom line for me it's easier to grill a steak and throw some vegetables in the oven or grill to roast with simple seasonings rather than cooking the meals they send.

 

[Thebobo]

I have 4 hair-trigger smoke alarms in my apartment so my in-home meal services are GrubHub and Amazon Restaurants

I use grubhub will have to look tino Amazon restaurants. I also have my food discovered most of the time with Peapod.

 

[snoopy7548]

I haven't read the thread but how healthy are these meals? Are they loaded with sodium?

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

I haven't read the thread but how healthy are these meals? Are they loaded with sodium?

They are however much sodium you want. They just give you the base ingredients - IE: Chicken breasts, brocolli - maybe some seasonings, etc... Either way, it will often say "Add salt and pepper" - to which obviously you can choose how much you want.

Generally speaking, they are fairly healthy. Most places let you choose up front which meals you want them to deliver, and they tell you the nutrition information. If you're looking to diet and want something lower calories - choose the lower calorie option obviously.

 

[BurnItDwn]

We have used Jewel Osco (grocery chain)'s delivery service once, we didn't like how they used 50000 plastic grocery bags so we won't use that service again. But, we have never considered a bulk meal food ordering type place. Myself, the Wife, and the MIL are all decent cooks. And I like to cook, so, between the 3 of us, we have "home cooked" dinners usually 6 nights per week, ordering out, or going out, or making frozen pizzas or lazagna one day per week.

 

[KeithTalent]

We used one for quite a while. We got three meals per week and I just did them on weekdays (most weekends we either went out or had time to shop/cook). Found it very useful and generally pretty healthy; was also quite a bit of food as we usually had enough leftovers for lunch the next day. Would probably do it again, we just don't have the service available where we live now.

KT

 

[frozentundra123456]

We used Blue Apron for a while. We had some quite interesting meals, but decided it was too expensive for long term use.

Edit: As KT said, pretty healthy as well. If I were trying to lose weight, it would be a decent option to those lose weight plans where the food generally sucks.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Heh, already got a call-back from HelloFresh trying to get me to turn on my subscription again. They offerred $10 to jump back in and I quickly declined. They upped it to $20 and I still ended up declining. It was slightly tempting for a 1 more week discount - but I have plenty of time to spare as I check out BlueApron currently and plan to Plated the week after. My number to get me back as far as retention is at least $25/off per week.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Bump.

I continue to order from these companies. Currently rotating between BlueApron, HelloFresh, and Plated.com. By the time I run out of promotions with 1 of them by then I will have at least 1 offer to renew from one of the other 2.

This definitely beats planning and prepping meals. I occasionally pop into the grocery store once every 2 weeks or so to grab some basics (milk, butter, oil, bread, yogurt). It's been about 4-5 months so far doing this - I plan to keep on doing it this way. It's a definite stress-reliever and helps with time.

 

[ImpulsE69]

It was a shame Chef'd went under. That place was great. We are still using Home Chef which we like. It gives you a lot of flexibility and choices. I'm not interested in Hello Fresh or Blue Apron at all, but have looked at Plated. I get that it might be pricey for people with kids. For 2, it is not a bad deal at all. We've tried to copy some of the recipes over the last few years and you end up spending the same or more.

 

[DigDog]

Y'all need Jesus cooking classes.

 

[gorcorps]

Tried Hello Fresh, was not impressed. Quality of ingredients was worse than the local grocery store (which isn't great to begin with) and the recipes we tried were nothing to write home about. Also had an issue when trying to cancel saying I wasn't allowed to cancel the next month (even though it was 3 weeks out) so I had to fight about that, and they finally cancelled it.

Haven't tried any others but Hello Fresh is one to avoid with issues in pretty much every facet of their business (ingredient quality, recipe quality, and customer service)

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

It was a shame Chef'd went under. That place was great. We are still using Home Chef which we like. It gives you a lot of flexibility and choices. I'm not interested in Hello Fresh or Blue Apron at all, but have looked at Plated. I get that it might be pricey for people with kids. For 2, it is not a bad deal at all. We've tried to copy some of the recipes over the last few years and you end up spending the same or more.

I think all of them are worth atleast 1 try.

Also I think it's dumb to buy the "servings for 2 people". It's mostly just me and the wife eating, but it seems incredibly stupid to not make the meal for 4 so we can have leftovers for another day of the week when we feel more lazy.

Y'all need Jesus cooking classes.

Meh, I know how to follow recipes - so in that regard I can cook just fine. It's just the logistics of prepping ingredients, making a list, going to the grocery store on packed days, etc... With these meal plans, I only have to stop at the grocery store once every 2 weeks - AND I don't need to make a list since I'm just getting basics, so I can go at way more convenient times like on the way home from work, at night, etc..