[ndaiger]

I use Blue Apron sporadically; it can be a good thing on a busier week because it removes both menu planning and shopping while still letting you make home-cooked meals (take-out more than once a week or so gets really old).

It can also be a great break when your go-to recipes feel too repetitive.

But often one of the three recipes ends up being a dud, and if you forget to skip a week and get a bunch of stuff you don't feel like cooking it's an expensive and annoying obligation to prepare meals you didn't really want or make an ersatz recipe out of the ingredients they sent.

There is absolutely zero chance I would go to a store to buy a Blue Apron box. Without the convenience of home delivery, it really loses its appeal.

[013a]

I agree. The biggest annoyance with Blue Apron is planning your deliveries. There might be a week you were planning to skip, for cost reasons or "too busy to even cook" reasons, but you forget until its too late. Or, you might forget to go in and select the recipes you want, so you get a couple good ones and one that you never would have ordered, wasting at least $20.

But I think it depends on the cost of these in-store kits. It does remove the huge convenience advantage, but I still like the idea of meal prep kits. The problem with in-store is that this space is so easy to compete in, and now you're asking to go up against every other company that can find space on a store shelf, which is easier than maintaining a delivery network.

Blue Apron's food isn't especially high quality and the recipes aren't especially amazing. They're great, but not great enough that I wouldn't switch to a competitor if the price or quality was better.

[fiter]

I think it's good that they're exploring the trade-off between the convenience of home delivery versus the convenience of last minute decision to buy. If the meal kits were carried in corner stores or along the route from the subway to home, then they could satisfy someone who didn't plan ahead or whose plans changed.