Blue Apron (Free Trial)

[Clarity]

http://blueapron.com

So a little over a month ago, our friend and favorite Facebook operations engineer (the guy responsible for the health and welfare of our hardware) sent me a free one week trial to a service called Blue Apron.

Essentially this is a service that sends you a box a week, each box contains the ingredients and professional chef created and balanced recipes to make three meals for two people per meal. No shipping and handling, no membership fees, high-quality (small farms and organic producers) ingredients sourced from the New York area (for me in Ohio, anyway) and in cases of seafood like Tilapia, no further than South America (read: no China). It works out to $9.99 per plate, which I have found to be a wash at worst, and a savings at best for buying the ingredients one's self.

Everything but salt, pepper, water, oil, and cooking implements are included. Whatever else the recipe needs (spices, butter, even milk) is all included.

Jo and I have found a couple real benefits to this service. First, it takes the discussion out of three dinners a week. Second, it exposes us to ingredients we otherwise may not have worked with. Hops flowers, Freekeh, cornichons, kumquats, etc.

The finished product is going to be dependent on your ability to cook, but the instructions are clear, include full color images, and both novice and experienced cooks alike will appreciate the ease of prep and clarity of direction.

Since joining we have made sixteen meals, with two more pending for this week:

New Orleans-Style Shrimp Étouffée with Jasmin Rice
Beef Ramen Noodle Soup with Choy Sum & Enoki Mushrooms
Mexican Chicken Mole with Lime-Cilantro Rice
Kumquat-Lime Glazed Tilapia with Brussels Sprouts & Almond Freekeh
Center-Cut Pork Chops with Caramelized Onions & Blue Cheese Grits
Chicken Potstickers with Baby Tatsoi
Latin-Spiced Shrimp in Butter Lettuce Cups w/ Red Quinoa & Poblano, Jicama, Orange Salad
Turkey Cutlets with Lemon, Shallot, Caper, Butter Sauce over Roasted Broccoli and Mashed Potatoes
Short Rib Burgers on Pretzel Buns with Hoppy Cheddar Sauce & Roasted Sweet Potato Rounds
Manhattan Fish Chowder with Fingerling Potatoes & Crusty Baguettes
Chicken Shawarma with Tzatziki, Hummus, and Beet Salad
Five-Spice Hanger Steaks with Stir-Fried Brown Rice & Chinese Snow Pea Tips
Blood Orange Roasted Salmon with Chickpea & Cucumber Salad
Stuffed Cabbage Rolls with White Rice, Beef, & Tomato Sauce
Two-Cheese Chicken Quesadillas with Chive-Sour Cream & Spinach and Apple Salad
Pan-Seared Cod & Roasted Red Potatoes with Remoulade & Frisee Salad
Fennel-Rubbed Pork Tenderloin with Grapefruit, Mustard Greens, & Japonica Black Rice
Turkey Burger Sliders with Brioche Buns & Toasted Hazelnut and Arugula Salad

A few of these have been spectacular meals, the bulk very good, and just a couple decent. Not a one so far has been bad. Maybe that will change, but that's a good record.

Anyway, I have a trial to give away. Taken, but I should get more!

That's one box, no fee. Food for three meals for two people each. Don't like it, you can cancel the service so you don't get subsequent boxes.

Want? Reply here. First come, first served. I expect I'll get another round of trials to give away after this (as will the person who takes me up here, if they stick with it), so even if you miss out on this one, post here and I'll get you next time around.

tl;dr - free food.

Let me know! I don't get anything out of the referral, so this isn't an advert. Just trying to pass along a good thing.

 

[jwinslow]

I'm intrigued. How long do most of them take to make?

 

[Clarity]

Because it's all bagged and labeled, prep is seriously abbreviated (washing and knife work). No excess, they send exactly what you need.

I'd say things that would normally take 60-90 minutes are streamlined down to 20-30 minutes (some take longer, but the point is it all goes substantially faster than it would otherwise, in my experience). It's still straight up cooking from scratch, but someone else has gone through the trouble of gathering all of it, breaking out what you need, and walking you through the rest.

Here's a shot of a just opened box.

 

[TDunk]

Sounds awesome! But I'm a picky eater and she cannot cook. Not gonna be me but thanks. So any recipes about orange flavored alcoholic beverages?

 

[jwinslow]

I think I'll try it out, thanks.

How do they insulate the perishable items, especially the meat?

 

[jwinslow]

Sounds awesome! But I'm a picky eater and she cannot cook. Not gonna be me but thanks. So any recipes about orange flavored alcoholic beverages?

My wife and I were both pretty picky eaters before going Primal (cousin of Paleo). It's been fascinating to watch how much our palettes have expanded ever since. Former bitter enemies are now staples (cauliflower, eggplant) and others were simply overlooked (zucchini, turnips, parsnips).

I would have been hesitant to try some of this before.

 

[Clarity]

Below what you see in that shot there's another extra insulted area that has the meat and fish sandwiched between ice packs. They say you could leave it in the box for a couple days after receiving it and everything would stay appropriately cold.

They must have a sweet deal with FedEx, because it's a lightning quick delivery and somehow they don't add S&H.

 

[Clarity]

JW, PM @LongwoodBuck with the email address you'd like to use. She'll send your invite through their system tomorrow.

They do allow substitutions (say, someone never wanted beef) and also offer a vegetarian option.

To anyone else interested, post in this thread. When I get new trials, I'll check here first.

 

[BUCKYLE]

Aw hell yeah.

 

[BIATCHabutuka]

one, great offer.

two, not interested in receiving the free food myself. i don't think you will have much of a problem giving this stuff away though as it looks / sounds great.

three, i am fascinated by the food / luxury food business almost as much as the plastic business.

four, i am bored tonight and not getting laid so lets break down this business with some random thoughts.


9.99 a plate for 6 total meals is $60 a week for those 6 meals.

i like the price point for the market they seem to be targeting. to get this variety / perceived quality you are paying more than $10 for the ingredients, not getting the variety of ingredients, and having leftover stuff go bad. i can see this having potential to lower the total cost for a customer and increasing the variety of foods, which is important to some people.

i would wonder how they make their packages up. if i was a family of five, those 6 meals wouldn't work. if i was a family of one, i probably wouldn't want doubles in the same week.

as a customer I would like access to all the menu options available and then pick my own meals out with the option of letting blue apron pick any i don't specify

to sell this to me, i would tweak it. i like the idea of having a few meals to cook per week with the variety. i would be more willing to pay to have my work lunch packed for me a couple of times a week too without any effort on my part. as in already brown bagged in the box, i just throw it in the fridge and grab and go as needed.



so the business is generating $60 a week off an account like this.

start with the variable costs always

shipping has to be at least 5 bucks or so, maybe even 10.

the box plus the refrigerant (dry ice?) has to cost at least a dollar, maybe even 2 or 2.50.

food and packaging has to be their largest cost. looking over what you list and not knowing the portion sizes i still don't see any way you are buying the food at less than $2.50 per plate. so something higher than that. maybe you are around 5 bucks food / packaging cost per plate. 5 may be more than i would want to pay to offer at 10 like this though so maybe it is 4 per plate. who knows.

labor is probably minimal. say you pay a guy $20 an hour to take the food how it arrives (ideally in the box quantity packaging already / prepacked) and break it down into individual shipments. i could probably get that guy to pack at least 30 boxes an hour and have them ready for ups / fedex to pick up at the end of the day. that is $1.50 a box. i bet they are doing it for no more than 50 - 75 cents a box.

take all these variable costs and you are looking at 10 to ship, 2.50 box and refrigerant, $5x6 plates = $30 food cost, and 75 cents labor. call it $43.25 variable cost for a variable margin of 16.75 per box. sounds reasonable to me.

now this blue apron has fixed costs too. warehouse (unless they are drop shipping which doesn't sound like a local farmer type of thing), utilities, management, stuff like that. marketing looks to be minimal other than the word of mouth with free boxes. that costs money though as does marketing people, sales people, and other talentless types. say 10% of the revenue is going to these type of fixed costs too. Another $6 in cost.


take all those wild assumptions and you are basically at $49.25 per box that is sold for $60. maybe making 20% margin here.


as for the consumer, i think they may receive more than $60 in value, and if so then this should be wildly successful. if they don't receive $60 in value, they won't be.

consumer is getting the value of the food. at 5 per plate that is 30 bucks to start with. the box, shipping, other packaging, and labor are waste to the consumer and have no value. they are his trash.

i honestly doubt that the consumer would get the same food at the same cost. it is tough to buy 2 potatoes at a good price for a consumer, but easy for blue apron to buy a whole buttload of them and ship two out in each food box. some economy of scale too. also blue apron has the ability to create demand in certain foods that may not have it otherwise (useful if i am a kumquat producer invested in this business perhaps). i definitely see this as saving the consumer some spoilage too. i have no problem assigning a consumer value of $40 to the producer cost of $30.


now the fun one, i value my time as a consumer at near zero. i can always make time to do something i want to do and i only get paid to work, not to fix my own meals.

i am probably in the minority there.

the consumer is saving the following in the time category.

shopping time and shopping expense (gasoline)
prep time
menu planning time

the consumer also gets the following intangible benefits from this service

food variety
cooking & food education
more free time to do other things you wouldn't have time for but for the time savings here
the excitement of getting something in the mail
the surprise of not knowing what type of food you are getting


if the customer values the time / intangibles at the gap from food cost to their out of pocket cost, this business will do very well. if not, it will need tweaked.

the food delivery business is a tough nut to crack. these guys aren't trying to get cheetos out to the welfare recipients though and are targeting the food bling crowd.

if i had to guess this is a group of small farmers that met up at a 4H type of thing or a farmers market and started this as a venue to move their marginal capacity to higher paying end user than their normal product outlets.


me, i think they will do alright. i'd feel better if their total costs were somewhere south of $42 on a $60 box.

 

[Clarity]

Just got three more trials to give out.

@BUCKYLE want one? Anyone else?

@BIATCHabutuka - Another interesting angle is that their main competitor seems to be a company called Plated. Since joining Blue Apron I've been getting FB ads for Plated, and looked into their structure.

They charge $10 a month for an optional membership that takes their $15 a plate service down to $12 per. When I last looked they also charged $20 for S&H (but that now appears to be free for at least the first order, little surprise). I asked them about the price difference as compared to Blue Apron and they cited larger portions (which is a little insane, because we've found that most "for two" meals from BA could easily serve three). I think that one is in real trouble, though they're much more aggressively marketed than Blue Apron, which tends to spread word-of-mouth and through free trials like this. This is my third round of trials, and you get three spots per. So once I stuck with the service, they'll have turned me into maybe 6 new customers (allowing that a few will try and and not continue the service).

BA took off rapidly throughout the Facebook and Google crowds out on the Left Coast, which is how I came across it, but I believe they're a NY company. With that tech audience with substantial incomes, they really had to make sure that the final product would be compelling enough to keep those types out of restaurants for a few nights a week. I think they've done a pretty solid job with that so far. So I'd agree with you that the target audience is largely the "food bling" crowd. That said, the recipes they've run with so far have been accessible. Which is to say that there's been nothing all too outrageous that the common palate is going to balk -- and yet they do manage to put things together that I think would sell for at least twice as much at a decent restaurant.

It's an interesting service and business. I could see it being very successful, I could also see it disappearing in a year. While it's priced the way it is, we're on board.

 

[BUCKYLE]

Yes sir. I'm going to act like i paid for it and cook the meals for the baby mama. Anniversary present level: Cheapskate

 

[MD Buckeye]

@Clarity I'll give it a shot. Thanks!!!

 

[Clarity]

Great! That's two down and one left. @BUCKYLE and @MD Buckeye please send a PM to @LongwoodBuck with the email address you'd like the offer to go to.

For all trying this out, would love to hear what you think about it after you get your first week.

Another note about the service, one week the packers made a mistake and doubled up on one ingredient leaving out another needed for one of the plates. We contacted them, and unsolicited they refunded the whole meal (19.98). Of course we had everything else including the protein and vegetables, so I just made something else with it. The point being that, in my experience so far, they do make mistakes right. I'd rather be reporting that no error had been made in the first place, but then we got a free dinner out of it.

 

[Clarity]

My best guess is that those of you signing up now will get the April 7th menu:

Swedish Meatballs & Braised Kale with Lingonberry Jam & Creamy Mashed Potatoes
Ginger-Soy Glazed Salmon with Broccoli Rabe & Soba Noodles
Chicken, Baby Artichoke, & Spinach Casserole with Gouda Bechamel

The week before that (what I'll get this coming Friday) is:

Tilapia Veracruzana with Yellow Rice
Roasted Chicken with Jalapeno-Herb Salsa, Mixed Citrus & Cracked Wheat Berries
3-Chile Beef Chili with Red Kidney Beans & Pepper Jack Cheese

As you can tell, in terms of protein, every week offers one fish/shellfish, one beef/pork/lamb, and one poultry.

There are (as above) vegetarian offerings, and if you don't want one type of protein you can swap out on an on-going basis.

My understanding is they're going to be rolling out a wider variety of menu options in the future.