Comment by maxaf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxaf | Hacker News Reader

I have no complaints about Blue Apron's food, which is usually delicious and almost always challenges us to learn techniques we wouldn't otherwise try.

Where it falls down is shipping: they use LaserShip, which loses multiple packages every year no matter where they originate from. As we rely on Blue Apron to provide our weekend meals, it can be quite frustrating when LaserShip makes packages simply vanish without a trace or any explanation. For a while we've managed to convince Blue Apron customer service reps to exclusively use FedEx when shipping our orders, however this stopped being an option for inscrutable reasons.

I wish vendors would stop using LaserShip. I've no idea what's wrong with it, but I also don't care because all I want is for my packages to stop disappearing!

We enjoyed Blue Apron for quite a while and had the same experience as you with trying new recipes and techniques. After about 6 months, there was a lot of almost-repeats in the menu and so we dropped it because:

My big problem with Blue Apron was the quality of the meats, especially the beef, was often horrific. I get that they need to hit a price point, but meat that is inedible is not a value at any price. A few packages of chicken were high-quality but arrived compromised making for a dicey "do we still eat it anyway, because it seems like it's still cold enough?" and "rotten chicken juice smells awful until the trash pickup day". We never got sick from it.

Ultimately, it was an OK experience. Very good for variety and giving us new ideas. Bad for value-for-price, ultimate protein quality, and wasteful (by necessity) packaging.

Probably a dozen of the dishes served as inspiration for on-going meals we continue to make with higher quality, locally procured ingredients, so we definitely got something out of it, but probably should have cancelled earlier.

In my experience with blue apron, the meat was high quality. Did you just throw it away because the chicken smelled bad?

The chicken was generally very good. We ate both packs where the pack was compromised and it was good.

The beef was often better suited for the soles of shoes or wear strips on a snowblower, especially disappointing given the per-meal net cost.

It comes down to cost. Shipping with FedEx would likely break their unit economics.

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