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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

There is a lot of hate for this company on HN. They are trying to help people cook healthy food, they are doing a good thing, and have an actual product. Good for them! And I hope the engineers / common workers get some money too :)

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I agree that they're doing a good thing.

Doesn't mean they're worth investing in, or have prospects to match the valuation (I don't have an opinion either way on that personally, but I enjoy reading others' opinions).

>They are trying to help people cook healthy food, they are doing a good thing

I don't think the idea that they're "doing a good thing" is so cut and dry.

Aren't they producing an astounding amount of waste? And aren't the working conditions uncomfortable at best?

https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/the-not-so-wholeso...

I think going into a dirty sewer is uncomfortable, but there are sewer inspectors, and paving a hot road in the summer is uncomfortable, but there are road pavers.

uh ok? And I think sewers and roads are slightly more essential than tiny packaged bags of basil shipped to my house.

Things must be shipped in packages. Are you against all products delivered by mail, or just the ones you could get locally at a store?

Let's not forget the astonishing amount of dark patterns in their UI. Cancelling your Blue Apron account is... quite the experience.

(Not to mention their food model seems to be "30% is crap we need to get rid of, and you will buy it")

I actually don't recall any negative experience when I cancelled my account. It might be because I'd already opted out the future deliveries, but closed the account with no issues.

I did it recently. You have to email them, at which point they send you a link. At that point it's pretty straight forward.

I've subscribed to Blue Apron before and, regarding waste, it doesn't seem much different from going to the grocery store. Meat ingredients like chicken breast, salmon, and beef are individually wrapped exactly like they are in the store. Blue Apron doesn't wrap all their produce (but they do wrap some of it); most people I know use a lot of plastic bags for produce when going to the grocery, so that's a small difference in favor of Blue Apron. The cardboard box it comes in is of course recyclable.

Miscellaneous knick knacks for the recipes come in small recyclable paper bags which certainly are made of less material than large grocery store bags.

The only other things I can think of are very small plastic containers for fluids like soy sauce and the ice packs.

Overall I wouldn't be surprised if Blue Apron is slightly more wasteful than going to the store, but it's a small difference at best, at least as far as basic packaging goes.

Aren't the meats shipped with dry ice / styrofoam?

I don't remember receiving any dry ice or styrofoam. The ice pack is recyclable. You just have to let it melt and empty out the water. There's a foil liner which is also recyclable. If there's no recycling option near you, you can even send the recyclable materials back to Blue Apron and they'll recycle it.

Do you think that people who are so theoretically time-strapped as to be using Blue Apron are likely to invest the time to recycle?

I can only speak for myself, but I did recycle whatever I could from the leftover materials when I was subscribed. My apartment complex made it very easy to do so.

Either way, needing to recycle is not unique to Blue Apron at all. You can easily go to the grocery store and come back with dozens of bags and packages and wrappings. Plenty of folks don't recycle in those circumstances either.

Fair enough--that wasn't a trap question, I was honestly curious. I usually go the butcher's-and-farmer's-market route and the amount of waste I end up with is very low, usually paper products and the like, so my view of that stuff is a little different. (If I hit a supermarket, I usually have my big ol' backpack.)

It's not as simple as a straight comparison of what you bring back from from the grocery store and what's left over from your meal kit box. Grocery stores also have waste from the packaging that food comes in.

Disclaimer: I work for one of Blue Apron's competitors, Green Chef.

> Grocery stores also have waste from the packaging that food comes in.

Err...so do you, yes?

Not in my experience. There is an ice pack, but it's just water in a recyclable package.

You can buy larger bulk packages at grocery stores and cut down on the waste. And you generally get a more favorable unit-cost that way as well.

I have friends who liked it for the healthy-food-on-rails aspect and because they weren't very adventurous cooks before trying it.

somethings. Others, like at Costco just come in even more packaging. There is a box to contain all your boxes of boxes.

I think you're missing the massive ice packs they ship with everything that they make very inconvenient to return.

I didn't miss them. I mentioned them, and they are recyclable.

"Recyclable" is not a panacea. There's a rain it comes last in the 3 RS. (Reduce, reuse, recycle)

I agree, but the same applies to a lot of materials accumulated from grocery store shopping. Like I said, I do think Blue Apron ends up being more wasteful in the end, but it doesn't strike me as an "astounding" difference.

The first post that popped up on Blue Apron and waste[1] has a picture of the wrapped up ingredients of three meals[2]. It looks a bit random to me -- a few veggies come without (extra) packaging, but then there's a single individually wrapped carrot.

When I buy carrots, there's usually zero packaging; at most there's a thin plastic back for a bunch of carrots. I also don't buy a single leaf of Kale, and another single leaf of a different variety of Kale. Based on that picture, I'd say the amount of packaging is about twice as much as normal -- just in terms of food packaging, another picture shows the total waste[3], which is two or three times again as much. I think that's pretty significant.

I don't feel like I'm trying very hard, either, and -- even though virtually all of it is theoretically recyclable here by law -- I'm still appaled at how much garbage remains. We should strive to do better, not worse. It's not easy, though, since larger serving sizes tend to lead to spoiled food, which is the worst result of all.

And it's probably a drop in the bucket compared to the footprint of micro-grocery delivery compared to the most efficient alternatives.

[1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/ellencushing/these-are-the-trashy-c...

[2] https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2015-11/25/1...

[3] https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2015-11/25/1...

I don't really see it as a lot of hate. I agree with everything you said about them, but that still doesn't mean I think their multi-billion dollar valuation is in any way supported by their financials or their business model.

I used them for several months. They had a great site, good service and pretty tasty meals. While expensive, that is relative, and found it a good value considering I love following directions but am at a loss grocery shopping for a week of season meals.

That being said, I left them because I didn't consider them, "healthy food". Now compared to eating out, or fast food or anything yes, they are certainly healthy. But compared to shopping yourself, or healthy food places, they are not healthy. The sodium levels and calories and everything are all very high. This is mostly because healthy doesn't typically taste as good, and there is a larger market for people who want tasty over healthy.

They may eventually offer recipes tailored to low sodium, lower calories, and all like some competitors at which time I'd love to try them again.

Juicero is doing a good thing with an actual product too!

"Our connected Press itself is critical to delivering a consistent, high quality and food safe product because it provides: The first closed loop food safety system that allows us to remotely disable Produce Packs if there is, for example, a spinach recall. In these scenarios, we’re able to protect our consumers in real-time. Consistent pressing of our Produce Packs calibrated by flavor to deliver the best combination of taste and nutrition every time. Connected data so we can manage a very tight supply chain, because our product is live, raw produce, and has a limited lifespan of about 8 days."

- Juicero CEO

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