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Comment by jonathanjaeger | Hacker News Reader

I'm not surprised -- I bet more will fall. Blue Apron dominates the ad space (I struggle to understand how the unit economics work out with their podcast ad spend..), but I'm a fan of their service and started it a few weeks back. I know not all meal kit services or pre-prepared services are identical in structure, but just acquiring customers that can be very fickle must be insanely difficult with a low margin business like food delivery.

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"That's right, Jon. They're shortrib burgers with a hoppy cheddar sauce on a pretzel bun."

What I will miss most about Blue Apron after they go out of business are their Pod Save America ads.

Blue Apron is burning money like crazy, investors are just propping it up.

Down 75% in less than year. Looks like time is running short.

Plus they have no moat. If Amazon decided to compete in that space, they could have a service up and running in less than a year that would destroy Blue Apron and similar companies.

Amazon is already running a restaurant food delivery pilot in Seattle, and they already have amazon fresh plus whole foods in stock.

All the "hard" infrastructure is in place, the last thing left for amazon is to create the app/website and market it.

Amazon already offers subscription-less premium mealkits via a partnership with Martha Stewart/Marley Spoon [1] and more affordable options via their Tyson Tastemakers partnership [2].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=14828691011

[2] https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=16207550011

It might be more like a couple months.

Amazon is a logistics company that nails delivery in volumes Blue Apron cannot even fathom and Whole Foods adds pipelines for ingredient acquisition and physical locations in exactly the places where Blue Apron clients live.

I really like sun basket, and it seems to me it’s solving a simpler logistics problem with a higher value proposition then munchery.

Logistically it’s not on demand, but rather delivery with reasonable advanced notice.

For me the value proposition is very high quality meals and a forcing function to do something mindful in making them ... typically my wife and I make them together. This is helped tremendously by the fact I work from home.

I do hope the market is there to keep sun basket going.

They also give out huge coupons to acquire new users. I think they gave me a free box ($60 value?) to try it, which I did, and cancelled after a few of them. Then they keep trying to win me back with $20-40 coupons. I bet I could keep trying it, cancelling, and having them entice me back with new coupons forever.

Gobble is hands down the best in the space afaik. Way better than Blue Apron (and faster too) tho Sun Basket is pretty solid.

Blue Apron is not bad tho

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