We use Blue Apron intermittently. Our experience is that we like about 2/3 of the dishes (the rest range from mediocre to inedible). Not a great ratio, but not bad enough that we’ve given up on it completely. We’ve gotten better at spotting the ones we’ll dislike ahead of time.
I like that it saves me from having to do as much grocery shopping throughout the week, and it also pushes us out of our cooking ruts. We’re both decent cooks, but we end up making the same 4-6 weeknight dinners all the time (or going out to eat more than we should), so it’s nice to have a nudge to cook something new at home. Both of us find the portions to be more than large enough (and I’m not what you’d consider a light eater).
Other than the 1/3 of dishes we just don’t like, my primary complaints are:
- Too much reliance on frying and sauteeing. I don’t mind it from time to time, but almost every dish requires it.
- The packaging choices are sometimes questionable. They simultaneously use too much packaging, yet manage to have at least one thing leak in almost every shipment. Flour leaks nearly every time.
- Sometimes their time estimates are pretty optimistic.
- Some dishes us overly-complicated techniques for relatively minor benefits.
- Sometimes they make substitutions of ingredients, and the substitutions totally change the nature of the dish.
- They let you do some swapping of dishes, but they limit the combinations you can do, so sometimes we end up not being able to get the three dishes we want together.
- They’re always trying to upsell me on their crappy wine.
To their credit, their customer service is good. Every time I’ve had a problem, I’ve contacted them about it and they’ve given me a refund or made it up to me in some other way.
Oh, my other complaint is that in our area they use OnTrac for shipping, and I find OnTrac to be by far the worst carrier in the business. However, I’ll grant that I haven’t had any OnTrac-related problems with my Blue Apron deliveries, and they did offer to switch my account to FedEx if I could switch my delivery day. But the delivery day they offered for FedEx didn’t work well for us, so I couldn’t take that option. Still, I like to avoid OnTrac as much as I possibly can.
We found the vegetarian option yielded bigger portions. We have enjoyed the variety and the ability to opt out if we have a busy week
It had better. $60 in veggies should feed us for way more than three meals a week. We enjoyed BA while we did I. Our only gripe was nearly every dish had either Kale or Collard Greens as the base for the veggies. That got old.
Oh, packaging was extremely wasteful but I suppose necessary in order to get it to use unspoiled.
I have a young daughter who is using it. She isn’t particularly comfortable in the kitchen but Blue Apron is changing that. Having all the ingredients you need, clear instructions, good ingredients, and a variety of meals has been a boon. $10 a meal is not expensive. We can rarely cook for that little at our house and you certainly can’t eat healthy food out for that. It challenges my daughter which is a good thing. She will learn to cook a wide variety of food now. It gives her confidence. We may try it or another service ourselves. Not a week goes by that something doesn’t get tossed out because we didn’t use it like we thought we would. Wasted food. As for the packing, we recycle almost everything here. Not a problem.
I use plated and really enjoy it. We get 2 meals/wk. I like it over blue-apron because I can pick what we are going to eat and it seems the food quality is a little higher. For a busy 2 professional home it is this or spending $50 out to diner… Plated is much healthier and cheaper, plus my wife cooked her first meal ever with it!
As people have said the only thing that gets thrown away are the ice packs, everything is recyclable.
My daughters 10 and 8 are going to use it as a “learn to cook” over the summer. They just wrapped up a week long 2-hrs a day kids class at Sur La Table, that I’d heartily recommend to anyone looking for a summer activity for their kids btw. And they’re so enthusiastic coming out of it that they want to cook every day. So where I would otherwise be reluctant, I’m going to try out BA. Will report back. Expectations muted.
Any updated opinions on Blue Apron and/or Plated? Or which is preferable?
With our local farmers market about to shut down for the winter and not making it to Chelsea Market as often I was thinking of giving one of them a try as I find myself getting into a rut with my usual dinners.
PPM seems only a little higher than what I’d typically spend, especially when one takes waste into account. For example I never finish off a whole bunch of carrots before they go bad.
I had been leery of the idea but with the time and attention the dogs take up I feel my cooking has suffered and I rely too much on a few easy dishes (mostly steak, sous vide salmon, and roast chicken). They’re good but…
Blue Apron is still our favorite. I think they are more creative than the others. We also like Green Chef. Sunbasket has been just OK. Plated is good, but I think the others are better. I subscribe to all four and pick which one each week based on menu. Blue Apron wins out a lot.
I just don’t have the time or energy to do meal planning, so for us this has actually reduced costs as we have a lot less waste.
Thank you Poppy!
Yes, the meal planning (along with gym time) has suffered as my free time has declined.
My wife loves it…orders a couple meals twice a month. Still requires prep time, but saves a lot on grocery shopping.
I would never use it – you lose the thrill of the chase! Where I live there are SO many different ethnic groceries, Lebanese, Korean, Chinese, Mexican, etc. If I go looking I can usually find the most exotic ingredients for any dish I want.
I think it’s like those “wine subscription” sites. You get 12 bottles of OK wine at a fairly high price. Why not go bargain hunting at really good wine shops, or scour the internet?? It takes away all the fun.
My favorites are the Lebanese grocery where I can find Persian ingredients, and H Mart where besides the normal Korean stuff I can find exotic Japanese items that are hard to find elsewhere. For basic Chinese there is Kam Man and another Asian supermarket here.