As much as I love certain aspects of the US, companies like Blue Apron just serve as a reminder of the absolutely twisted and unhealthy relationship that Americans seems to have regarding their daily meals.<p>I know people who eat out multiple times a week (with their spouse), every week of the year, and other people who eat out every day during lunch. I guess it's somewhat understandable if you're single and maybe even working at one of the places where they have catered lunch, but if you have a family at home and have to actually pay for restaurants yourself it's a huge item on your monthly expenses.<p>And that's just the economics of it. Let's not even talk about how having catered meals for nearly every occasion distances you from the act and ritual of preparing a meal together with your family, taking the time, sitting down and enjoying it.
If I were to do a start up right now, I think I would do a meal kit start up (not that I actually know what I’m doing). There’s still a market for it—people really like the kits—it’s the business model that’s the problem. I think the delivery part is where they go wrong. It’s too expensive to cold pack these things every day and deliver them to individual addresses.<p>I’d try to partner with restaurants to prepare the meal kits. Restaurants have a staff that’s trained to handle food, plus a kitchen to do it safely, and time during the day when they’re not busy. Oh, and they already received regular large food deliveries. Restaurants are well distributed enough that it’s easy enough for people to pick up a kit on the way home from work.<p>From the point of the startup, there’s not intense capital costs, you just have organize orders and pickups and ensure quality.
"Company with absurdly expensive food that still requires considerable preparation gets rejected by non-tech workers".<p>Federal minimum wage is $7.25 and median HOUSEHOLD income is around 59k so let's look at their pricing: the cheapest plan they offer is $39.96 a week for 4 servings a week ranging to $143.84 for 16 servings a week for $143.84.<p>That means 1-day's kcals for someone on a 2k kcal diet is $25.68 to $39.96 a day depending on the plan. PURE INSANITY.