How to Choose a Blue Apron
Blue Apron. Plated. Din. HelloFresh. The internet is bursting with companies that want to help you cook dinner. The four mentioned send pre-portioned and to varying degrees pre-prepped recipes. You do the cooking.
They offer free trials but beware, since the trial kicks off a subscription, you have to cancel before your credit card gets charged. (Blue Apron uses a not-so-classy dark pattern for this, where the only way to truly unsubscribe involves emails and lots of steps. But dark patterns are a discussion for another day.)
For all the tldr folks out there, jump to the end for my summary, otherwise, come along as I join Blue Apron.
The Blue Apron sign up was quick and easy. Four steps. First, they get your email. Second, your food preferences. The flow does a nice job minimizing overwhelm. You have a choice between a two person plan and a family plan for four. Have a three person family? You’ll have leftovers. A five person family? Out of luck. Streamlining choices has its tradeoffs.
Then, you answer: vegetarian or not. If you eat meat you can fine tune if you eat beef, lamb, poultry, pork, fish, shellfish. Here’s where I hit my first block with Blue Apron. You can’t tune for dairy or wheat preferences. What if you have a child who, like 2.5 percent of the population in the US, is allergic to dairy? If I had a non-negotiable allergy, I’d drop out here.
But you forge ahead through delivery and payment. Now you get a chance to pick the specific menus for the week. This gives you a second chance to exclude foods you want to avoid. Unfortunately you do it on a per week, per meal basis. The allergy information and ingredients aren’t made explicit, and there’s no way to filter.
You’re done. The following Tuesday a box of food arrives for you.
Second hiccup. The box is heavy. I’m strong and can manage but my elderly neighbor, for whom Blue Apron would make a lot of sense, couldn’t move this box three inches.
You get it inside and open it. Tidily organized, individually portioned everything. Unpacking is satisfying. Your fridge is immaculate. You have only what you need.
Now to cook some food. The included recipes cards are colorful and appetizing but actually following the directions is hard. There’s a lot of steps crammed into paragraphs on a single page. It’s easy to lose your place. (I haven’t tried the tablet experience yet.) As an experienced chef, the recipes weren’t hard, but they also weren’t fast. Making salsa verde from scratch is tasty, but it’s not the quickest route to enchiladas.
The food turned out plain, and appeared engineered for less experimental eaters. Blue Apron seems to be trying to appeal to the most people possible with an inoffensive flavor palette.
And now for cleanup. There’s zero food waste—visible to you—but you’re left with a mountain of packaging. Paper bags, little plastic cups, plastic bags, and remember how the box was so heavy? Two huge cooler packs. Are those packs recyclable? NO.
The myriad logistics that come together to create a Blue Apron box are impressive and I respect the clear effort the Blue Apron team puts into their product. One of the biggest positives for me was being forced out of my recipe stable and routine. I haven’t fried green tomatoes in years, nor would I normally make shrimp rolls at home. There’s some good reasons for that—but it was a refreshing reminder that there’s a world of menus that are not yet part of my dinner routine. This positive would be especially strong for less experienced cooks, who might find Blue Apron a non-threatening way to learn skills and recipes.
The deal breaker for me is that I choose what to eat based on a web of sustainability factors .e.g., growing practices, food miles, humane animal husbandry. I couldn’t find any information on the Blue Apron site about the specifics of their sourcing practices or principles, so I sent an email. I got a noncommittal reply:
“I apologize that I cannot speak on the specific farming practices of our various partners.”
Without sourcing transparency I won't continue Blue Apron after the trial. However, this review did remind me that I could use a blue apron in the kitchen. I plan to make one like this version from Etsy seller Kanso Aprons.
Pros:
saves time on menu planning and grocery shopping
for new cooks it could be a great learning tool
short-circuits old menu routines
Cons:
not enough granularity in food preference selections
box is too heavy
recipes aren’t that fast
lots of packaging waste
lack of transparency in sourcing