Blue Apron: The Experiment

Anybody who's met me on Facebook or real life knows I am kind of a crazed baker. I picked it up as a coping mechanism during grad school, when none of my reading or research was coalescing into a prospectus/dissertation/article, and just needed SOMETHING to work when I put my hands to it. And it just so happened I was leading workshops on a regular basis, so I baked cookies as incentive for attendance. And then the cookies led to fruit crumbles which led to cakes of increasing complexity. Now, I bring a fresh batch of cookies to my writing center every day of the week. It's a thing.

While in grad school, I also taught myself to cook. I was living alone for the first time, and also I had discovered the magic of farmers' markets. And again, since I have a weird atavistic need to feed armies of people, that quickly became weekly potlucks and monthly cooking contests. At one point, a colleague eyed the two (yes, two) tables of food I'd lugged onto campus and asked, "Uh, Patti. Are you okay?"

I'M FINE DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT EAT THIS ENCHILADA

In any case, I've had a lot of time to think upon how food impacts my life and my life-living. Friend Amelia and I have been having a fun and rhizomey discussion about lots and lots of things food-related, which at some point led to peering closely at meals-by-mail programs like Hello Fresh and Plated and Try The World. (Full disclosure: I was already a subscriber to Try The World because I also suffer from a lot of wanderlust. That said, I couldn't get the referral page to work, so this is just my hearty endorsement with no actual financial benefit.) The Kitchn had an article on Blue Apron, which intrigued me, so when I came this Popdust article that included a $20-ish discount on a new subscription, I messaged Amelia to see if she wanted to draw a little empirical work into our musings. (Full disclosure: I am also now a subscriber to Blue Apron, but I also couldn't find a referral code, so I'm not profiting from this, either. I guess we are doing it FOR SCIENCE.)

Amelia and I have a Skype date for making one meal together tomorrow, but for now, here are some thoughts:

• Cost & Audience: It's $59.94 (weird number) for a weekly shipment. That's three meals for two people. As a lump sum, it's a lot. If this is replacing going to a restaurant three times a week, though, it's pretty good. But yeah, the assumption is that you've got a decent chunk of disposable income AND have the time to do some cooking experimenting three times a week BUT don't have enough cooking experience and so need these very specific portions and instructions in order to make the meal. (I'll have more to say about cooking literacy when I actually walk through the meals themselves, but if you know how to cook and have decent grocery/specialty stores in your area, you might be better off just browsing through their online cookbook for inspiration.)
  
  
• Environmental Impact: This one was a tough one for me. Part of why I want to buy local is because of carbon emissions--shipping food a long distance is not at all healthy for the air we breathe, and it also eats up a lot of fuel that could be conserved for things like, I don't know, emergency generators for hospitals or something. So that's a big strike against the service, for me.
  
  Packaging-wise, I was fairly impressed. Blue Apron has a breakdown on recycling all the containers, and if you don't have recycling facilities in your area, you can ship containers back to them, and they'll do the recycling themselves. The packaging itself didn't seem overly fussy to me--having two flat blocks of ice meant they didn't need to add a lot of extra fluff to keep things from getting squished en route.
  
  
  If you dig tiny and precise packaging, you will be delighted by the knick-knacks bag for each meal.
  
  
• Convenience: I'm fairly impressed with the set-up. While, as with most subscription-based services, Blue Apron is set up so that you have to opt-out of weekly deliveries, rather than opt in, it's pretty easy to do. Right now, they have a full month of meals displayed, and you can skip deliveries weeks ahead of time. They also allow for some customization: I'm an omnivore who doesn't want to cook shellfish or pork, and Amelia's a pescatarian. (A cod dish is the only one we have in common--I received a beef/lamb meal and a chicken meal, while Amelia got meat-free pizza and risotto dishes.)

So that's all I've got to say so far! More to come.