The Happy Spoon: Blue Apron

A few weeks ago I tried Blue Apron which is a service that delivers a box of recipes and fresh food ingredients for you to cook straight to your doorstep. Inside my refrigerated box I found ingredients wrapped in bags with description labels of not only what the food was, but what meal the items belonged to. The packing is designed to keep the ingredients fresh for several hours after delivery (so you don’t have to worry about it sitting on your doorstep while you are at work) and up to a week after the delivery date.

Your membership comes with access to their super user-friendly website where you can actually choose the meals you want to receive each week. There are 6 options. I found that there are restrictions on what meals you can select to be delivered (probably for cost reasons) together but all of them usually look amazing so for me that wasn’t that big of a deal.

Another cool feature of Blue Apron is you can set your dietary profile which offers vegetarian meals and you can uncheck the foods you don’t like/eat/want delivered (i.e. beef, poultry, fish, lamb, pork, and shellfish). The best feature of all is that you can skip deliveries at any time and the company only needs a weeks’ notice.

Delivery day options are Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, or Saturdays. I choose my delivery day to be Wednesday and delivery schedule changes have to be made that prior Thursday by 11 am. Also, the system allows you to skip up to 6 weeks’ worth of deliveries in advance and you can cancel your membership at any time.

At this point you are probably thinking, “Okay this sounds great but what is the cost?” Blue Apron offers a two-person or four-person subscription and a flat rate for three meals per week. The two-person plan is about $60 per week or $10.00 per person per meal. The family plan is about $140 a week or $8.75 per person per meal. Shipping and packaging is included in the cost.

So here is my review. First, I obviously found getting food delivered to my doorstep (avoiding the drive and hassle at the grocery store) very convenient. Next, I thought all three recipes I made were super easy to make and delicious. They even tell you what you can prep ahead of time. None of the meals I received in my first package required over 20 minutes of cook time. I also like that the serving size was controlled. In terms of cost, I know many would argue it is pretty expensive but personally I feel like it is very easy for me to spend over $60 for three meals per week.

Overall, I would say Blue Apron is a great service. I probably will not utilize it on a weekly basis just because I do enjoy picking out my own recipes to try and I sometimes do enjoy grocery shopping (when it is a quiet Sunday morning). I will say, I do predict I will order Blue Apron those weeks I know I am going to be super busy or when I am just plain exhausted from being on the road for work too long.

To my readers out there, give it a try and send me your review! The upcoming recipes look amazing. I am thinking about trying to buy all the ingredients myself and seeing the price difference. I will keep you updated on my findings.