An Unpaid Review of Blue Apron
Raise your hand if you’ve read about 50 blog posts about Blue Apron. Yep, me too.
How Does Blue Apron Work?
If you’ve somehow avoided the onslaught of paid reviews, the gist is that Blue Apron is a meal planning and delivery service. Every week you get a box with all the ingredients and instructions to make 2-3 dinners.
I liked the concept, but I was hung up on two main things – the cost (which runs about $9-10 per person, per meal) and whether or not my children would actually eat the meals. And, frankly, after seeing some of the things people got in their boxes, I wondered if I would actually eat them.
Fortunately, my neighbor is a Blue Apron subscriber (she loves it!) and when I asked her about it, she offered to give me a free week trial, which is apparently something you can do after you’ve been a subscriber for a while.
It took me all of five seconds to accept. I set up my account, put in our preferences, and voila – my box was scheduled to arrive later that week.
Blue Apron Cost
I got the plan where you get 3 meals, each of which serves 2 people. The regular cost for this would have been $59.99.
I generally spend about $75 a week on groceries, so $60 for three dinners is an enormous chunk out of my grocery bill.
My first box came on Saturday and when Ella, Star and I were making a library run that afternoon (Bart stayed home with a late-napping Ani), I saw the box on the doorstep and felt an enormous sense of relief that I wouldn’t have to figure out dinner. I could just pick one of the three meals out of the box and make it. Score.
We got home from the library, and Bart entertained the girls while I started pulling things out of the box.
Since I love food and cooking, it was kind of like Christmas to open it all up and see all the beautifully packaged ingredients (although I would have liked it if things were divided up by meal, instead of all being mixed together).
Blue Apron Recipes
The meals for our week were:
- Rice Flake-Crusted Hake with Sautéed Daikon Radish & Yuzu-Soy Sauce
- Flat Iron Steaks with Ramps, Fingerling Potatoes & Shaved Asparagus Salad
- Turkey Kibbeh with Cucumber Salad & Mint-Yogurt Sauce
I decided to go with the fish since I didn’t want it sitting in the fridge for several days, and I got to work.
Each recipe has a beautiful full-page, full-color card with the final dish on the front with which ingredients you need, and then on the back there are step-by-step instructions with photos of how to make the meal.
Immediately I felt annoyed that I still had to wash all the produce – it’s one of my least favorite tasks, and I would WAY rather meal plan than wash food.
I also could not get the rice flakes to stick to the fish – they mostly just fell off the fish and burned on the bottom of the pan (the recipe warned that some would fall off, but the vast majority of mine did. I think they were just too big – if I were to make this recipe again, I’d definitely run the flakes through the food processor to make them a little smaller).
And it definitely wasn’t a time-saver. It took me about 35 minutes to make dinner and then there were plenty of dishes afterward to cook.
Ella quite liked the fish, but had zero interest in the vegetables, and Ani wouldn’t eat it at all. For the first time in my parenting life, I let her have cereal for dinner instead of eating what I’d made. Bart gave it a 6 out of 10. I thought it was fine – nothing I’d want to make again, but I was happy to eat it.
The next two meals were better.
The steak was the best steak I’ve ever made at home (this is probably because I almost never make steak because I feel like it never turns out that well, which is probably because I buy really cheap steak) and the girls ate it without complaint. My only trouble was peeling the asparagus stalks. I don’t know if I have a totally weird peeler or what, but after five minutes of peeling that resulted in only about 2 Tablespoons of asparagus peels, I just skipped the rest of it and threw it all in to sauté.
I was dubious about the turkey, but they turned out to be surprisingly delicious – the bits of dried apricot gave it a nice little sweet taste that I loved. The cucumber salad was only medium for me, mainly because I don’t particularly like cucumber, but it was better the next day when I had the leftovers.
Is Blue Apron Worth It?
So what did I think about Blue Apron overall?
I liked trying new recipes and using new ingredients, and it’s really fun to have dinner just show up on your doorstep.
I feel like tons of the reviews I’ve read about it talks about how generous the serving sizes are. I totally disagreed. I feel like we eat fairly modestly (I’ve had several readers tell me that they double almost every recipe I post on my blog because they eat so much more than we do, apparently) and the girls eat fairly little for dinner always (they eat a huge breakfast, medium lunch, and light dinner) and we only had a teeny bit of leftovers one night (the turkey). The fish dish, especially felt very small.
You’re legitimately getting one meal for two people – I wouldn’t count on it stretching through children or ending up with leftovers.
I also felt like they weren’t quite complete meals. Bart really likes to have at least two side dishes, and most of these had just one, so I felt like I needed to supplement (plus, as I mentioned, the meals just aren’t that big).
The main bonus, I think, is not having to meal plan, but I don’t mind meal planning, plus, even with Blue Apron, you’d still have to come up with 3-4 dinners for the rest of the week. And you can just look on Blue Apron and get the recipes for the week without paying, if it’s the meal planning you really really hate.
(Although a lot of the Blue Apron recipes have specialty ingredients that might be difficult or expensive to track down on your own. I suspect that they might do this because it makes it seem like you’re getting a better value – it’s harder to justify paying $10 a person to make your own spaghetti – and because it’s more difficult and expensive to track down those items on your own. I would have had no idea where to purchase yuku juice for the fish recipe).
Lots of people have compared it to restaurant quality meals and I’d agree with that – the food was definitely high quality – but I don’t want to eat restaurant meals three times a week. I feel like I have a good variety of meals in our dinner plan, but they’re a little simpler and less heavy/fancy feeling than some of these were.
You also can’t avoid grocery shopping by doing Blue Apron, unless you only eat dinner 2-3 times a week and never eat anything else. So . . .that doesn’t help me all that much.
Plus, there is a fair amount of waste, since everything is individually (beautifully) packaged and you have the big box and the multiple ice packs. Most of it you can recycle, but recycling still isn’t nearly as good as not having had the packaging in the first place.
And – the final nail in the Blue Apron coffin for me – the cost is just more than I could justify. I can make meals that we like more, provide leftovers for lunch, and that use less dishes for a lot less than $20 a meal.
Frankly, I’d rather spend my $60 a week and go out for dinner 2-3 times. Last weekend, we went to a Greek place in Chapel Hill and got two large plates that fed all of us for $20. It was fresh and delicious, I didn’t have to cook any of it, and there were no dishes to deal with afterward.
Or, for $60 I could buy quite a bit of high-quality semi-prepared food at a place like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s where I could get more food on the table with less hands-on time.
How to Cancel Blue Apron
It was fun to try out and I was a little sad to cancel my account at the end of the week, but I wouldn’t pay for it myself. (Bart, on the other hand, was fairly relieved it was over – he was just not that thrilled with any of the meals and was ready to go back to our regular eating).
They don’t make it super simple to cancel Blue Apron – you have to send them an email at cancellations@blueapron.com, and then they send you an email with directions for how to cancel. A cancel button would be a lot simpler.
I could see it being a fun gift for a housewarming or graduation present for someone who likes to cook, or a cool at-home-date idea. I also can imagine possibly using it if I lived somewhere that groceries cost considerably more than they do in Durham, North Carolina.
That said, if anyone has free meal trials for Hello Fresh or Plated, I’d happily try those ones out too. You know, as a service to others.
And if you’ve tried it out (or are a subscriber to Blue Apron or any of the other similar services), I’d love to hear what you think and why you are or aren’t a fan!
P.S. I wrote this post about an option that I think is way more realistic time and price-wise for families like mine, if you want to check it out here.
I've purchased two boxes from Blue Apron in the past couple of months and have another one coming this Friday. We both work long hours, and with no kids, we tend to fall back to eating cereal or Taco Bell for dinner more often than I'd like to admit. So I've been considering it a treat with the bonus that we are spending some time together cooking, and eating something good for us. All the food we've received (fish and vegetarian meals) have been good and we've learned some cooking techniques that we've repeated on our own. I'm not willing to pay the $60 on a regular basis (or wash so many dishes – I'm with you on that), but maybe every once in a while.
just don't try to cancel. They have no link for it, and the websearch takes time, with false addresses. I really enjoyed them up to that point. Now I they seem like hucksters. I was only going to cancel temporarily, while I left the country for some months. Now I'll never go back.
We're calling to cancel tomorrow. They sent us 3 rigatoni recipes in a month even though they aren't supposed to repeat, they don't send you complete meals so we've had to grab mcD's afterward. Mac n cheese and a salad isn't dinner. Broccoli calzones aren't dinner. I asked if they consult a nutritionist. No answer. Poor nutrition= don't feed your kids if you want them to grow. Not for working adults either.
lol Have _you_ consulted a nutritionist?
I am excited for my first meal and just wanted to read some reviews. But excuse me, how is grabbing McDonald's nutritious for your children? The only way they are going to grow it outwards.
Right, Karen? I laughed out loud with the person complaining that they don’t consult a nutritionist and claiming a broccoli calzone isn’t dinner -but in the next breath saying they had to run to McDonald’s and claiming blue apron is poor nutrition? What a joke.
They are complaining with $9/meal. How much would you pay @ restaurant include tip? I wonder if she never give tip in restaurant. Tip for 2 meals @ restaurant at least $10.
How long will it take you to go to grocer? if you just need a little pepper, you still have to buy whole. do you have to think about which food you are going to cook today?
You need to appreciate what they bring to you!!!
I'm with you on the cancellation process. It is a pain in the you-know-what and no one even bothered to respond to me so I received the next order without even being able to select my options. The first box came late and the meat packaging had torn so there was blood in the bottom of the box. Not exactly healthy! I was really disappointed that their customer service and business ethics don't live up to the image they try to portray. You're better off finding their recipes on their website for free and taking an hour to grocery shop yourself. Guarantee you'll spend only a fraction of their price (especially in the Durham area where I am, too).
I am a subscriber of Blue Apron. I have the family plan. Both my husband and I work full time and used to eat take out way too often. I just LOVE LOVE lOVE Blue Apron.! I love that I don’t need to shop for groceries as often and that there is a meal waiting for metro cook at home. I find the price the same as if I go get the ingredients at the store. ( I remake recipes so I checked the price). You do get more for your money at the store, everything is bigger or sold in large quantities. Some things don’t keep well so there is some waste when you repeat recipes with store bought food. I do find shopping super fast when you repeat a meal because there are not a ton of ingredients. As far as the reception. My husband loves it all and only complained once. He hates kumquats ( who knew?). The kids on the other hand fuss and complain. Most meals aren’t that kid friendly so I will often supplement with baked potatoes. Dispute their complaints I really like this for my kids. They usually taste everything. I think it’s good for them to try different foods. As for my self I hate cilantro. I am one of those people for whom it tastes like soap. They have plenty of Cilantro. I also am allergic to Seasame so I have to be careful about the occasional seasame ingrediant. When I first started Blue Apron I had my share of disasters. The smoke alarm going of and so forth. You get faster at this as you go. You toss stuff in a boiling pot or in the oven to roast while you still prep other produce. You realize everything doesn’t need its little bowl ( if you dump it in at the same time). My kitchen is actually cleaner because I like to start out with a clean work area. As far as the cost as I said it’s pretty close to what I pay for ingredients from Cub. I am paying for convienance here though. I make enough and I work enough so that it doesn’t feel extravagant. I feel like a better mom and wife. No fast food suppers any more! When you live in a small town you max out the offerings and we are sooo sick of Subway. Anyway this is my rambling unsolicited unpaid review. Oh and the customer service was responsive in my experience the gave me a $20 credit for missing Finger Limes ( whatever those are). I found this site because I was just feeling the love for Blue Apron and wanted to see if others do too!
I couldn’t find another spot for adding a comment; forgive me, please, for hijacking! Tip on breading fish, and other meats: I put the breacrumbs and herbs/spices into a gallon size food storage bag. After dipping your protein in whatever (I like using spicy mustard or applesauce instead of egg), place the item in the plastic bag. Press the breading onto each surface. Carefully remove the item from the bag and let it rest on a cooling rack for 10-15 minutes (cookie sheet underneath helps with clean-up later). After each item has been breaded, you simply toss the bag, less mess on the counter top!
My first meal did not arrive. The wife called them. There was a problem with my shipping info. There was an address that did not exist listed. She assured me that they had delivered it to that address. After telling them that is not possible they told me they would give a small credit that did not cover half of the price of my meal. I called my bank, disputed the charge and canceled the service.
I know a lot of people really love these meal box things, and I'm happy they're at least inspiring people who wouldn't normally get into the kitchen to at least cook SOMEthing, but my general opinion of them is pretty low. They definitely seem to be targeted to people who eat out a LOT, and therefore think the price is reasonable and the food is, um, normal.
For people who cook three times a day, seven days a week, however, the concept and the cost are a little ridiculous. This is the first review I've seen of Blue Apron that seems more applicable to my own situation. And it's pretty much as I suspected it might play out in the kitchen of an everyday cook.
It must be nice to have time to cook three meals a day, but when I'm working long hours at the office and have no wife/significant other to do the chores at home, it is nice to be able to come home and have everything ready to cook when I get there.
I agree. Blue Apron caters to a specific segment of the population. Someone with three kids and a husband who is an ex-football player isn't going to like the program. My husband and I enjoy the dinners three times a week. It's so nice to have everything ready to cook, as you say. Can't negate the value of that for sure. I cancelled because I couldn't justify the excessive amount of packaging used to get the product to me. It was too much of guilty pleasure.
Thank you for this great post!!! I keep reading all these glowing reviews of Blue Apron and I have always been super skeptical. I like to cook and I already have several go to meals that I can keep on hand when I haven't planned my meals for the week so this service just seems ridiculous and expensive. But to each their own I guess!
I find it kind of funny that you've read "all these glowing reviews" of Blue Apron and just one that was a little more critical, and it's that one you choose to believe. Seems like you were just looking for someone to validate your decision not to like something you've never tried.
Or, like me, they have doubts as to how many of those “glowing” reviews are legit, as in NOT paid for. When you see something like this where there are some obvious concerns (such as price and quantity and quality etc) and you see almost no bad reviews, you have to start to wonder how legit they all can be. Especially when a lot of them don’t list a single negative (even something small). Just look at Amazon reviews; there have been many many cases where glowing reviews turned out to be paid for, or from the people who work for the business selling the products.
The issue is finding unpaid reviews. This was covered in the first sentence of the review.
You’re right. mention UNPAID REVIEWS mean you do it on purpose.
We did Blue Apron for a while after I had Kinsley because I was always too scared to go to the store with both kids. We wound up always skipping the weeks that we weren't crazy on the meals but for the most part it really worked well for us. We always had a TON of leftovers… but people always tell us that we eat like birds so I think we might be the exception to that rule. That and Jay pretty much never eats what we eat for dinner anyways so it wasn't a major loss on his eating habits. We haven't done it since we moved though because we're super close to a Trader Joes here and now I just make their premade dinners 90% of the time. And we can get our entire week of food at Trader Joes for $60 versus doing Blue Apron and still having to go to the store to get all the basics. I feel like I heard that Plated has a kid friendly dinner option which would be fun to try, but I also think I might have made that up too.
I am astounded that you can get a week's worth of food for $60 at Trader Joe's! Love the store, but we must eat a lot cause that just doesn't happen for me, no matter how strategic I plan…
I keep on reading that people spend $60 on their weekly grocery shopping and I am amazed! I plan my weekly meals and for the most part buy at regular grocery stores (Giant, Shoppers, Safeway…) We are 4 and I rarely spend less than $200 per week. And no, I don't stock up in soda, snacks and cookies… Is it the area we live in (Montgomery County)or is there any secrets? I'm all ears! 🙂
Hi Ribga, I completely agree, I spend about the same as you weekly. I wish I knew the secrets of these people who spend so much less.
I had the opportunity to intern for FreshRealm this past summer and it was amazing! They are a great meal kit delivery service that lets you pick and choose what meals you want with no subscription necessary, plus the meals are family friendly! Here is the site if you want to take a look, freshrealm.co.
I am always at $200-250 a week for a family of 5. I have teenagers so that is self explanatory as to why the bill is so high. I am trying it for the first time this coming week. I ordered the 2 meals for 4 people. I got a coupon from a friend but I can already tell this will 1)not be enough food 2)too expensive to keep up. Trader Joe's is awesome and has a lot of pre-preped foods and I agree it would be significantly cheaper. Too bad TJ's does do a meal plan in a box! lol
Ive received about 6 boxes from Blue Apron. The first couple we really liked. But they seem to repeat some of the same ingredients over and over such as vinegar/citrus dressings and or sauces. My husband doesn't care for citrus or vinegary dishes. So Ive skipped the next several weeks. Not sure if I want to continue even though I like the idea of not wasting food. I don't think what they are giving you is worth the money. And we too, would just prefer good tasting family style menus instead of "restaurant" style. And I also would like to know how anyone spends 60.00 per week on food. We are two, don't eat much meat, live in southern oregon and I spend at least $125.00 for a weeks worth of food.
She said she uses TJ's premade dinners. I take that to mean their frozen pastas and orange chicken and rices and the like. A bag of pasta is $3-$4 add some frozen green beans at about $2 and you have dinner for 2 adults and a toddler for $6 add some cereal, milk, lunch meat, bread, lettuce and tomatoes and there is your $60+/- per week. If you cook from scratch and use a decent size or high quality portions of beef, chicken or fish in your dishes and fresh fruit and vegetables it it can't be done.
Food must be expensive in my area as well. Sometimes I shop for one meal and end up spending way more than I would if I had eaten out. Also, going to the grocery store tends to make us buy things we didn't actually need.
I tried Hello Fresh and I liked it, but I agree, it's not time saving for me either.
*weeping* I've read your posts about how little you spend on food a week and can't for the life of me manage even a hundred a week! How do you feed a family of 4 on $75??
I spend about the same amount! Here are what I believe to be big contributors for cutting the cost in our house: we don't eat a lot of meat so I buy it like once a month and usually on sale and larger quantities that I freeze, we don't drink a lot of milk, and I hardly buy anything from all of the middle aisles- the occasional pastas or can etc. That costs me about $50 a week and then I spend about $100 a month on stuff from costco/trader joes, every so often I stock up on bulk at winco.
I hear you. I cannot spend so little. I spend about $140 or so, which includes things like paper towels and toilet paper. We are only three and my toddler doesn't eat a great deal,but I do buy him lots of organic snacks. I live in a rural area so I am limited to the expensive local store and they know they can keep the prices high because of the location. I too feel so sad that people can spend so little while we are breaking the bank!
I've tried free trials of Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, and…something else. I can't remember. I love the trials, because it's so fun to get the big box of cute food and cook several meals you never would have come up with on your own. But it's just not worth how much they charge for it and the packaging makes me feel SUPER guilty. Also, the trials are always of the two-person plans and I'm cheap so I don't upgrade – it's hard to make them stretch to two adults and two kids!
When you use the free trials that someone sends you how easy is it to cancel the subscription ? I would like the free trial and then just go ahead and cancel the subscription but do they automatically charge you again for the next week after receiving my meals? Also have heard that cancelling is hard to do because customer service isn’t the best. Do you know anything about this?
I can see that it's too expensive and fancy for a family with young kids (like yours and mine). My mom does it but she is definitely more of a gourmet cook so she loves the specialty items and not having leftovers. If I was ever given a trial or purchased it I would consider it like "at home cooking school". I've always wanted to take a professional cooking class but never have so this feels like a fun way to try new ingredients and recipes. On another note, can you share how you do meal planning? How often you switch up the recipes? What time of the day you meal prep? How many hours you spend in the kitchen? That would be great to read!
So glad you wrote this! This is exactly how I suspected I'd feel if I tried it out. I like to meal plan and cook for my family, so I'm perfectly comfortable throwing together a healthy meal that all of us will eat on nights when I don't feel like making much effort.
Also, how do you spend so little on groceries! We spend about $100 (sometimes more sometimes less and it averages out to that) a week on groceries, and I thought we were doing really well. Granted, my kids are really good eaters and eat a lot at dinner which is our most expensive meal of the day. I'd love to see a post where you compare your meal plans (which I love peeking at when you share them) with your grocery receipts if you're willing to share. Thanks again for a great post!
Omg, seriously, everyone quit asking her how she spends so little on groceries a week. She is obviously lying. How guilable can you be?!
Omg, seriously ladies. Please quit asking how she spends so little on groceries per week. She is obviously lying. Don't believe everything you read online, use your own brain.
I spend a little more than that on groceries for 6 people with one teenage boy. A lot of how much groceries cost depends on where you live.
Oh my word! Yes to this post. I realize that it's difficult to write a completely honest review of a company when they're paying you (I'm not against sponsors, it's just challenging) but some of the ones for Blue Apron have been a bit too, well, glowing. Thank you for an honest look at what seems like a great idea but doesn't always play well to my large family reality.
And side note, we spend $120 every 2 weeks for our family of 7. I'm always amazed by how it works out.
Oh and one more thing, your photography is incredible.
I would never pay that much for this service. Actually the only scenario in which I can see myself doing so is if I had a child who really enjoyed cooking and wanted to learn some new things – then I can see it being a fun project for them. Not for me generally, though.
Oh my goodness, thank you for this. I'd read several reviews of Blue Apron and always thought–but this is crazy, who pays this much for this! Does anyone really hate meal planning that much? Don't they use Pinterest? Sure the meals sound fancy and sure it would be great for a dinner's worth of ingredients to just show up on my doorstep, but you said it best when you talk about how it's only 2-3 nights worth of dinners. I cook about 4 nights a week for my family of 3 (one is a toddler who barely qualifies as a meal-eater) and also spend about $70-75/week on groceries, and that's for meals that almost always have leftovers. So the thought of spending $60 on 3 dinners alone seems ludicrous to me. And also I kind of like meal planning 🙂 Clearly I'm not their target client. Anyway, I'm sorry I wrote a novel here, I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate your honest review.
Yes, I just want to let you know, some people hate meal planning that much. I will do anything to not have to think about what is for dinner.
Agreed. 10 fold! Not how I want to spend my life.
The problem is time – my husband and I both work long hours, on top of a long commute. There's rarely time for us to sit down and plan meals.
How does spending only 70-75 a week on groceries feed a family of 3 for a whole entire week??! I am also a family of three; myself, my husband, and a toddler. I spend about $125-130 and that barely lasts us a week & most of the stuff I buy is on sale!
LOL Glad it’s not just me! I routinely spend $150 weekly on groceries for my family of four. Now granted, I shop at Wegmans, so there are always a few extra non-necessary items in my cart. But still. $75 a week in groceries? Are y’all eating PB&J sandwiches for every meal?
I've made a couple of their recipes but never ordered the actual food. I liked using their recipes because they were definitely things I wouldn't have thought of to try on my own. I tend to pick recipes that don't have too many unique ingredients unless they are easy to substitute. I highly recommend the chickpea burgers – I've made them twice!
I'm so intrigued here. I get the idea that some people have trouble with meal planning (and sticking to that plan), and grocery shopping and having strange ingredients on hand….but all that is the stuff I really like about cooking. I mean, I like heating and stirring too, but grocery shopping is one of my favorite things, more-so when I have a list of things to work from.
Also, THANK YOU for this review, I appreciate the honesty and the "this is fine, but probably not super great for X, Y, and Z reasons).
xox
For us, I think it's a time and a place kind of thing. We ordered a few trial boxes (like getting a few meals of a box for free) when my daughter was born. It eased me back into cooking- first few weeks of a first child felt so crazy. Then we went back to our regularly scheduled stuff. I cook at home about 6 nights a week and our tight budget didn't allow for that. Almost two years later we just got our second box from Blue Apron. I went across the country for a wedding for 5 days and ordered a box for my husband. I knew he'd eat healthier if he had the meals laid out for him, all of the shopping done. In that instance, money well spent. I think he got the same box you did- and he loved those meals. I don't love meal planning, but I can't justify this expense on a regular basis. My scenarios would be after another baby or during another deployment (months of cooking for me and a toddler can be hard with most meals designed to feed 4-6). I agree that the portions don't seem large. Maybe they are bigger for the family boxes? I've also tried Plated and I liked theirs better. Blue Apron is a bit cheaper though.
I forgot two things: my husband who was afraid of the kitchen when we married, fearlessly cooked all three meals and loved the clear directions. He can't wait to cook that steak again, he said he'd never made a steak that good. And I do use the recipes they post – it helps out with my meal planning and I can adjust quantities.
I know I already commented on this on your Facebook or whatever, but seriously I don't think it sounds that awesome. I too thought "that doesn't look very tasty…" too expensive. Too fancy. Too wasteful. I would way rather eat out and skip the cooking and clean up if I was going to spend that money! I'm so surprised people (like design mom with her family of 8 $$!, though I know she's so super busy) like it so much!
Glad you mentioned the wasteful packaging…that was one of the first things I thought of when I heard about Blue Apron. Not only is it wasteful, but hello – you're paying for all that waste. If I really felt like I was in a pinch and needed food delivered, I'd order it from my local grocery store which delivers for a pretty reasonable fee.
I was happy to learn from my son that is trying Blue Apron now, that it's free to mail back the packaging and gel packs. He said, once you have a few collected, you mail them back for free and they even issue a food credit for recycling with them. I read on the Blue Apron website about free shipping to mail boxes/gel back but I didn't see the part about credits with my own eyes. I hope this info may be helpful to someone.
SO SO glad you wrote about this! I've seen these sponsored posts all over the interweb and I just can't understand what all the hype is…granted, if you're getting paid/getting everything free to review, of course it's hard to talk smack but still, the cost is crazy to me! It's so good to hear an unbiased perspective and know that it's really just the sponsored posts talking…unfortunately. We too spend about $75 for groceries a month and I feel like we eat a ton – it's me, my hubs, and our three toddlers. We started using eMeals about two months ago though and absolutely LOVE it! I paid for a year subscription and plan on using it until I die. You should try it! The meals are huge; we always have leftovers and all the meal planning is done for you so one trip to the grocery store a week it is! 🙂
Oh my! I love this review. My sister did a Blue Apron box once with a friend and I swear she could have written this. She basically said all the same things.
I know this isn't really what your blog is about but I would love if you would share your meal plans with us. I always really like your recipes so I'm sure I would enjoy your meal plans too….I absolutely hate meal planning so I think you would be saving my sanity!