Blue Apron Review: My Experience Ordering Blue Apron

Blue Apron Review: My Experience Ordering Blue Apron

Many people love to cook, it’s finding time to go grocery shopping that can be difficult for anyone with a hectic life. That’s exactly why meal delivery services are all the rage right now. Having food delivered to you, with recipes that spell out exactly how you have to prepare your ingredients can be a huge time saver, but still gives you the freedom to have fun cooking at home.

Today, I’ll be reviewing one among the primary and most well-known meal delivery services: Blue Apron.

What is Blue Apron?

Blue Apron is a meal delivery service—meaning, Blue Apron offers a variety of recipes that you can choose from each week, and all the ingredients you’ll need to prepare them are sent right to your door.

Blue apron boasts chef-designed recipes that are quick and easy to make, but still plenty tasty.

How Blue Apron works

Creating an account

Creating an account is incredibly easy. You give you email and address and then you’re led to a screen where you select the number of meals and serving size (more on this below).

After a few more questions, you select your delivery date and then you’re done.

Choosing box options

As you can see from the picture above, you can choose from four different plans. The Vegetarian, Signature, and Weight Watchers Freestyle Plans only serve two people up to three times a week, while the Signature Plan for 4 is meant for four people, up to four times a week.

Choosing recipes

Blue Apron has a decent amount of recipes to choose from, but to me, none of them were very creative. Most of their meat-based dishes involved chicken. Five out of the eight recipes I tried (which were pre-selected for me) were chicken-based, and often in the form a stir fry.

Don’t get me wrong, I love good stir fry, but I expected more options from one of the largest meal delivery services available.

With all that being said, their vegetarian selection is actually large compared to other delivery services.

One other thing that’s unique to Blue Apron is the fact that they offer a wine delivery service. And, you'll pair them supported your food selection. So, if you’re like me and enjoy wine, but never actually know the proper food-to-wine pairings, Blue Apron has you covered. The cost isn’t too terrible either at $10 per bottle. So, if you drink a significant amount of wine, the $65.99 a month isn’t bad – and that includes shipping. I spend that on one night out in my over-priced city.

Who is Blue Apron good for?

Blue Apron brands themselves as a food delivery service for people who want fast meals—and that’s exactly what they do. Their meals typically take 20-30 minutes to make, and there’s not too much preparation, as most of their spices are already mixed for you.

Who isn’t Blue Apron good for?

Blue Apron is definitely not for people with a lot of experience cooking. Their recipes are a little too simple for the experienced chef. I often found myself going an extra step and adding more spice, or simply preparing the food differently than the directions told me.

That being said, I found that directions also aren’t the best for people who have no experience cooking. There was a lot of assumption that you knew what you were doing, and some of the cooking utensils you needed weren’t ones that most unexperienced cooks would even have. Like a cheese grater for example—the only reason I have one is that my fiancé cooks a lot and he brought it when we moved in together.

Blue Apron cost, details and features

Blue Apron’s serving size

I chose Blue Apron’s Classic Plan, which is meant for two. The serving sizes were a little disappointing. There was enough for two small plates of food, but definitely no leftovers. So, if you have a two-person household and you’re hoping for leftovers, your best bet is to go with the Family Plan.

How much does Blue Apron cost?

Depending on the plan you choose and the number of meals you select, your cost per serving can go down. Here is that the cost breakdown for every plan (without promos):

 Servings and Recipes/Week    /                                Total Cost             
2 people, 2 recipes per week  / $9.99/serving ($47.95 total + $7.99 shipping = $47.95/week)
2 people, 3 recipes per week / $9.99/serving ($59.94 total + FREE shipping = $59.94/week)
4 people, 2 recipes per week / $8.99/serving ($71.92 total + FREE shipping = $71.92/week)
4 people, 3 recipes per week / $7.99/serving ($95.88 total + FREE shipping = $95.88/week)
4 people, 4 recipes per week / $7.49/serving ($119.84 total + FREE shipping = $119.84/week)

My experience using Blue Apron

Overall, using Blue Apron wasn’t the simplest experience, but I feel that has more to try to to with the very fact that I enjoy cooking and Blue Apron’s fast and straightforward to cook meals was a little too simple.

Food quality

The food was always fresh when it arrived and will last a couple of days within the fridge, or, if you would like to attend longer to form certain meals, the food was fine being frozen.

Taste

Blue Apron’s food never tasted bad, but it didn’t taste top quality either. That’s likely due to the fact that most of their food simply didn’t call for enough spice. Once I added more salt or pepper or chili flake (you get the point), the food was a touch better but still fairly bland.

For the value of Blue Apron, I don’t feel that the food quality is necessarily worthwhile. You pay upwards of $50 for two meals a week (and that’s just dinner), so you’ll need to go grocery shopping anyway, and by the time you’ve bought everything you need, Blue Apron’s price it is not very budget-friendly.

Recipe cards

For the foremost part, the recipes led you in the right direction. But, as I said above, for those that haven't, or rarely made full meals, the recipe cards are often hard to follow. You’re told to do multiple tasks at once—which is hard even for more experienced home cooks, and there’s a lot of assumption that you know how to chop vegetables properly, know how to add the right spices, and multi-task.

In my experience with other meal delivery services (Plated, for example), the recipe cards have helpful tips that instruct you how to do every single step, no matter how small.

Packaging

If you read a review of any food delivery service, you’ll likely hear that the packaging isn’t very eco-friendly, and Blue Apron is no exception. The food came in a giant box filled with ice packs and plastic wrap. I took the packaging with a grain of salt, however, because currently, this seems to be the only way to ensure freshness of the food.

Blue Apron does have a “how to recycle page” that you can find in your account information.

Pros & Cons

PROS

• Easy to follow recipes — Each meal comes with simple recipes complete with step-by-step photos
• Delivered at the ideal temperature — Comes with ice packs to keep the food cool even if you come home after a few hours
• Has a Weight Watchers option — If you're doing Weight Watchers, there's an option for you to order Blue Apron meals
• Delicious, quality meals — Blue Apron is known for encouraging customers to use interesting ingredients they may never have considered. The meals are consistently interesting and tasty

CONS

• No specific dietary plans — Can’t cater specifically to certain allergies
• Not as easy to cancel plan — Must send a request by email rather than doing so online
• Less choice — Blue Apron offers 8 meals a week to choose from

Blue Apron Compared

Blue Apron’s cancellation and refund policy

Every once in a while, you are planning a trip or you just know that you need to not be having Blue Apron meals delivered to your home. I will say, Blue Apron makes it super convenient if you want to skip any number of weeks with no questions asked. In fact, you can skip orders up to five weeks in advance which is super convenient and makes it easy to plan.

If you decide you want to cancel your subscription altogether, you just need to send an email to cancellations@blueapron.com Blue Apron will then send you an email with simple instructions about finalizing the cancelation.

Summary

If you’re looking for a simple meal delivery service, Blue Apron is it. The meals were definitely fast and easy to cook but did not compare to going out to your favorite restaurant.

But who can really afford that? For home-cooked meals that are healthy, Blue Apron is a good choice.

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