In reality, both of them were way too much work. We were excited to try them but don't miss them at all. I think the blog describes it well: this is not a real pain point (at least for us - 2 adults, one baby).
Blue apron freaked me out because they deliver a huge box that is 80% packaging and cold packs. Inside that box are many other little boxes that contain, for example, a single tomato.
They require you to be pretty adept with a chopping knife and good at prep work, while assuming that the only ingredient you own is cooking oil. So you get cocaine-like bags full of two tablespoons of flour.
It's like a sous chef simulator that fills your house with packaging. I buy as much as I can from them, since I figure they are running at a loss and I want venture capitalists subsidizing my dinner.
But it freaks me out to stab all those melted cold packs and bleed them out into the sink every night.
"They require you to be pretty adept with a chopping knife and good at prep work, while assuming that the only ingredient you own is cooking oil."
Yes, that was pretty much what we experienced as well. The prep time was often much longer than 20~30 minutes, and really took the fun out of it.
Admittedly, it was all very tasty but for us, it created more pain than it solved. We tried Plated to see if it was better but it pretty much was the same experience.
I found both prep time and quantity of food varied really widely. Sometimes I was chopping for what felt like hours, other times you just had to mix stuff together and fry it for five minutes. And then make a second dinner, because you'd been given two spoonfuls of seeds and a pearl onion.
I think those of us who like fresh cooked meals have already adapted to how to make them, the market for people who need and want to convert to that stage is small.
That's precious. Dude, its about the journey, man. Take the 40 Mil spend it on booze. Live fast, pivot and ride the wave to the soft landing. Then do it again. Beats a real coding job any day.