Have now tried five home meal orders, here’s a breakdown

We’ve been trying Blue Apron and HelloFresh and I finally think I’ve figured out what the business model is – saying they’re sorry and offering a discount off the next order.

That’s the only thing that makes sense – every single order from each of these companies we’ve received is missing at least one item that ruins at least one meal. By ruin, I mean you look for a substitute, realize that the only place that might carry what they’re missing is Whole Foods, and decide to go with corn instead.

I’ve gotten to the point I record unboxing the things expecting the companies are going to try and claim we’re lying. Everything gets inventoried at time it gets in. Everything’s missing something or something doesn’t match the description. Every order results in another contacting customer service.

Every time the offer is the same – here’s $X off your next order… and the next order is messed up as well, and it’s $X off the next order and so on and so forth.

They’re just locking you in with bad inventory control and an offer of a discount.

Of the five orders, each contained three meals. Every order contained at least one meal that was missing an ingredient. This was Hellofresh and Blue Apron.

Blue Apron had some packing issues which additionally destroyed another meal (we salvaged, but it destroyed the bag and leaked all in the box.) in addition to the two missing ingredients.

HelloFresh just has been skipping ingredients but everything’s packed.

Lordy, get it right before you send it.