We tried a meal-kit service and I don't understand who their target market is.

[drwex]

An acquaintance had a coupon for a free "week" from Purple Carrot (https://www.purplecarrot.com/). I tried it after reading their terms and understanding that I could cancel at any point and not be charged. So I set up the account, and the coupon credit was applied immediately. This gave me a cash balance equivalent to three "meals" - ingredients for a dinner entree for two people. I'll cut-tag the narrative in case you don't want your friends page blown up with my saga.

I could have added more food if I wanted to pay for it, either in the form of additional items, such as desserts/snacks/side dishes, additional meals, or increased portions of the existing meals. (E.G. turn a dinner-for-two into a dinner-for-four for considerably less than 2x the base price). I did not choose any of these options.

The site was extremely clear and easy to use. Purple Carrot emphasizes vegetable-based eating though they do use milk products so not everything is vegetarian. I could select entrees that were vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, etc. Delivery was also quite clear and timely. Each meal came (mostly) in one big plastic bag marked with the name of the entree the ingredients were for. A couple of large items were separated but obvious and easy to line up with the intended meal. Inside each bag the ingredients were wrapped or containered where necessary (e.g. some tablespoons of almond milk) or not if they were self-contained, such as a lemon or a head of garlic. Still, there was considerable packaging (waste) with each meal.

The box came with a standard full-color printed set of recipes in which I had to find the meals I had ordered. I infer that this is a print-once book that they just put into every box and don't go through the work of sending you just the recipes you ordered. Easier and less work for them but again more waste.

At this point I infer that they are targeting people who are concerned about eating healthy, maybe vegetarian, but are not price-conscious or overly concerned about plastic and other waste. My eyebrows start to go up.

Ingredient quality was superb. Everything was fresh and kept well in the fridge for days. I did not cook the meals quickly after the box arrived and was concerned that things would have wilted or lost quality. Whatever suppliers Purple Carrot are using and however they're selecting produce is top-notch. The delivered ingredients included everything needed except salt, pepper, olive or vegetable oil.

Preparing each meal turned out to be quite labor intensive. For example, one meal used a lemon. First you zest it, then cut it in half, juice one half and quarter the other half. Peapods are to be thinly sliced, etc. The recipes did not explain the cooking terms used (but hey that's what the Internet is for) so I now infer that Purple Carrot is targeting people who own a lemon zester but do not own red wine vinegar (an ingredient they supply). My eyebrows continue to go up.

I would estimate meal prep time to be 20-40 minutes. Often there were multiple stages that got combined. E.G. cook the quinoa, put some ingredients (that you have prepared) into that, do a thing, then add more ingredients later. Total time from opening the plastic bag to eating food was generally an hour to an hour-and-a-quarter. So Purple Carrot are targeting people who have an hour to prepare and cook dinner but no time to shop for ingredients or who live somewhere that finding high-quality ingredients is hard. At this point my eyebrows have disappeared into my admittedly receding hairline.

I am a tolerable low-skilled amateur chef with a silly amount of accumulated tools. Each of these meals felt within my skills but used up three or four prep containers (two saucepans and a big mixing bowl plus plus). Possibly a more experienced cook would have been more efficient, I dunno. The pre-measured quantities of various items saved a small amount of time, but really not much. Measuring two teaspoons of something is quite quick compared to the amount of time to zest a whole lemon. Possibly Purple Carrot makes these choices based on how easy something is to mess up? I have to assume that anyone who owns the set of knives and cutting boards required for these recipes is going to own at least one set of measuring spoons and know how to use them.

The recipes did not seem very complex and were generally simple to read and follow, again assuming you knew the terms used or were willing to look them up. There were some pictures to help, but not step-by-step. There were just a lot of steps and a lot of ingredients to prepare and it all took time. Maybe Purple Carrot is appealing to people who find this kind of labor relaxing or meditative? A way to wind down at the end of the day. Very not-me but perhaps those people exist.

The meals ranged from tasty to OK. Sample size 3 is probably too small to determine that, and I do want to find more plant-based things to cook. Purple Carrot's recipes seem to rely on tofu, beans, and quinoa for much of their substance so those are things to look into more.

Overall an interesting experiene and a free way to learn that this is for Not Me. Honestly I'm still not sure who they are for - do you know anyone who uses a service like this?

Comments

[redbird]

I know someone who is using one of these, and she's using it partly as a source of ideas. This way she has the recipe, the necessary ingredients, including seasonings, and not a lot of leftovers that she won't use before they spoil, or at all.

The recipes they supply are more than one meal for her, and sometimes she likes one enough to buy the ingredients to make it again. I'm not sure how much of her reason for this is not wanting to waste things, or not clutter her kitchen with lots of little jars of different spices she's not going to use.

It's not my approach, but cattitude and I are off in a different direction. Our spice cabinet includes various things that we got because Penzey's was giving away free samples, and a few because we were there anyway and Cattitude likes getting something he hasn't used before. Fortunately, most of the odder ones are spices that will keep well, like powdered horseradish, rather than green herbs that don't.

[drwex]

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

[totient]

Purple Carrot seems like a new-pedagogy teaching-to-cook tool in the same way that bikes with no pedals are a teaching-to-ride-a-bike tool. The old pedagogy was to use training wheels to tackle the easy parts, like steering and pedaling a bike, to build confidence before taking on the hard part, which is balancing. The new pedagogy is you need more time to work on the hard part so start there, but remove any distractions so that you can get the balancing down before you start trying to do other things at the same time. Considering the amount of unearned confidence in the world, I am on board with the new pedagogy.

[drwex]

That's interesting. I had not thought about it from a teaching perspective. The set-up and directions are not what I think of as teaching tools, but experiential learning is definitely a thing.

[reedrover]

Interesting review, and definitely not for me.

I like your questions about For Whom the Carrot Tolls.

My first postulation for an answer is someone who was once more outgoing but is now stuck at home due to pandemic/health situation/responsibilities to the point that the corner store is the only source of fresh produce and they want to continue at a higher level of cooking.

Second idea: someone who used to cook all the time and has all the tools, but had to radically change the household meals due to a newly diagnosed meat allergy or a gluten sensitivity in the house, and is out of cope to try to totally remake all of their cooking habits.

Third idea: people who cook as a show-off/personal art project for a few friends at an intimate dinner. They don't want to spend the time picking recipes and then hunting down exotic/quality items in the grocery stores; they want to spend their time looking gorgeous and gourmet in their perfectly-supplied open, modern kitchen.

[drwex]

Yeah I thought about it from a situational perspective but this company has existed for lots longer than the pandemic as have its many competitors.

[ursa_cerulean]

We don't use meal kits, because I am bad at recipes, but I can see how they'd be very attractive.

For me, the exhausting part of making dinner is figuring out what dinner is going to be, figuring out what ingredients it needs to have, do we have those, does the store have those, what substitutions do we need to make for people's food restrictions, how carefully do we need to calibrate for leftovers (is this meal going to be delicious in two days, or do we need to make sure it makes only enough for tonight and maaaaaybe one lunch.)

A meal kit takes ALL of the hard part away, and leaves the fun part: actually preparing the food.

Sometimes we don't have the brain or energy to prepare the food either, and in that case, that's what take-out is for.

Both take-out and a meal kit use a lot of dollars resources, but fewer brain and body energy resources.

[drwex]

Interesting. Thanks for that perspective. I don't find the prep fun at all and tend to skew heavily toward low/no-prep meals. I also tend to start with food I have and throw that at google. Something like "chicken kale ginger recipe" - or any similar combination of food words with recipe appended gets me lots of ideas.

[ursa_cerulean]

I mean. The actual making of food ranges from "fun" to "boring but ok" to "too much" but it's not the HARD part for me. Planning takes all the managing energy that I'm using at work, and I have a limited amount of that.

[drwex]

Valid. If I'm low on that kind of cope I tend to go for leftovers and on days when I know that's likely to happen I ask Pygment if she can handle cooking on those days.

It used to be we'd make things in larger quantities and have more leftovers but these days with four adult appetites it's harder to have substantial meal-worthy leftovers to cover these gaps.

[chhotii]

I can see how, with Purple Carrot supplying the imagination, this might get one out of a cooking rut and take one into previously-unexplored directions cooking-wise.

However, nope on this concept for me. I never, ever can bear to follow instructions exactly. My starting point for meal planning is based around "what do I want to use up?" And the excessive packaging would really offend me.

[flexagon]

I know a lot of tech people who use either a service like this (Gobble's been recommended a lot -- they specialize in partly-prepped food with only about 15-20 minutes' work left to go) or else a personal chef who delivers a few meals' worth of food a week.

The idea for me would be to always have the ingredients for the recipe, and always not have too much -- so you're free of the whole dreary supply-chain problem of keeping a kitchen going, which is my least favorite part.

We just used a kit to make molten chocolate lava cakes for our anniversary last night, and that was fun. I keep meaning to try Gobble. The excess packaging is kind of sad-making, but it's the price of getting things in meal-sized quantities.

[dcltdw]

TLDR: trade money for spoons

My vague(!) understanding is that it's for people with disposable income (hi, tech sector) who 1, like cooking but 2, Past Them did not prepare by 2a researching recipes and then 2b getting basics plus 2c oh dang a lemon normally I never have lemons on hand.

So then one can just say "the f I know what I'm having for dinner, but all the logistics is neatly done for me, so all that's left is operations", so as long as you're not starving (and even so, it sounds like 40 mins max of prep? which is not that bad), then one can close the laptop lid and say "okay! Dinner!" et voila.

I think upthread you said something like "if I'm out of spoons, I eat leftovers", but again, that's a logistical spoon being spent -- ah, Wednesday is gonna be bonkers, so I'll cook Tuesday night -- and so this trades money to not have to do that planning.

All that said: I've never used this kind of service, soooo yeaaaah have a salt shaker. :)

[fenicedautun]

I think this would make more sense to me if you could go in a grocery store and pick up a package like this on the spur of the moment (BFresh had these for a little while when the Davis one opened). I feel like having to order and get delivered requires that preplanning that could be shopping.

OTOH, I'm a planner and that's the easy part for me.

[badseed1980]

I think they're mostly for people who prefer not to eat meat for either ethical or health-related reasons rather than environmental ones, who are able to follow recipes, but who are not generally creative cooks, and for whom planning and shopping for meals *in addition to cooking them* takes more energy and time than they tend to have. Also, FWIW, most people do have a regular box grater that can easily be used to zest a lemon. I have a friend who is a regular subscriber to their boxes. I've never used any meal box kit myself.