Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

I think blue apron is a good substitute for cooking classes and a reasonable way to "just learn to fucking buy food and cook already". Most younger people need to overcome the urge to say fuck it and get $7 take out that'd be approximately 1000x better than anything they can make themselves (Treesh thread). Groceries are expensive, and that little bottle of red wine vinegar might make sense for a person starting out, uncertain if they want or need a full sized bottle (especially if it's sherry vinegar, I mean fuck). I agree that a blue apron type package is not a sustainable way to eat your home cooked meals over a long period of time, which is probably what it needed to be for the stock to not tank.

I think that's a reasonable take

the local grocery chain, which is pretty good outside of my smaller/oddly-stocked store offers things like pre-ordering with curbside pickup, meal boxes, and other services now and it makes sense in that format

having a big cardboard box with cold packs in it shoved on your doorstop, less so. really we just need to start a service that has straighforward recipes to choose from (or a few that are selected for you based on preferences) that are handed to you when you pull up at the grocery store

was going to say a partnership with someone who had a cookbook like mark bittman's simple one would be ideal, and wouldn't you know, nytimes already made a page similar to the concept: https://cooking.nytimes.com/ourcooks/mark-bittman/my-recipes

another really irritating thing is how these companies act like grocery delivery is some sort of groundbreaking concept, and not something that, y'know, grocery stores used to do all the time in the first half of the 20th century

there are so many start-ups that are providing services that fell by the wayside as stores stopped offering them or creating a level of convenience that existed when stores weren't huge and were more local

so I get why some of them seem like a great idea, but we did it to ourselves

There tends to be a lot of magical thinking about the ability of apps to transcend or alter certain physical and economic realities.

I just kinda hate this manbaby economy of "I don't know how to do anything and I don't want to go anywhere, can a robot just deliver it for me plz"

just learn to fucking buy food and cook already, these are literally some of the most basic human activities ever

― legislative fanboy halfwit (Οὖτις), Wednesday, February 6, 2019 2:12 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The funniest thing about this sort of thinking is that it's very much the blindered mentality of silicon valley workers projecting their own lifestyle onto the rest of the country. *I* don't like going to the grocery store or have time to do it and would rather pay 30% markup to have drones bring me my groceries, so it must be that everyone feels the same way.

lol yeah. honestly I really like going to our local grocery co-op, the people there know me and my family, the selection's awesome, there's cheese samples...

A couple of times lately I've used instacart to do my costco shopping, but even there (1) I prefer to go in person (esp to see the produce), (2) the markup is insane, and (3) they randomly don't have certain items. I assume they try to lower their own costs by treating the instacart shopper like an uber driver and making them an independent contractor who pays his own expenses, but you still have to pay them enough to make it worth their while to spend the time going to costco, shopping, and delivering, plus maintaining their own vehicle, paying for parking at the costco, etc., and then you have to somehow deliver profit on top of that. I just don't get how the model can work. They claim to be profitable but I'm guessing we'll see a different story once an IPO forces them to start reporting financials.

And Blue Apron I REALLY never got -- you pay not much less than takeout cost per meal and do the labor yourself.

I've been using Instacart lately, due to a health thing I'm dealing with (nothing major, but basically I was told not to carry anything heavy for a while, and since I was regularly shopping at Bi-Rite in the Mission and walking home, thus the switch). Since I'm using it specifically for Bi-Rite I'm at least supporting the same place, and pretty much I tip the driver at 20% in cash, though I would rather just wander in as I can -- it's not on my direct route to and from work, though, so there's that. On the bright side I still hit up the Ferry Building farmer's market every Saturday and get further groceries there that aren't too much to deal with, and I always see my regulars when I go.

yelling “learn to cook” at programmers is truly the yelling “learn to code” at people who lost their jobs but have life skills

lol just kidding

i've done cooking and coding

coding is harder, if you fuck up cooking you just get food that doesn't taste as good as it could instead of inscrutable debugger messages

I can see the attraction of recipe packages especially if you don't have easy access to big supermarkets or good/healthy takeaway food, as it saves you spending eg 80p on some herbs you might use quarter of a packet of, £1 on a whole cabbage (my fridge is often full of expiring half-cabbages for some reason), bottles of stuff you might not use again, just for one dish. I've nearly been tempted to try but don't like the idea of all the packaging, set portion sizes (I often make a little extra for my small kids) and not being able to choose the produce.

I cook from scratch nearly every day and when you've got a baby waking up crying every 15 mins when you're trying to prep veg and wondering where the rice wine vinegar is and need to wash up all the knives/ pans etc from lunch before you can even start... It gets a bit tedious. But that's when I would skip to the frozen meals (hooray for Cook) rather than recipe packs.

also is it normal for these companies to get promoted by reps going door to door? there are two of these recipe services that seemed to appear at the same time and were all over my Facebook, Twitter etc. one of them came to my door to try and sign me up. As did a flower subscription service.

everybody's talking about ingredients delivery services when the article says "prepared-meal delivery company Munchery". which makes it sound more like meals on wheels.

it looks like Munchery preps it for you and you just heat it back up

the terminology is hard to keep track of because Blue Apron seems more like a meal ingredient box, and Munchery sounds like a grubhub where the food arrives to you ready-to-reheat rather than possibly lukewarm

I did use one of those meal-delivery services for a few weeks just to see if it would simplify life at all, especially with my job taking up more of my time/energy of late. Truthfully I would probably have kept doing it awhile longer if it hadn't been for the horrifically wasteful packaging. It's not bad to do for a short time if you're looking for new recipe ideas to reuse later but my lord the packaging! Also I was noticing a lot of the same ingredients getting reused a lot even in that short timespan

in my experience Blue Apron's secret weapon is... rosemary. The faux-asian my friends have fed or given me was all run of the mill soy/teriyaki bland, but for pork chops or chicken they're showing bland midwesterners that it's possible to season things

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za_KilRD-do

otm

We used these meal services when we had a newborn (ie no energy and not time but wanted to not order restaurant delivery every night for six months) They were good for that.

There's something passive-aggressively half-assed about just delivering me a bunch of uncooked ingredients and a recipe, like when someone says "I washed some of the dishes for you." Just finish the damn job.

parents w newborns are a special case cuz there's p much no time for cooking and delivered food is a godsend. Our pre-K co-op did meal trains for new parents, which I always thought was cool. Enabled you to live off meals cooked by other families for those first few months.

it looks like Munchery preps it for you and you just heat it back up

Pretty much. We only used it once a week on Friday -- basically just a 'yay the weekend's here' treat to ourselves. We normally cook most of the week or I'd bring something home from Bi-rite's deli when shopping.

The profit margin in the farming and food businesses is low; there is literally no fat to be removed. And nothing that companies like Blue Apron or Munchery did fundamentally changed those economics. The founders who ran these companies were either naive, ill-informed, or simply lying. And as stories from inside these businesses start to leak out, it is clear they were also poor and inexperienced managers.... Their only advantage was the free money from venture capital. Other businesses could not afford to spend more than they make in order to compete. Thus, the VC-backed startup model in this instance was not "disruptive". It was profoundly anti-competitive.

Yes and no. I mean, Wal-Mart did this (fucked over farmers, other food suppliers, etc.) back in the 90s due to economies of scale. The farmers my mother worked for were basically forced to sell tomatoes to Wal-Mart for less than cost.

But, the profits in farming depend a lot on scale of operation, and also in terms of what you grow, and of course, the market for those crops. Something you grow gets hailed as a trendy thing, (i wonder how well cauliflower growers are doing right now) or a super healthy miracle food, then, a year or so later, your crop falls out of fashion, or there's a health scare, (e.g. romaine lettuce, spinach), and you are kinda screwed, and then there's the weather ... like, it's not quite that there's no fat to trim in farming, it's partially there's a lot of risk involved, and if you are a good manager, you don't spend like every year is gonna be great. And then there are labor issues ... that yeah, are a much bigger cost now than they used to be.

Anyway ... I actually hated Munchery for years because in addition to their dumb business model, they had a dumb name, and I'd occasionally have to go work at a client's a block away from their dumb warehouse and they fucked w/traffic and parking. So yeah, fuck them. CSA otm!

Re: Trader Joe's -- like people said upthread, the produce is kinda hit or miss and also there's a lot of packaging ... also, a lot of the produce is imported (lots from Mexico), and in terms of supporting local farmers, that doesn't help all that much.

wal-mart didn’t stop in the 90s consdering their full grocery rollout was later!

oh yeah, then it got worse.

mah produce

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dy5xzxNW0AIki2s.jpg:small

we're innovating medical transportation & changing the standards of ambulance service to improve the lives of emts, patients & healthcare providers.

I remember joking about creating 911 Gold back in college.

the logo and color scheme looks scarily like that of the hospital in Idiocracy #trenchant

we got like 4 or 5 Groupons for HelloFresh that made them like $30 a week which is a pretty good deal

as someone with two small children and little time to shop they are kinda useful. I thought the meals were pretty good. but yeah, don't like the wasteful packaging and once the price increases to like $60/week or whatever it's not worth doing. nice to have all those recipe cards though

steven spielberg should sue

just learn to fucking buy food and cook already, these are literally some of the most basic human activities ever

They are also some of the most bullshit human activities, though.

Listening to “The Dropout” podcast on the whole Theranos story. What a crazy story! Holmes is such a classic con-(wo)man. It’s great to hear her deposition, where she can’t just keep spinning BS.

it's a good story and a good pod, not necessarily covering tons ground not trod in Bad Blood but it's interesting to hear from some of the principals

They are also some of the most bullshit human activities

Only if you are mesmerized by the Food Channel's version of these activities. What's "bullshit" about buying some rolled oats, simmering them in hot water for six or seven minutes, adding a few raisins and brown sugar, and spooning them into your mouth?

xposts -- yeah agreed, it's a bit redundant after Bad Blood but it's a nice way to flesh out the story a bit more, hear some voices, etc. Gibney's documentary and the Bad Blood adaptation are both on my 'to watch' list when they come out.

I couldn't hear that podcast here on spotify but I'm interested in hearing Holmes directly

i don't even cook much but the idea that making brownies is "bullshit" baffles me

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/02/lawyer-who-wrote-apples-insider-trading-policy-accused-of-insider-trading/

quis custodiet something something

maybe by bullshit, he means that food should be free and we shouldn't have to buy it? idk i mean, there are definitely times when i wish i didn't need to eat and deal with food because i don't feel like i have time or there are too many other things i wanna do, but it's more or less like sleep -- it's pretty necessary and actually enjoyable most of the time

I guess if you view the human experience as some grand experiment in creating technology, art, and furthering culture then maintenance activities like cooking food and organizing your socks become hindrances that steal your time. Or if you’re really on that edge, the time spent eating food is a barrier to true transendence and you’re chugging soylent or whatever

I like cooking and even, on occasion, enjoy doing dishes

I'll never forget reading a Michael Jackson interview when i was like, 10, al where he said he hated eating because it was such a waste of time, and that was my first inkling that there was something deeply askew w this dude

I'll never forget reading a lex post when i was like, 24, etc

some part of this is an artifact of an economy in which food preparation is chiefly a private matter. there's an alternate history where it got much more collectivized and we'd view cooking for yourself in the same way as like, generating your own electricity or something. like at the start of the 19th century, most americans bought all their food at the market and someone in their home (probably a wife or mother, or servants) prepared it. gradually different forms of restaurants emerged and became popular and it became more and more normal to take more and more of your meals out of the home, not to mention the role played by room-and-board rooming houses. always so interesting to see those portrayed in old movies. so idk we're on some kind of continuum where there are a range of different versions of your relation to food and cooking.

in the 1920s there was a small constellation of communist, left-socialist, and feminist-reformers who argued that it was crazy to have every individual home kitted out with all this space and hardware and plumbing for cooking, plus the assumption of who was going to do that cooking labor, especially in the context of public housing schemes that were struggling to design minimum-cost dwellings. communal dining for apartment blocks (basically like a cafeteria) were briefly experimented with in a few projects in the USSR before stalin consolidated and deradicalized the state's cultural program etc. moisei ginzburg's narkomfin building in moscow had units with very small, basic modular kitchens that could - in theory - be removed if you realized you were taking all your meals in the attached cafeteria and you'd rather use the square footage for something else. i could imagine someday being wooed by an apartment offering not a gym or a pool but a reliable square meal in the canteen as part of the rent, with some version of a miniature kitchenette (little cube fridge? single-rack oven for when you get the baking urge? i don't know) so you can fix up a few things yourself...

excellent post, DC!

. i could imagine someday being wooed by an apartment offering not a gym or a pool but a reliable square meal in the canteen as part of the rent, with some version of a miniature kitchenette (little cube fridge? single-rack oven for when you get the baking urge? i don't know) so you can fix up a few things yourself...

these exist already and are marketed at tech bros, often through renovating former SRO's which entail displacing poor people and other marginal individuals who often end up homeless as a result.