This Blue Apron review will cover all aspects of the popular meal kit, with information about what types of recipes per week you can get, what to expect from their shipping, ingredients, diet options, Blue Apron pricing, and more.
If you’re wondering if Blue Apron could be a good fit for you and your lifestyle, you’re in the right place.
We tried it for a week and broke down every piece of the meal delivery service to share our experience.
How Blue Apron Works
Blue Apron is a traditional meal kit service.
There are a number of meals to choose from each week, then they package your ingredients along with a recipe card for each of your meal options and deliver everything to your doorstep each week.
You won’t need any fancy kitchen tools or shop for additional ingredients.
If you want to learn to cook or pick up some new skills, their easy-to-follow recipes have got you covered no matter your skill level.
Not to mention, their recipes are notoriously fun, creative, and damn tasty!
We can attest to these claims about their food. It’s really, really good and super fun to make.
A Full Blue Apron Review
Is this one of those delivery services I’ll try once and never go back to, or will I actually want to use it each week?
This is a common concern when ordering a meal delivery service.
From their ordering process to their customer support and everything in between, we are here to share our experience with Blue Apron so that you can have a better idea of whether this delivery service may be right for you.
Great Ordering Process
I’m a big fan of simple processes, especially when it comes to setting something up, and Blue Apron definitely delivered with a pretty seamless ordering process.
It just took a few steps to get set up, then it redirected me automatically into the section to choose my meals so I didn’t have to track it down.
I really appreciated that extra step to redirect automatically to choosing meals; many times you have to start the process from scratch to find the meals page and go from there.
Not that it’s really that big of a deal to do so, but that little extra bit of convenience was nice.
A good ordering process makes a great first impression!
Well-Rounded & Seamless Meal Selection Process
Choosing your Blue Apron meals is pretty easy, too.
The categories are broken up neatly and there’s no confusion trying to figure out what your choices are.
You can view the menu options, look at nutrition facts and ingredients, swap a meal, and make your choices easily from the same screen without jumping all over the place.
I also like that you can see what the other meal plans besides your own have for choices that week as well.
That way if you want to change your plan for the week, you can easily do so as well.
Oftentimes you’re required to change your plan before even seeing what other options are available, but this seems like a much better way to do it and much more convenient for customers.
Good for Some Dietary Accommodations
While Blue Apron might not have specific plans for dietary accommodations, they do have very well-rounded options within their meal plans that allow for people to choose what they need.
They even have meals that work for certain diets that aren’t commonly found in meal kits at all, such as the Mediterranean diet.
They also offer many carb-conscious and 600 calories or less meals, in addition to others.
They do have a vegetarian plan, which does include some vegan meals, so those are definitely covered.
Blue Apron is careful to keep a good balance within its meal options, so they do typically have several gluten-free and dairy-free choices as well.
Not Much Portion Flexibility
There isn’t much flexibility within the serving size choices, but then again that’s not too common with any meal kit services, so it’s not too surprising.
They have an option for 2-servings or 4-servings, which they call their signature plan and signature for 4 plan.
Then they have their vegetarian plan for 2 which completes their options.
These choices do usually work well for most families by choosing the closest needed.
For example, we have a family of 2 adults and 2 young children, so we ordered the signature plan for 2.
This ended up being just enough food without anything left over, but we also could’ve gone with the 4-serving option to plan for larger portions and/or some leftovers.
Larger families can use a similar method when ordering to find a good solution without much effort.
Responsible Packaging with Constant Improvements
Blue Apron has excellent packaging, and they’ve vowed to continue making improvements to make it even more sustainable in the following years.
This is especially important because they’re one of the biggest and most popular delivery kit services available, so they set the tone with it comes to these types of trends for other companies as well.
Currently, their packaging is 85% recyclable.
They are aiming to be 100% recyclable within the next few years.
Customers tend to take notice that there are a lot of plastic bags used for their ingredients.
While this is true, as it turns out, meal delivery service companies streamline the food chain and have other positive influences on our overall carbon footprint that are better for the environment than grocery shopping.
Excellent Taste & High Creativity
I cannot rave enough about the taste of our meals.
You can tell during the tasting portion of our video review how good their meals are.
The thing is, they’re consistently good, which is rarer than anything.
Many meal kits have some stunners, but then other meals fall flat.
Literally, everything we’ve tried from Blue Apron has been a home run, and not just for my husband and I, but for our kids as well.
While the meals are great, they’re also highly creative, which is exciting for me as a chef and foodie.
If trying new things and learning new recipes is something you’re into, you’d love Blue Apron because they provide that and then some.
For example, our first recipe included soaking raisins in date syrup and using them as a garnish. This small ingredient aided in creating an astoundingly balanced flavor profile that took the overall meal flavor far beyond expectations.
If you like creative meals, this is absolutely the service for you.
Recipes Easy to Understand
I really, really love Blue Apron’s recipe cards.
In comparison to other meal delivery services especially, their recipes are easy to follow.
The game-changer though is that they have BULLET POINTS!
This is awesome, because not only is each recipe well-organized and easier to pick up where you left off, but you can easily mark your progress by checking off each step as you go (I would highly recommend this, it’s awesome).
There are several actual steps within each ‘step,’ so this organized presentation is such a help, especially if you’re multitasking while cooking (like if you have a toddler pulling on your leg while another one drills you with questions, for example).
Especially when you’re following a recipe you aren’t familiar with, having great recipe cards is a huge pro for Blue Apron because it makes the cooking process so much easier and less stressful (and quicker!).
Relatively Accurate Time Estimates
One thing that always gets me frustrated about meal kits is when they say a recipe should take 30 minutes and it takes closer to 50.
Especially from someone with a lot of experience in the kitchen, I’d prefer to have an accurate representation of what I’m getting myself into when I start so I know when dinner will be done.
Blue Apron has pretty accurate time estimates.
Not perfect, but they’re pretty accurate, and nothing was really overblown to the point of frustration, so that’s a win.
Of the recipes we tried, only one took longer than estimated, but it wasn’t by much, maybe about 5 minutes, which is hardly worth mentioning.
Freshness, Quality & Sustainability of Ingredients
The quality and freshness of the ingredients we received were good, and this was expected.
After all, you don’t get to be the biggest meal kit offering if you’re sending out low-quality ingredients.
While Blue Apron doesn’t use 100% organic ingredients, they do vet their suppliers and use quality, trusted sources for their produce, meat, and other products.
Our greens were crisp and perky, our peppers were firm, and our carrots were crunchy.
Nothing was wilted or clearly expired.
The only issue we had was one onion that had a mushy core, but you couldn’t tell from the outside, and it didn’t smell at all, so there would have been no way of catching the issue during a quality check.
Considering our other onions were fine, I don’t consider this to be a problem, but rather a common occurrence that happens sometimes with food delivery services.
We simply took out the bad part and kept cooking, and everything turned out great.
Blue Apron Cost
So how do Blue Apron’s prices compare to those of their competitors, and is it worth it?
Well, I can absolutely say this service is worth it.
The signature meal plan costs just $9.99 per serving, which is a pretty standard price for these types of services.
The signature for 4 plan can come in as low as $7.99 per serving, which is a great price, especially for the high-quality meals provided.
Free shipping also sweetens the deal, along with the fact that their portion sizes are nice and roomy, so you’ll have enough for even large appetites.
Blue Apron Customer Service
How does Blue Apron customer service perform when an issue arises?
Thankfully, we didn’t have any issues with our order, but they do have great options to get assistance should you need it.
First, it is simple to do most account maintenance on your own within their website.
You can easily swap recipes, change your plan, pause, or even cancel your account all on your own.
If you do need to contact customer support, they also have email, phone, and chat information available as well.
What We Liked
The biggest thing that I absolutely love about Blue Apron is the taste and creativity of their meals.
It’s by far one of the tastiest meal kits we’ve tried, and their recipes are super creative and fun!
I also like their add-on options, which are unique. You can add on a meal prep box, which comes with ingredients and recipes to prep and cook a week’s worth of lunches, which I think is pretty awesome.
You can also add a wine box to go with your meals, which comes with 6 bottles (smaller than normal size) of wine.
Another aspect I really appreciated with Blue Apron is their recipe cards.
They do have multiple steps within one ‘step,’ although this is pretty common with meal kits in general.
What sets them apart, though, is that they have bullet points that make it easy to find where you left off, and you can even use a pen to mark your progress (I did this and would highly recommend it!).
What We Didn’t Like
The first aspect that didn’t sit right with me is the fact that their wine pairing box is a minimum of 6 bottles and is processed as a separate subscription.
I absolutely wanted to try this add-on service (and would have), but 6 bottles is far too much for our particular household and I don’t want a whole subscription for it.
It would’ve been preferred (this may be a personal preference) to have the ability to add a bottle or two to a single order.
Second, they don’t have very many choices per week.
Since they have such a well-rounded menu with different types of diets included if you’re looking for something specific it doesn’t leave you with many choices.
I definitely would’ve appreciated a few more options than just those that were given.
Lastly, I would’ve liked to see some small add-on options that are available with many other meal kits, such as breakfast, snacks, or dessert options to add to the week.