Is meal delivery better value than the grocery store?

Meal-kit service Blue Apron says it’s a better value than grocers like Whole Foods. We put it to the test.

Sally French, MarketWatch

Fresh, delicious dinners delivered to your doorstep at a reasonable price -- it’s a tantalizing idea and one that more startups are looking to make a reality. Most ready-to-eat or ready-to-cook meal deliveries range in the $10-to-$15 price-per-serving range, which you may consider either outrageously expensive or a good deal depending on your dining and shopping habits. Either way, it’s a fair bet that you’ll pay a premium for the convenience of having a high-quality meal planned out and the ingredients brought to you.

Doing the math ingredient-by-ingredient, we found Blue Apron to be 35% more expensive than Whole Foods.

But just how much of a premium are you paying? Dollar for dollar, here’s how meal-delivery service Blue Apron, which claims to be a better value than your local grocer, compares with shopping at Whole Foods WFM, -1.63%

Blue Apron: Better value than your local grocer?

We ordered a week’s worth of meals from Blue Apron, one of the longer running meal-delivery startups on the scene, which is available across 85% of the U.S. and serving up more than 2 million meals each month. The New York-based startup is in talks to raise money from investors at a valuation of around $2 billion and has been called one of the most innovative startups of the past few years. So outlook on the company is bullish. Blue Apron promises “exciting,” “seasonal” recipes for beginners and experienced cooks alike (all of which are available on its website for free), and farm-fresh ingredients from family-run businesses, all at a “better value than your local grocery store.”

Blue Apron, like other meal-delivery services, doesn’t disclose how much you are paying per item or, even, per specific meal. The cost averages out to $9.99 per person but you are charged per weekly order, which contains 6 meals for $59.94 (that’s the 2-person plan; the family plan is $139.84 per week, or $8.74 per serving).

Blue Apron tells you how much of each ingredient they are sending you and pre-measures ingredients to reduce waste. We weighed each ingredient and found that nearly all of them matched exactly the amounts Blue Apron listed. One major mishap occurred, though: We were missing one yellow onion. (Customer service offered us a $9.99 credit for the missing onion.)

The Blue Apron vs. Whole Foods smackdown

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Blue Apron says it's a better value than grocers like Whole Foods. Dollar-for-dollar, we put it to the test.

Is Whole Foods actually more expensive?

Blue Apron did its own price comparison research and claims that, on average, it can deliver ingredients for less than 60% of what your grocery store charges. So we headed out to the local Whole Foods to put that to the test.

Whole Foods aka Whole Paycheck is hardly a budget grocer and is known for high-quality organic goods and produce, so we felt the comparison would be fair. Plus, Whole Foods says that any produce items priced by weight it will cut down to exactly the amount you need -- if you only want to buy a half-bunch of asparagus, you can ask a worker to portion that out for you.

Meal-kit service Blue Apron says it’s a better value than grocers like Whole Foods. We put it to the test.

We priced out the exact same ingredients (or close substitutes) and then hit the calculators to find out how the cost of each meal would compare to Blue Apron’s average of $9.99 per person.

Orecchiette Pasta with English Peas, Pecorino Cheese & Mint

Ingredient	Amount for 2 Servings	Whole Foods price
Orecchiette Pasta	8 ounces	$1.09
Pea Tips or Bok Choy (Whole Foods did not have pea tips, so we priced out bok choy as a substitute)	3 ounces	32 cents
Garlic	1 head	90 cents
Lemon	1	89 cents
Red Onion	1	63 cents
English Peas or Snap Peas (Whole Foods did not have english peas so we priced out snap peas as a substitute)	½ Pound	$2.49
Mint	1 Bunch (weighed at 0.3 ounces)	60 cents
Part-Skim Ricotta Cheese	½ Cup	$1.84
Grated Pecorino Cheese	⅓ Cup	$2.44
WHOLE FOODS MEAL COST:		$11.20, or $5.60 per person

Flat Iron Steaks with Ramps, Fingerling Potatoes & Shaved Asparagus Salad

Ingredient	Amount for 2 Servings	Whole Foods price
Flat Iron Steaks	2 (weighed at 9 ounces)	$5.62
Fingerling Potatoes (Whole Foods did not have fingerlings, so we priced out jewel potatoes as a substitute)	6 Ounces	86 cents
Asparagus	½ Bunch (weighed at 3.1 ounces)	$1.55
Ramps (Whole Foods did not have ramps, so we priced out green onions as a substitute)	½ Bunch (weighed at 1.27 ounces)	$1.49
Lemon	1	89 cents
Chives	1 Bunch (weighed at 0.25 ounces)	49 cents
Dill	1 Bunch ((weighed at 0.28 ounces)	55 cents
Butter	4 Tablespoons	50 cents
Shallot	1 (weighed at 1.87 ounces)	58 cents
Crème Fraîche	2 Tablespoons	60 cents
WHOLE FOODS MEAL COST:		$13.13, or $6.56 per person

Turkey Kibbeh with Cucumber Salad & Mint-Yogurt Sauce

Ingredient	Amount for 2 Servings	Whole Foods price
Ground Turkey	8 ounces	$5
Bulgur or Quinoa (Whole Foods did not have bulgur, so we priced out quinoa as a substitute)	½ cup	$1.12
Plain Greek Yogurt	½ cup	$1.59
English Cucumber	1	$1.99
Lemon	1	89 cents
Yellow Onion	1 (We were missing our Blue Apron yellow onion, so couldn’t weigh it. We assumed a 6 ounce weight)	63 cents
Mint	1 Large Bunch (weighed at 0.63 ounces)	1.25 cents
Parsley	1 Large Bunch (weighed at 0.42 ounces)	83 cents
Pine Nuts	2 Tablespoons	$1.87
Dried Apricots	1 ounce	78 cents
Turkey Kibbeh Spice Blend (Za’atar & Aleppo Pepper)	1 Tablespoon	$4.27
WHOLE FOODS MEAL COST:		$20.22, or $10.11 per person

In total, the same amount of ingredients at Whole Foods would cost $44.55 -- that’s $15 less than the $59.94 Blue Apron price, making it a 35% premium to get those meals delivered to you.

However, if you look at each meal individually, there are wildly different price differentials: The pasta dish at Whole Foods comes out to nearly half the price of Blue Apron (a 78% premium), while the turkey dish -- which features a pricey spice blend and a few more ingredients than the other meals -- was slightly more expensive at Whole Foods.

That price difference often depends on Blue Apron’s suppliers.

“Blue Apron has built its own grocery distribution platform where we work directly with hundreds of family-run farms and artisans to remove waste from the supply chain, and in turn, pass that savings along to our customers,” said Blue Apron founder and CEO Matt Salzberg. “These direct relationships also allow us to get food to our home chefs faster and fresher than what is available at their local grocery stores, and give them access to hard-to-find seasonal specialty produce (e.g. pea tips, green garlic and watermelon radishes) nationwide.”

Bottom line: A 78% premium for a pasta dinner doesn’t seem worth it. No one said meal delivery would be cheap, but Blue Apron does say that its meals are a 60% better value than grocery shopping -- which is hard to believe from these three examples.

“When shopping for ingredients at a grocery store, you often have to buy far more that you need for a recipe and much of that food goes to waste,” Salzberg said.

Blue Apron’s portioned ingredients are supposed to save you money, but that 60% figure assumes leftover ingredients go to waste. That might be the case for unique, perishable foods but doesn’t make sense when it comes to basic pantry items like pasta. Of the 30 ingredients in our three meals, only two were both perishable and unavailable to be purchased by weight: the herbs and crème fraîche (though herbs can be easily reused, frozen or dried). Adding in the full cost (versus the by-weight cost) of those items at Whole Foods, the grocery total would come to $51.18, which is still a few bucks cheaper than Blue Apron.

The Blue Apron meals were all delicious, though the portions varied -- the pasta dish was more than enough for 2 people, while the steak dish left us ransacking the fridge for leftovers. So if you do decide the convenience is worth that extra cost? Order the meals with interesting spices, unusual ingredients and lots of them. Otherwise you’re better off taking your paycheck, Whole or not, to the grocery store.