I end up on the weirdest mailing lists

[alexseanchai]

I seem to have a $30 gift card to Blue Apron, which says it is a thing to deliver pre-portioned ingredients (from "family-run farms, sustainable fisheries, ethical ranchers and artisanal suppliers") and recipes to my door, starting at "$8.74 a serving". Obviously this is not a thing that I can afford to actually subscribe to. But I wonder if it's worth redeeming the gift card, and if it's even possible to redeem the gift card without subscribing.

Comments

[redbird]

I have gotten and tossed a couple of those, because I suspected that it would turn out to have a minimum purchase of >>$30; if you do try it, or find out more, I'd be interested.

[alexseanchai]

Yeah, that looks like the thing. :(

[madgastronomer]

Blue Apron is awesome, and if you can do it without subscribing, it is totally worth it.

My folks get Blue Apron. My only complaint -- and this is ME -- is that they take twice as long to prepare as they claim.

[alexseanchai]

It's not a gift card, it's a discount off a first time meal plan subscription. NOPE. :(

[subbes]

> if it's even possible to redeem the gift card without subscribing.

if it's anything like the 'gift card' they sent me, it's a 'discount on your first month' sneakily masquerading as a gift card, so it's not possible to redeem without subscribing. when i found that out i was mad.

[alexseanchai]

It is exactly that thing :(

[niqaeli]

It doesn't look like you can do the ingredients package thing without subscribing and their small plan is apparently $60/week which gets you 3 recipes (each recipe is 2 servings) for the week, making the gift card basically 50% off for one week. According to their site there is an auto-renewal, but no commitment so you can suspend or cancel your subscription at any time, so it would be possible to do one week only if you wanted to.

However, they also appear to have a market that sells mostly kitchen gear but also they do have a small section that has pantry ingredients. If it's a real gift card, then it may be redeemable in the market? Apparently you can check out as a guest through the market, so you don't have to sign up for an account of any kind but also apparently a market account does not create a meals account.

[alexseanchai]

*bothers to actually peel the card off the paper*

..."valid for first time meal plan subscriptions only"

if I'd done that earlier I could have saved making this whole post :(

Thanks for the research, though!

[clare_dragonfly]

I received a free delivery thing and you can cancel right away, so I didn't have to pay anything. Pretty sure it was more than $30, though. :\

It was worth getting the free delivery for the free ingerdients.

[alexseanchai]

*nod* Thanks