Blue Apron — Local services in Richmond

I highly recommend Blue Apron. The meals are DELICIOUS! Keep in mind that you do all of the food preparation from scratch.

I would call this a food shopping service. The good thing is all the meals are 500 to 700 calories and they're wonderfully seasoned.

You choose if you like meat, poultry, fish and other preferences and Blue Apron plans your menus and mails you a box of food, spices and directions. I did have to have my own salt, pepper and olive oil for my meals.

I did the 2-Person Plan, which offers two meals for three days at six meals total. It cost $59.94 and shipping is always free.

You can also choose the Family Plan, which serves four. Eight meals total cost $69.92 per delivery.

Blue Apron also offers wine pairing with your meals. I didn't try that, so I can't tell you how that goes.

I have to say the ingredients are always very fresh. The meals are packaged in a container that keeps the heat out and your food is sandwiched between two slabs of ice.

I had to cancel my meals because I was going to be unable to find time to cook, but I still got one delivery because I was a little too late. You can reactivate with ease.

I did find that chopping, shredding and other preparation took longer than the directions indicated.

Still, if you have the time to make your own meals from start to finish, Blue Apron is...

We WANT to love Blue Apron's service. The meals, when they arrive on time, are very well organized and planned, fresh and unique. Not your typical dinner fare. Unfortunately, they have issues with their delivery service.

After just a few successful deliveries and meals, they did not deliver on the scheduled day last week. This was disruptive, because we had not gone to the store in anticipation of receiving our box. Arriving home late from work, we were disappointed that no box had arrived as scheduled and were left to that run to the store which we were so trying to avoid. Customer service closes at 3PM PST, so we had no idea if we were going to receive the box late or at all, so we stocked up on meals that were supposed to be supplied by Blue Apron. The next morning, the box arrived. Now we had double the amount of food we needed!

Yesterday, our expected delivery DID NOT arrive again. Calling customer service, the associate explained that the delivery "was found to be spoiled" and rather than delivering a spoiled box, they cancelled it altogether. They knew they could not deliver, yet they failed to communicate. When we they going to tell us?

I hope this is just growing pain. We WANT to love Blue Apron's service, but if this inconsistency continues, we'll have no choice but to...

What I liked:

-Many of the recipes were yummy -The directions were very clear and easy to follow -Customer Service was okay -Canceling was easy

What I didn't like: -Some of the recipes were quite bland (and after so much effort on my part!)

-Sometimes the food was turned -- meat and vegetables --even though the box was delivered on time. Really?

-And then there's the not being delivered on time. 3 times in a row our food box was delayed. Every morning there'd be a new notice from UPS. One time, it had left the warehouse and was en route for 4 days before it got to us. Seriously? They had no idea where it was. All the ice packs were soft and the meal boxes themselves were soft. Needless to say the fish and meat were no longer usable. This is a BIG problem for so many reasons. It's REALLY inconvenient to plan out your meals and not get groceries for every dinner, and then either have no box or have the meat in the box be spoiled.

-Many people said customer service was not good. I thought they were fine, but all they could do was credit me for the following week's box when what I wanted was to just close out the account and get reimbursed! Finally, I closed out the account without even...