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No time to cook? Now you can get a cyber sous chef to help

 
Ingredients for a home-cooked meal are delivered from Blue Apron, one of a bevy of new online services angling to be a virtual kitchen assistant. The services offer the chance to take care of the more tedious aspects of cooking.
Ingredients for a home-cooked meal are delivered from Blue Apron, one of a bevy of new online services angling to be a virtual kitchen assistant. The services offer the chance to take care of the more tedious aspects of cooking.
Published Oct. 17, 2014

If the only thing standing between you and a home-cooked meal is the time and energy to shop and prep, a new breed of would-be cyber sous chefs wants to help get you cooking.

Think of it as Hamburger Helper for the Amazon.com era. A bevy of new online services is angling to be your virtual kitchen assistant, giving you the chance to outsource the tedious aspects of cooking — the shopping, sorting, washing and prepping.

"The idea came out of a need my co-founders and I had in our own lives," says Matt Salzberg, co-founder and CEO of Blue Apron, a 2-year-old New York startup that delivers high-end, premeasured ingredients to your doorstep.

Supermarkets and even online giants such as Amazon and Google deliver groceries. But these so-called "meal kit" services take that model a step further, offering time-starved, convenience-craving cooks the ability to go online, click on recipes that appeal, then have farm-fresh ingredients — premeasured and sometimes even prechopped — arrive on their doorsteps ready for the skillet.

"All these companies make the promise, whether explicit or not, of their ability to pick out exactly what you need," said consumer trends analyst Kirk Vaclavik at the Chicago-based market research firm Mintel. "That's a whole other layer of convenience, of 'Wow, there's an expert I can rely on to pick all the ingredients I need to make a delicious gourmet meal.' "

To provide gourmet appeal, many of the companies source from farms local to their delivery areas. And recipes also skew upscale, with options such as quinoa patties with pan-roasted mushrooms or togarashi-spiced tilapia with jade pearl rice.

New York-based Plated promises premium cuts of meat and chef-designed recipes. Seattle-based Gathered Table, Forage in San Francisco and Chicago-based Madison and Rayne all offer similar services.

Chicago-based food industry consulting firm Technomic predicts that meal kit services like these could become a $3 to $5 billion segment of the food industry over the next decade.

"Our hope is that people never have a reason to go the grocery store," said Blue Apron's Salzberg.

Meals at Madison and Rayne can cost as much as $19 per serving and sometimes include a delivery fee. But others are less expensive. A single serving at Blue Apron costs $9.99, a price Salzberg says is 60 percent less than shopping for the ingredients yourself.