Chipotle is nowhere near the quality I can produce in my own kitchen, even setting aside its recent correlation with e coli outbreaks. This price is also precisely the same price point (around $10 per person per meal) that these services provide. And when I cook at home, I don't have to drive anywhere, or accept the enormous amount of extraneous salt and cooking fat that tends to get used in those situations.

> Go build a chipotle meal at some other zip code.

Chipotle is much lower quality than anything I've had from Blue Apron (this is typical of low-price national chain fast-casual restaurants; the fast-casual restaurants that are worth comparing are independent or local-chain places).

So, yeah, if that's the kind of food you want, it's price comparable to BA (but you wouldn't be looking at BA if you were satisfied with that kind of food I the first place.)

I thought Chipotle was straight-up fast food, and that's already more expensive than Blue Apron. To me, fast-casual means Chili's, Applebee's, etc. You're talking easily $15/pp without alcohol or tax or tip. Plus at least 90 minutes out of your day to get there, wait for your waiter, get the menu, order, wait, ask for the check, wait, get the check, pay the check, wait for the check to come back, leave, go home.

Anecdotally from what I've read on reddit AMAs from restaurant kitchen workers, most fast casual places cook only a few items from scratch, a majority at a place like Chili's or Applebees is prepared from a pre made portion supplied by Sysco. One pretty much has to have a source in the kitchen to know if someone is cooking a dish from scratch for you or if you are paying to essentially have someone else heat up your food like going out for a Blue Apron meal. Even somewhat fancier restaurants serve a lot of Sysco dishes. http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2016/food/farm-to-fable/res...

> I thought Chipotle was straight-up fast food

I tend to think of it that way, but it's pretty much, among national chains, the one that is held out as the archetypical fast-casual (IME, it's pretty bottom of the barrel for partial-table service, and no more fast-casual than Carl's Jr., which also has partial table service.)