The Potential for Meal Subscription Services

Aaron Cecchini-Butler
2 min readOct 31, 2018

The US has been embracing the world of subscription services, and not just the digital ones. My wife and I, for example, currently subscribe to Purple Carrot, Grove, Little Wolf Coffee, Amazon Prime (which includes Whole Foods delivery), and a plethora of digital subscriptions (NY Times, Hulu, Netflix, HBO Now, Apple Music and probably a few others I can’t think of right now).

Photo by Mike Petrucci on Unsplash

I think that subscription services have a potential that isn’t being fully utilized.

As my parents get older, it is going to be extremely convenient for me to subscribe to services for them. Knowing that semi-prepped meals and natural cleaning supplies will be there dependably week after week will bring me peace of mind. However, I think that for many people, subscribing 100% of the time isn’t going to be possible. And I know that right now, my parents don’t need that level of help. And this is where I think an opportunity exists.

Blue Apron recently announced an agreement with Wal-Mart to sell their semi-prepped meals through Jet.com. This is similar to the opportunity I want to bring up.

I think it would be advantageous for subscription services to offer non-subscription options.

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Aaron Cecchini-Butler

Senior Systems Designer at Grubhub working on Cookbook (our design system) — as well as contributing to product design work.