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Blue Apron wants to change the way you cook dinner

Kai Ryssdal talks to CEO Matt Salzberg.

Blue Apron ships millions of meals to customers each month.
Blue Apron ships millions of meals to customers each month.
Image via Blue Apron/YouTube

Blue Apron, the New York-based subscription service that delivers weekly pre-portioned ingredients and recipes to homes nationwide, ships millions of meals to its customers per month. In fact, food start-ups have become an inspiration for entrepreneurs everywhere and a magnet for venture-capitalist dollars.

But it wasn’t always this way. Remember Webvan?

“One of the mistakes of the internet bubble was to build businesses that tried to be all things to all people,” says Matt Salzberg, CEO of Blue Apron. “And we’ve built our business to be the exact opposite of that.”

Blue Apron says its focus is to deliver farm-fresh, high-quality food and to help prevent food waste by pre-portioning its ingredients. Salzberg says he would like to change the way Americans consume meals by shaking up the way the ingredients, specifically used to make dinner, are bought and sold.

“It costs 60 percent more money on average to recreate our recipes by going to a grocery store, and on top of that, about 30 percent of the ingredients we deliver wouldn’t even be available at a given grocery store,” Salzberg says.

To see what was in Kai’s Blue Apron box, click here.

Click the above media player to hear the whole interview. 

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