Cooking with Competence: Blue Apron’s Year in Review

Cooking with Competence-Blue Apron's Year in ReviewAt the end of the year, a number of different programs and services I use sent me “year in review” type overviews, similar to the one from TripAdvisor I wrote about earlier this week. In terms of motivating ongoing interaction with the program or service, they vary in efficacy. One that did a pretty good job at reinforcing a sense of competence came from Blue Apron, the weekly cooking subscription service.

Here’s my overall year in review:

BlueApron2015

Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to be able to discern the relevant content from that gigantic image. Here’s where Blue Apron really helps underscore a sense of competence, by highlighting how many meals I cooked from their service in 2015:

I'm a cooking machine!
I’m a cooking machine!

To be fair with respect to the 126 meals, that’s really 63 orders of two meals each, and some of them were cooked by my husband. Still, 63 meals eaten at home (not even including when we cooked from our own recipes) isn’t bad! And I only started using Blue Apron in June.

I also thought there was a nice touch of relatedness support in this detail:

Patronizing BlueApron characterized as supporting community
Patronizing BlueApron characterized as supporting community

Blue Apron has cast its service as a way to support a larger community of farms and businesses, which may help users feel good about continued patronage. Using Blue Apron is a way to help and be connected with other people.

Even if Blue Apron hadn’t sent me this Year in Review summary, I’d continue being a customer because their service is high-quality and well-priced. However, as a psychologist I also appreciate knowing that they are thinking about user engagement beyond the items in their weekly box.

If you are interested in trying Blue Apron, leave me your email address in the comments or a message; I have free trial offers to share as a current customer. This post was not sponsored or influenced by Blue Apron. 

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