I tried 3 weeks (9 meals) of Blue Apron to compare to Gobble (which i used for several months). These services deliver a weekly food box for you to cook. It contains exactly the ingredients you need to make specific meals, along with the recipes.
gobble meals are significantly easier and faster to prepare, cost 20% more, and were more gourmet. selection is similar (around 7-8 meals to choose from per week. maybe blue apron had slightly more. they seem to always have 3 vegetarian meals, so if you usually don't want those then you don't get a lot of choices.)
gobble puts more effort into side dishes, more complete meals, a bit fancier meals, and sauces. i also like their packaging better because they group everything for a meal in an outer bag (except meat separate). blue apron groups up the small things for each meal in a bag but then sends several loose things to deal with.
gobble sends more food that's already partially prepared. e.g. partly cooked rice or mashed potatoes that's done in 2min in microwave. or they've sent me complete raviolis with filling. or they'll send garlic shallot confit ready to add to your dish instead of making you chop garlic. they've also sent cooked meat that you just have to heat sometimes when they want it prepared a specific way that's harder or takes longer. and they'll send complicated sauces they already put significant effort into making to save you time. i also liked all of gobble's salads (and i'm not much of a salad person), but blue apron sent a lazy simple salad that didn't impress. blue apron commonly has you put stuff in the oven for 20-30min, whereas gobble tries to get meals done in 15min. i don't really mind time leaving things in the oven but blue apron is also significantly more time preparing the food.
blue apron was fun for a bit to compare and practice cooking (since you do more actual cooking from closer to scratch) but gobble is way better overall IMO. blue apron isn't bad though, i'd use them over going to the grocery store. both services work well and consistently provide good food.
i cancelled my blue apron account (for some stupid reason you can only skip deliveries one by one, but you can't skip everything by default). next time i feel like putting higher effort into cooking, i'll try a different service (there's a bunch like chefd, peach dish, and hello fresh).
oh and on the subject of food i've gotta recommend Fasta Pasta. it's a special plastic container for microwave cooking. i cook all my pasta with it; it's easier and always comes out perfect (microwaves are more consistent about how much they cook stuff). it does rice and some other stuff in the microwave too. i used it instead of a pot on the stove for cooking some pasta from my meal kits.
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