We are all concerned about the rising cost of everything, including food. In this series we will give you tips & tricks to stretch your food dollars using the Red Apron.
This video shows how you can take one of our popular Red Apron dinners for 2, add a few items from your fridge & pantry, and turn it into a meal that serves 6 or more generously for less than $6.50 a portion.
Follow us in Instagram, Facebook or YouTube for all the details and stay tuned for our next in our video series.
There are a lot of meal kit delivery services out there these days and everyone is looking to save time and money these days with rising food costs.
I tried one of the national brands recently and compared it to items you can purchase in the Red Apron’s retail store, or have delivered to your home.
My overall observations were that the meal kit food required me to dirty a LOT of dishes. For example one menu required 3 pots, a fry pan and two baking sheets to cook the entire dinner for 2. Overall the packaging was excessive, weighing in at over 3 kilos of packaging, including the ice packs. Without the ice packs the packaging weighed almost 1 kilo, none of which was reusable.
The Red Apron meals are 20 percent less costly per gram of cooked food, contain significantly less packaging and our Friendlier containers are reusable, so that means zero waste. The time required to reheat the Red Apron meal was 15-30 minutes, and the meals can be warmed in the microwave in the blue container, or in the oven in one oven safe container.
Overall Conclusion: Red Apron offers better value, less mess, more food, and much less packaging.
We love going out for dinner and supporting small, locally owned restaurants. But let’s be honest, dining out is becoming more and more expensive. Recently we found ourselves dining in a Chain Restaurant. We ordered 2 main entrées and 2 deserts and shared a bottle of wine. There were no local or organic ingredients on the menu. The meal came to $201.00 including tax and tip.
If you are a regular Red Apron client you know that you can enjoy a Thursday Fresh meal dinner, picked up in store or delivered to your home. These meals are generous and always include multiple components, feature local and organic ingredients, include a delicious dessert and require less than 30 minutes to re-heat. You probably have leftovers for the next day, and if you choose a bottle of wine from our beautiful selection of Ontario small batch/small vineyard wines, the total will come to $81.00 all in!
This difference of over $120 can go a long way to stretching your food budget!
Every couple of weeks my family orders burgers from our favourite Canadian Chain burger joint. Typically our order includes 4 cheeseburgers, two fries, no drinks or sides. The total, including tax and tip is $57.00
We are all concerned about rising costs and food is a big one. We have seen the impact of increased costs on everything from lettuce to flour and we work hard to keep our prices as low as we can.
By comparison, if you come into our store and purchase a 9.5″ Savoury Meat Pie, loaded with Ontario beef & pork which we source directly from the farmers, and add a large Roots & Shoots organic kale salad, you can feed 4 – 6 people a healthy, nutritious dinner that contains local and organic ingredients for $55.00.
You may have noticed some of your meals are packaged in this distinctive blue container. It’s part of an important testing phase and we are looking for your help in making a really exciting decision.
As you know, the Red Apron is committed to sustainable solutions and if this re-useable packaging works for our clients and us, it would represent a giant leap forward for our business and our planet.
August 2021
It’s that time of year, where we try to squeeze the last drops out of summer vacation while anxiously preparing to head back to school and work. We all know that this will look a little different this year, but given the events of the last 18 months, it’s exciting to return to something resembling normal.
Check out our recent video below featuring some ideas for getting you back into the swing of things!
Red Apron Back to School Ideas
We have stocked our retail store with items that we believe will help you make this transition easier. Starting with the most important meal of the day, we have some tips and suggestions for you.
Lunches can be a real challenge for busy parents rushing out the door in the mornings. We have expanded our retail offerings to include Mepal storage containers in a variety of sizes. They go from fridge to freezer, to microwave to lunch bag and are leak proof and beautiful. Our Danica Tiffin containers, and Small Hinza Bags are a stylish way to transport your lunch to and from school or work.
Fill your lunch bag with a variety of nutritions options including:
Look for our ‘Back to School’ themed dinner on Wednesday September 7th – Spaghetti and Meatballs!
We want to thank everyone for your support during our first month in our new location. It’s been going really well, and we are settling in nicely. Our spacious patio and huge parking lot have been real hits with our customer base. Wishing everyone a safe and happy return to school!
Every week this summer we have customers rolling into the Red Apron on a Wednesday, Thursday or Friday and loading up the cooler for the camp-site or cottage. Well this weekend I got invited to a cottage and decided to do the same so Amanda, Julie and I (Jennifer) put together a little video to show you how we can help you make your weekend adventures fun and delicious!
Watch me load my cooler for my weekend at the cottage!
Here is a short list of some of the items you can find in our store to make feeding a crowd on a weekend easy:
Our team of knowledgeable, passionate and enthusiastic foodies will be on hand to help you plan your weekend meals.
As we approach the finish line and can see the light appearing at the end of the tunnel, we enter an even busier phase of our move to the new location at 410 Gladstone. If you have driven by, you will notice that work on the exterior has started. We have painted the outside a beautiful green, and we are starting to build a beautiful fence that will contain our parking area, and working to lay down the ground cover.
In typical Red Apron fashion, we have a very ‘earth friendly’ solution planned four our exterior space and look forward to sharing details with you on that ‘first in Ottawa’ solution!
On the inside, we have been painting walls, finishing plumbing and electrical, and receiving new furniture and equipment. It’s not just a new space we are getting, we launched a new website last week, we are receiving a new point of sale system this week, and there is a number of new, exciting and expensive pieces of equipment that are being installed and tested this coming week.
Finishing touches are being installed which include decorative light fixtures, hand railings, and counters for the cash and bakery area, and tile in the customer bathrooms.
We are so thrilled with the colours and finishes and are extremely grateful to our designer Shannan Callaghan at Design Wise in Ottawa, a boutique design team that specializes in Kitchens and Bathrooms, but agreed to work with us on this project. With an extremely limited budget Shannon managed to make our space beauty through the careful use of colour and small accents like tile.
As we approach the end of March and get a glimpse of spring weather, we are making great progress in our new location. This last week we have been framing up walls, applying drywall, finishing up the rough in of plumbing, electrical and HVAC, and planning the exterior.
Avery has put together a video that will help you locate the new location in the context of the neighbourhood, as well as highlight the beautiful windows that will be providing tonnes of daylight to brighten the interior of our retail space and production kitchen. Production kitchens are often windowless spaces tucked into the back of building with little access to daylight. Our team will be working in a bright airy space with high ceilings and beautiful windows letting southern light flood the space.
One of the biggest questions we have been getting from our customers is ‘will there be parking?’. Well the answer is yes….loads of parking for customers. We are fortunate to be able to offer metered street parking, and 10 customer parking spots on site.
We have not finalized an official Move Date yet, but it will be in June.
It’s been a busy few weeks at the Construction Site of the New Red Apron and things are moving along nicely. The most exciting part of the progress has been the addition of new windows and doors, which are transforming the look of the space and showing us how bright and full of natural light our new workplace will be!
The plumbing and electrical services have already been roughed in and this week the Construction Team at from Tikkun Construction will be starting to close in the walls and drop in the ceilings. By the middle of next week it will start to look like a finished space.
On the design side, we are turning our attention to the exterior of the space for choosing colours, signage, fencing, landscaping and parking materials. We have some exciting and beautiful things planned, and here’s a taste of what the new Red Apron might look like!