Turntable Kitchen Pairings Box Review – June 2013

Hi,

This is Matthew from Turntable Kitchen. First, we appreciate My Subscription Addiction’s thoughtful review. However, we are sorry to read in the comments that Mary was disappointed with her subscription and we’d be happy to address her comments publicly.

We are very clear about our offerings on our site; from the product description to photos, video and a full-length FAQ, we offer our readers and passerbys the opportunity to learn as much as they would like about our product before they commit to buying it. That said, any subscriber who decides to cancel their subscription can do so at any time. When we received Mary’s email, we immediately cancelled her subscription. Everyone has a right to determine what is and isn’t ‘worth the money’ or in their budget, but we’d like to be clear about what we offer and why we have the pricing structure that we do.

The recipes featured in the May Pairings box included Baked Vanilla Cake Donuts with Maple and Meyer Lemon Glaze, Sweet Potato Chips with Hickory Smoked Pacific Sea Salt, and A Smoky 6 Ounce Cheeseburger. Each recipe was original, seasonally appropriate, and unique. In our experience, these recipes were very popular with most of our subscribers. The hours we spend developing the recipes, photographing them, and designing + printing our recipe cards are frankly, much more than the cost we factor into the box alone.

With regards to the music: Every month, we include an exclusive, limited-edition, hand-numbered single on colored vinyl from a rising artist. The artists we’ve featured in past Pairings Box have received rave reviews in Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, NME, Paste, and many other popular indie music publications. They are collectibles and copies of previous singles have gone for $100 on sites for buying and selling vinyl records. Because not everyone appreciates vinyl records we also include MP3s of the tracks.

The digital mixtape includes 20 additional tracks that we negotiated the rights to use in our Pairings Box. The cost of purchasing these tracks off of iTunes would be at least $20. It’s a curated mixtape of what we believe is great music from the best up-and-coming artists. This is intended for people who want to know what’s cool before it blows up. We recognize that taste in music is incredibly subjective, but we think these artists are awesome, and expect that anyone who subscribes to the Pairings Box is interested in our curation.

In addition to the recipes, 7″ vinyl single, and digital mixtape, the May Pairings Box included 2 ounces of organic Hickory Smoked Pacific Sea Salt. It’s a specialty gourmet item and that quantity of that ingredient sells for $12 on other sites/stores: http://www.etsy.com/listing/151428844/hickory-smoked-sea-salt-in-pinching-tin?utm_source=google&utm_medium=product_listing_promoted&utm_campaign=plants_and_edibles_low&gclid=COeP7o27tLgCFQE6QgodT0cAlA

Finally, every part of the Pairings Box is (to the extent that it is practical) handmade, hand-stamped, hand-numbered, and created by my wife and I personally. It’s not a mass-produced product and therefore, as with any item that is hand-made in the USA, and involves a lot of manual labor, cannot be ‘made on the cheap.’

We pride ourselves on our customer service, but at the end of the day, we are two people running a small business and sharing what we love with people who are interested in our point of view. The Pairings Box is not for everyone, nor is it intended to be (every month we produce a very limited number and we often sell out). We welcome feedback, but we also want to address mean-spirited comments, especially when they are made in a public forum. If you have any other questions or comments that we have not addressed, please feel free to email us (or we’re happy to respond honestly on any public forum).

Best,
Matthew