Turntable Kitchen Pairings Box Review – June 2013
The Turntable Kitchen Pairings Box is a subscription service that sends you recipes, an ingredient and a new record every month. I love subscription boxes and my boyfriend loves to collect vinyl , so I had to sign up!
The Box: Turntable Kitchen Pairings Box
The Cost: $25
The Products: A limited edition 7-inch single vinyl featuring a pair of tracks, 3 unique recipe cards, 1-2 dry ingredients for the recipes.
Ships to: US, Canada (for an extra $5) and Internationally (for an extra $10).
This month’s ingredient was Toasted Cumin Powder. All of the recipes included look great:
Toasted Cumin Popcorn
Chicken Soup
Toasted Cumin Guacamole
Salt Cathedral Move Along Vinyl
This vinyl also came along with a digital download card. My boyfriend loves the record!
Verdict: It’s tough to assess value for this box the way I typically calculate it. We paid $25 for this box, and while I’m not sure if the contents equal $25, but I think the value of this box is more about the curation and exclusivity of the items. I like the recipes and my boyfriend loves the record, so I’m calling it a win! What do you think of the Turntable Kitchen Pairings Box?
Written by Liz Cadman
I’ve been a Pairings Box subscriber ever since it launched and I love the service!
My fiancé and I have made many of the recipes we’ve received and we’ve never been disappointed. They’re are approachable for people without a lot of experience in the kitchen, but still feel “gourmet.”
The records and mixtapes have been equally fun. My favorite singles so far have been Mikal Cronin, The Bones of J.R. Jones, and GEMS.
It’s a perfect date night at home.
I was so excited to try this, it’s supposed to be curated music and food ideas and items. I love music and I love gourmet food, so I felt like the perfect candidate. They have a super cool video on their website explaining the box, which had me sold. I got on the waiting list and made it in for the May box and here is was I got: 3 recipe cards, one for cheeseburgers, one for potato chips, and one for donuts. A 7″ vinyl record (which had a malfunction, they emailed everyone about and said they would replace and did not), a code for a digital mixtape download, and a small sample of smoked sea salt (yes salt!). Wow, what a major disappointment. I email the company today to cancel and explained I was really disappointed. The music was okay, some of it was just mediocre, but whatever. I just can’t believe this was supposed to be a food/music pairing experience. The worst $25 (plus tax) I ever spent. I cancelled my subscription immediately and told them why. They wrote back, “we cancelled your subscription, sorry you were disappointed” and that was that. Now that I see what the June box was, I am so happy I cancelled. I great box concept that is poorly executed and over priced.
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
I am a foodie and music lover. Even though I think this is a great concept, I just do not see how you can justify spending that much! Maybe if it was a full record, or if they sent a few more ingredients, but $25 for two songs and a packet a spice just doesn’t make sense to me!