
Blue Apron Shares Hit New Low, as Anyone Can Do “Meal Kits,” Even Walmart - Cbasedlifeform
https://wolfstreet.com/2018/03/05/blue-apron-shares-hit-new-low-as-anyone-can-do-meal-kits-even-walmart/
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jerkstate
I really liked Blue Apron but there was so much trash left over! I really wish
they would do better pre-planning with ingredients, like send a stick of
butter and a jug of vinegar instead of a pat and a tiny bottle. There were so
many bottles from week to week of the same stuff - vinegar, soy sauce, mirin,
etc.. We ended up just using a lot of the techniques we learned from Blue
Apron to prepare vegetables from CSA boxes.

It's a great idea for young people who would like to learn how to cook (or
learn some new techniques/staples). I might get a few months subscription for
a relative who just moved out on their own as a gift, for example.

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Lendal
Yeah I agree. So much waste, plus it doesn't really solve the problem we were
trying to solve which is time. Preparing the meal is still time-consuming. It
wasn't saving us much time at all. Add to that the guilt of having all the
extra waste for what, so we don't have to stop at the grocery store on the way
home? Not worth it. The meals were good though, and healthy.

~~~
jerkstate
It was good for us because we have a toddler/infant so going out to a
restaurant is really difficult and we like variety without a whole lot of meal
planning effort. Adding the blue apron techniques to our repertoire made it a
lot easier to throw stuff together from our CSA box and have a pretty focused
shopping list for the grocery store.

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breakpointalpha
Without reading the article, this is exactly why I gave up on my last side-
project.

The subscription box business is great for consumers, but nearly indefensible
against competitors.

Dollar shave club was hugely successful because it was a first-mover. Now
Gillette and others are offering direct subscription services.

There simply is no moat if you don't own the base materials in the package and
can control for manufacturing costs.

~~~
amclennon
I suppose that depends on what your goal is. If you're hoping to create a
product segment that didn't previously exist, I think Blue Apron succeeded. If
the goal is to make money, then I think the Blue Apron founders / investors
were also able to cash out from an IPO when they saw the writing on the wall.

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DougN7
I've been using HelloFresh for a couple months. I don't think there is a
business model here. Too much expense in shipping materials, and then a pain
for the customer to dispose/recycle said materials. Vegetable quality is hit
or miss. And the price is high. The convenience factor just barely, barely
makes it worth while.

Having said that, the recipes are really great (I'm not a cook, but can follow
a recipe). Wish they would just bundle their recipes into a book and sell that
(strangely, I've not been able to find a 'complete meal' recipe book with a
set of steps for each part of the meal sequenced together)

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marrone12
They do: [https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Apron-Cookbook-Essential-
Lifetim...](https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Apron-Cookbook-Essential-Lifetime-
ebook/dp/B01N16AS1T)

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OscarTheGrinch
Completely indefensible from competitors with zero chance of a monopoly. Peter
Thiel is tutting disapprovingly down in his antarctic survival mansion...

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wiremine
Agreed this isn't much of a defensible business: if anything it feels like a
stepping stone to the next phase: 100% on demand meal kits.

1\. I upload my meal plan for the next week or two, or select from pre-
designed options.

2\. The grocer [1] picks and packages the ingredients into kits, one per meal.

3\. I pick them up and/or they are shipped to me. (or a bit of both if it's
Amazon or Walmart)

Actually, that's just a stepping stone to a fully automated kitchen, but
that's a separate thread for another day...

[1] I'm using this term loosely.

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shostack
I think you're right that it is just a stepping stone, and it may work like
that, but I also see another option.

With Amazon's Whole Foods acquisition and penchant for turning everything into
scaleable infrastructure, I wouldn't be surprised to see an API for groceries
released in the near future. Then every single recipe blog out there could
simply have a button to "Buy this meal" and get it either delivered or
assembled and ready for in-store pickup. It would be a game changer.

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wiremine
Totally agree, I'd group that in my #1 above.

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officemonkey
Wow, it's only been 18 years since Blue Mountain Arts being sold to
Excite@Home for $780M.

If you recall, Blue Mountain Arts made 3/4 of a billion dollars in 1999 for
it's "ecard" business, a business that literally anyone with a webserver can
replicate in an afternoon.

It's too bad too, because Excite was my favorite "webportal/homepage" back
then. And the dotcom bubble burst killed it.

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an4rchy
I feel like there's still a lot of potential for this type of a business to
pivot/grow as they try to improve the unit economics in multiple ways.

It sounds like (based on the thread) a lot of people picked up Blue Apron as a
starting point to cooking. So why not create an interesting skillset
based/gamification of cooking product where you learn new skills all the time.
I'm sure everyone can dice/cut/bake/fry/sautee etc in a few meals but there
are probably other advanced techniques which you could subscribe to, to learn
new/interesting techniques/recipes.

Also, you could have a community based thing where different people compete
for skillset or you order blue apron for a party and cook together etc (larger
quantities -- less wastage, better economics).

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jstalin
I used to subscribe to Green Chef, but stopped mostly due to the time it takes
to make the meals. Usually it took twice as long as it said on the recipes.

We now subscribe to Freshly. Meals are pre-made and in 3 minutes they are
heated up. Perfect!

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WheelsAtLarge
Blue Apron needs to sell itself to a large supermarket chain. They can use the
markets as a base of operation. Their business model is impossible to
maintain. Marketing and delivery costs are killing them. I suspect a year from
now we won't see them as an independent concern. They might even go out of
business. Walmart will win this fight, no question.

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mywittyname
What supermarket would buy them though? Their product is trivial to replicate.
In fact, every supermarket I shop at already sells meal-kits.

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WheelsAtLarge
I shop at Ralphs which is part of the Kroger chain. They have a meal kit
system in place but they're doing a really bad job at marketing it. It's there
but there's little motivation from the store to sell it. If they could get the
same marketing energy that Blue Apron has then it would be a big part of the
store's revenue.

But you have a good point, it's a hard sell. I suspect they, Blue Apron, went
public since they ran out of funding sources. I wish them luck. It's a hard
business but maybe they can work things out.

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mathattack
Market cap is now under 500M. Is there any point at which they become a value
play, or are the unit economics too awful?

Edit: Typo dutifully noted and corrected!

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ghostbrainalpha
For them to be a 'value play' wouldn't they need to have purchased a bunch of
real assets, like farms etc?

Blue Apron stopped making sense for me when Uber Eats started delivering to my
house. It's just too expensive.

For $9.00 per meal, and a family of 4, I can just get delivery from most of my
favorite restaurants. (More Choice, Same Price, Tastes Better, Much Easier)

I guess Blue Apron is healthier than what I typically order, but I could
choose to order healthy if I wanted to... which I usually don't.

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skybrian
It seems like the target market for meal kits would be people who want to
learn to cook? (Without working too hard at it.) Delivery will get you tasty
food but you don't learn anything.

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bilkoo
I think it's for people who are too lazy for grocery shopping but not lazy
enough to just order takeout. That's a tiny sliver on the laziness scale IMHO.

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RootReducer
Not quite. The meals I prepare from Blue Apron are significantly healthier
than most takeout options - we control the sodium entirely and the majority of
the ingredients are fresh vegetables and proteins. Plus the variety week to
week is staggering - I've been getting weekly Blue Apron for more than a year
and never had a repeated recipe. I've learned about all sorts of new foods I
had never even heard of before. I am absolutely too lazy to meal plan and go
grocery shopping, but ordering takeout isn't even a comparison point for me.

