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Blue Apron shares dropped sharply Monday morning, accelerating the slide since their debut amid fresh signs of competition from Amazon.
The e-commerce giant has registered a trademark in the U.S. for a service described as: "We do the prep. You be the chef," according to a filing previously uncovered by The Sunday Times, based in the U.K.
Blue Apron shares hit an all-time intraday low of $6.45 a share, according to FactSet, and the stock was last down more than 10 percent.
Blue Apron, a meal-kit delivery service backed by major investors including Fidelity, Bessemer Venture Partners and First Round Capital, has seen shares fall after hitting the public market in late June. The stock has shed nearly 30 percent month to date.
[...] "Although it's a neat concept, the dominant players within the space will compete at a level that won't allow Blue Apron to be successful long term," Seaburg told CNBC earlier this month. "It's all about scale, it's all about relevance. You look at Kroger, Whole Foods and Amazon. They can take this section of the market over from a price perspective alone in a very short period of time."
Source: CNBC
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday July 19 2017, @02:30PM (16 children)
People that know how to cook, also know how to shop for food.
In fact, I would venture a guess that shopping for food is easier than cooking it.
Yeah, I eat at home less than I should due to time constraints; but no so much that I am going to pay a fortune for a baggie of pre-chopped vegetables.
Want fresh food and don't have the time to shop? Join a CSA [wikipedia.org].
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 5, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday July 19 2017, @03:04PM (3 children)
The point of Blue Apron is not that people can't shop, but that people don't want to buy bulk ingredients for a dish they might only cook once or in a blue moon. It's a great idea for people who want to cook something more complex or exotic and not have to buy tens of dollars worth of extra ingredients they will inevitably wind up storing for long periods of time and/or throwing out. They ship you only the exact amounts needed for that dish. This cuts food waste and makes it cost effective.
I once wanted to make a chinese style side of bok choy. I needed sesame oil and ginger. That cost me an additional $6. I only used a fraction of that for making that dish a few times. The rest of the ginger wound up getting tossed and the sesame oil is still sitting in a cabinet taking up space and doing nothing. Wasteful. Now compare that to a Blue Apron dish my brother gave me: curried fish with chutney over rice and vegetables. Everything is neatly packaged and the instructions are clearly laid out. After you are finished cooking you only have to toss the packaging (which itself could be considered wasteful but that's a different issue.)
Not a fan of the oatmeal but this comic from him perfectly sums up why blue apron is a good alternative: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cook_home [theoatmeal.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @05:07PM (2 children)
You could use the ginger to make tea, freshen your breath, or to flavor sodas and alcoholic drinks.
You can use the sesame oil like..... oil in any dish, or turn it into dressing by pouring spices into it from other cooking experiments.
Wow.
There is literally no good use case for blue apron and they're a very bad company. Go read reviews of the (mostly black) people working in their warehouses. Then go look at the pictures of their all white/asian office workers. It's a fucking bizzaro night/day thing.
Not to mention the carbon footprint of eating this way.wowo!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday July 19 2017, @05:27PM
I assume that it's also for weight loss. Eat our 3 meals a day and you will lose 20 lbs (eventually). No snacks!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday July 20 2017, @11:51AM
Good points. But here is the thing, I'm not a fan of raw ginger flavor. I did try to use some of it but there was too much and it went bad. And I've tried to use the sesame oil for some other dishes and it doesn't always work out. Then again, I'm not a 5 star chef.
(Score: 2) by tekk on Wednesday July 19 2017, @03:57PM (9 children)
They're not dumping Blue Apron because they don't like the idea, they're dumping it because Amazon is about to enter the market. The point of BA and similar services isn't that you don't have to grocery shop so much as 1: it gives you ideas and keeps out you out of a rut where you make similar things again and again. You'll probably end up with wildly different meals depending on what's sent. and 2: like sibling said, it gives you properly portioned amounts. I live alone and I sometimes loathe cooking because there's a dish I really want to make, but to make that dish I need one particular ingredient I won't use afterwards and which doesn't come in a small enough size for just me.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday July 19 2017, @05:08PM (8 children)
With a little more experience (or listening to your mom) you would have figured out the serendipity of forced substitution lead to discoveries you may end up liking more. Shopping at the right type of market allows you to buy just the right amount, and the only thing you end up buying on a daily basis are the freshest veggies etc.
Avoid the supermarkets, choose a smaller chain. Literally a 6 minute trip into the store, grab and run. Get a shopping list app that syncs with your SO or housemates to make shopping trips organized and quicker.
"Properly proportioned" is as easy as mental division. Buc Choy isn't just for oriental food. (slice it length wise, and put it on the grill - maybe drizzle a little of that left over special oil you had to have for last weeks special dinner.
There's no doubt that shopping is a major pain, and rather inefficient use of time, fuel.
However, substituting someone else's idea of a perfectly ripe avocado or table grapes and the perfect cut of beef is not likely to be satisfying long term.
And when your cookie-cutter-pre-packaged-meal sucks or is late, spoiled, or bug infested if you don't have something in the fridge to substitute you're ordering pizza anyway.
Our neighbors have been on and off of three or four of these meals-in-a-box plans. They aren't happy with any of them, but their cooking skills are hopeless.
Induced helplessness isn't the answer.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Wednesday July 19 2017, @05:57PM (2 children)
In my case, that's "literally a minimum 90 minute trip over a mountain pass; 120 minutes (and a different pass) if I want to find 'the right type of market.'"
My local grocer has trouble providing quality tomatoes and lettuce consistently, much less bok choi, or fresh ginger. Right now, they are selling prepackaged "gourmet carrot sticks" and packages of slimy baby carrots, when I haven't seen a full-sized carrot in the store for over a year. And even if I succeed in my effort to buy fresh, with the quantities I am forced to buy, half of it will go bad before I can use it.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday July 19 2017, @06:09PM (1 child)
My guess is UPS or whatever ships these would have trouble getting fresh ingredients to you as well.
I have been wanting to move someplace away from light pollution for years now, but this is one of my major concerns. The suburbs might suck, but I can get any meal or item I want on a whim.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Wednesday July 19 2017, @06:34PM
Yeah--until recently, Blue Apron hasn't offered service to my area. This has recently changed, but I am still hesitant to try it, as shipping delays are common in rural towns.
Regarding the rest of your comment, you can't even escape the light pollution here, in a town of less than 700. The local Main Street Improvement group just installed new vintage-looking streetlights, and though they look good, the lights aren't shielded upwards, so, of course, half the night sky is washed out.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday July 19 2017, @05:59PM (2 children)
And which store will sell me a quarter-head of cabbage?
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Wednesday July 19 2017, @06:45PM (1 child)
Exactly this.
I might need two stalks of celery, a quarter-clove of garlic or half of an onion--chives they sell in non-divisible bundles, and they don't sell small onions or small heads of lettuce or cabbage. Even their small tomatoes are sold in groups of four or more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 20 2017, @02:52AM
> two stalks of celery, a quarter-clove of garlic or half of an onion-
The rest of the celery makes good snacks with peanut butter, or diced in a salad. I like to peel back the strings before eating raw.
A head of garlic lasts for weeks if you keep it dry, use the rest of the cloves later in another recipe. Or crush some, add butter and make the best fresh garlic toast, YUM!
Half an onion keeps OK for a few days in a ziploc. With some cheese it makes a nice omelet.
Ta-da, no (or minimal) wastage. I cooked for one for many years.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 19 2017, @09:01PM (1 child)
Its worth pointing out thats not really their business model. My regional supermarket employee owned co-op has carry out curb service for free and delivery for a charge (kinda like cheap Chinese restaurant). Rather than LARPing as a warehouse worker for an hour or two I can do curbside pickup as part of the rest of my life's travels. They need 24 hours warning to pick your food for you, and you can do all your shopping quickly online and there's support for lists and previous orders, making shopping ridiculously fast and convenient. Also their "cart" holds stuff for a week (or more, I haven't tested) so you can enter partial orders when you have time, when you need them. Anyway the point is brick -n- mortar is starting to pown carry out and delivery, because they have a warehouse right in your neighborhood... I don't see the point in paying more for peapod when my local store is cheaper and has similar (well, cheaper..) delivery and they offer carry out which is nice and its cheap.
The "Real" business model for the blue apron is for people who are not creative and don't have much agency at least WRT cooking. I obtained a paleo thai cookbook from a family member and am doing the obvious with it. There are people who for a variety of reasons have not realized there are interesting ethnic meals, at all, or aren't wired to turn writing (like a cookbook) into action (like a plate of food). As for uncreative people, you will meet otherwise cool folks who literally have no idea what to do with the other half of a head of lettuce, no matter how many eye revolutions you apply. I'm unclear if there's enough broken people like this to keep a business spinning. How are they fed and alive to reach the current year?
There's a side dish of, as near as I can tell, people who can no longer afford refrigeration but can somehow due to whatever weird new urbanism, afford very expensive delivery food. Like if your rent is $6000/mo for a dorm room and no cooking is allowed. What a "great" way to live, LOL. But there is a microscopic fraction of the population living that way who cannot afford the sq footage of a freezer and microwave. This is merely a side dish for their business because the fraction of the population who can afford the expensive service but can't afford the real estate for real cooking, is possibly in the thousands at most.
The biggest problem blue apron has is people are confusing it with mass market. A near perfect analogy is they're not trying to sell automobiles to everyone, they're trying to sell wheelchairs to the small fraction of the broken population. Walmart has a target market of about 310 million people in the USA who could theoretically eat their food, likewise Ford could at least theoretically have a 310 million person market of potential car passengers, if not car owners... but blue apron economic model is a boutique wheelchair vendor and they're never going to sell to even 20M people much less 2M people. Google indicates there's 2M people in wheelchairs in the USA... that would be a very high estimate for possible blue apron customers.
Its an interesting marketing technique to convince broken people they're getting a special service. This could be tried with wheel chairs or hearing aids, not just with people unable to cook. Look at how culturally "cool" it is to be innumerate and illiterate, its not farfetched to glorify a handicap to increase sales. Blue Apron is the cooking version of that famous speaking Barbie doll that said "math is hard". Its fame will vastly exceed its sales.
(Score: 1) by RantyRantington on Thursday July 20 2017, @05:05PM
Wow, I didn't know I was "uncreative", "broken", "innumerate and illiterate" because I don't want to eat some form of cabbage for the next week just to avoid throwing out the remnants of a single head.
I'm a single guy who works a lot, and I don't have a ton of time or energy to spare. For me, normal volumes of perishables purchased from the store usually result in either repetition or waste. Also, proper meal planning and shopping takes as much time as the preparation does.
With Blue Apron (or any of the other similar services, I presume), I don't have to do the planning. I don't have to do the shopping. I have variety daily. I don't have any food waste.
Three days of the week, my lunch and dinner is taken care of with decent food that I have cooked myself, and the rest of the week I'm free to cook or not cook as I feel inclined.
I'm not paying extra money for the ingredients. I'm paying to save time and effort.
I don't know if Blue Apron will survive the competition, especially from the 500lb gorilla known as Amazon, but if a service like it remains, I'll probably continue to use it.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday July 19 2017, @10:50PM (1 child)
My wife and I joined a csa for a summer: got lots of kale, lettuce, carrots, beets onions.
No zucchini (which we eat a TON of), turnips, tomatoes ( BIG favourite), asparagus (easy to grow (I can start harvesting mine in about 2 years)).
Got lots of 'okay' stuffand tons of 'well, enough of this shit'.
Wasn't worth our money.
Wish there was more choice around here.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday July 28 2017, @08:13PM
Yeah, I dropped out of the CSA mostly because of the hassle of getting it. (The one I was doing could not find a place to host it every week, so it was drive around randomly till I found the house that had it. Or deal with locked doors that had the stuff behind it.) But another major problem was getting a fuckton of lettuce every week that was just useless for a single person to deal with. Even on the "light" plan it was way too much.
Now that one has a drop point in my office building, I am thinking about doing it again next year. I should peek into a box on drop day to see how much of a fucktun of lettuce they give.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Wednesday July 19 2017, @04:15PM (1 child)
I've heard polarizing reports on Blue Apron: some people love it as it enables them to cook, but others think it is overpriced for what is delivered. Ultimately if you think Blue Apron is a good idea this could be a great investment opportunity, as I'm skeptical if Amazon will effectively break into the market. If anything, all of this recent coverage will promote Blue Apron in the near future, as these articles are free advertising and Amazon/Kroger don't have a competing service today.
But deep down inside I still think the service is overpriced and silly so I struggle to buy shares in Blue Apron.
(Score: 4, Informative) by richtopia on Wednesday July 19 2017, @04:20PM
Nevermind. I forgot that Blue Apron's IPO was just days ago, and it is now being investigated for mismanagement of said IPO. Even if they aren't wrong I cannot envision the stock going anywhere but down for now. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/harwood-feffer-llp-announces-investigation-of-blue-apron-holdings-inc-300490287.html [prnewswire.com]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 19 2017, @04:34PM (3 children)
Just the threat of behemoth Amazon considering whether they want to enter a space is enough to hit potential future competitors,
Capitalism at its finest!
Now, since the giant companies do control the
democraticfriendly US government via campaign donations, doesn't that imply that good ol' Karl was only partially wrong ?(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @05:24PM
We've Got the Future Under Control.®
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @05:36PM
The threat is unleashed to lower the market-price, and then amazon swoops in and buys the whole thing for pennies on the dollar, that is capitalism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 21 2017, @05:51AM
That was the kind of effect Microsoft used to have on the computer industry in the days of their zenith. Just the mere whisper they might be considering getting into something would be enough for the stocks of players in it to take a tumble, whether it were true or not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 20 2017, @04:37AM
So Amazon is the new Microsoft now? Simple saying they might get into a market to kill those already in that market. Perhaps they're going to buy Blue Apron soon as its new stock price drops.