Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time

markets.businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 336 posts

Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time

#171

Post by village-idiot »

goldcd wrote: post #140

Always seemed a strange business model. Appealing to people who "want to cook", but doing so by turning yourself into a production-line assembler. Like saying your want to learn carpentry, by buying some Ikea flat-pack. What confused me (and makes me think I've overlooked something) is why nothing more interesting has come along from the supermarkets. In the UK at least, they're all online and deliver - but they all…

That and the people who cook at home either:

1. Love to cook.

2. Are quite price sensitive.

The first group were never going to use blue apron. They have the skills and the interest to do it all themselves. The latter group is tricky to hold onto: margins must be relatively thin, and there’s a high probability that these users will learn how to assemble their own recipes to cut out even the razor thin margins that blue apron was making.

The result is a rotating user base, and extremely advertising costs to acquire new customers. This is probably why they’re on podcasts all the damn time.

Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time

#172

Post by _thejrk »

padobson wrote: post #158
goldcd wrote: post #140

Always seemed a strange business model. Appealing to people who "want to cook", but doing so by turning yourself into a production-line assembler. Like saying your want to learn carpentry, by buying some Ikea flat-pack. What confused me (and makes me think I've overlooked something) is why nothing more interesting has come along from the supermarkets. In the UK at least, they're all online and deliver - but they all…

Still too much work! How about you give me a list of meals, I pick 50 or 100 of them, and then you give me a shopping list for the month including where to get it at the best price, taking advantage of bulk purchasing and overlapping ingredients. Then email/text/notify me every day with the recipe for dinner that night. I'll keep the left overs and use them for lunches. This should minimize time for planning and cost…

As a single father who sucks at everything kitchen.. i need dis.

Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time

#173

Post by Pfhreak »

tigershark wrote: post #116
Pfhreak wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We buy a box that specifically is sourced in our local area. Online grocery shopping solves the 'trip to the store' but doesn't solve meal planning, sourcing local ingredients, managing a shopping list, etc. Right now, the cost of my box includes all those steps. It also occasionally includes locally sourced meat, fish, dairy, or eggs. I can find information on the farms where those items came from easily. I value th…

Most of the online grocery delivery shops give you food from local producers, all of them must indicate the origin, at least in uk. For some recipes you can’t have local produce, by definition. Your box doesn’t solve the trip to the store because you still need to buy household stuff, breakfast food and all the other stuff that you use daily that is not sold by blue apron or these kind of services. The premium doesn’…

"This solved a problem for me, and I found it valuable."

"No, you're wrong, it'd didn't solve that problem for you."

Wat? I'm able to evaluate a cost benefit scenario in the context of my own life quite adequately. The stuff we need from the store these days is staples, which we buy rarely in bulk.

Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time

#174

Post by djhworld »

goldcd wrote: post #140

Always seemed a strange business model. Appealing to people who "want to cook", but doing so by turning yourself into a production-line assembler. Like saying your want to learn carpentry, by buying some Ikea flat-pack. What confused me (and makes me think I've overlooked something) is why nothing more interesting has come along from the supermarkets. In the UK at least, they're all online and deliver - but they all…

I think the biggest problem for me as a single person is the way most stuff sold in supermarkets is designed for family meals. Which is fair, families probably represent a significant portion of their customer base.

But it becomes problematic for me because I either have to eat the same meal 4 days in a row (or freeze it) or only use half of the ingredients and shove the rest in the cupboard, or throw it away because its perishable

I wouldn't mind a service that works out a set of meals you can make for the week that makes the best use of ingredients (minimises waste) and brings some variety.

I suspect the economics don't work out on it though

Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time

#175

Post by albeebe1 »

While I enjoyed the trial, the food was great, and the freezer packs they ship with the food have found a new life keeping things in my cooler nice and cold, i can't say that i'm surprised at all. Cancelling the service required jumping through numerous hoops, ultimately requiring me to call them to cancel.

Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time

#176

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

naravara wrote: post #113
chad_strategic wrote: post #6

After 10 years of marriage, my wife thought it would be helpful for me to start cooking, as she was getting stressed out with our 2 years old. We used Blue Apron as the starting point. I can't tell you how much time we save in planning meals and trips to the store. My wife doesn't have nag me about what I what I want for the week's dinner. The quality of the food and the time saved is well worth the price. I know the…

>I suspect Blue Apron will survive as it will probably be taken over or bought out. It's kinda the leader of the pack and the market will eventually consolidate. It also helps that I might have helped I bought about $1000 discounted gift cards at Costco. I'm not so sure. Even most people I know who have tried Blue Apron tend to either regress back to not cooking or they "graduate" to buying their own ingredients and…

Completely agree. Blue Apron occupies a very unstable niche, with high customer acquisition costs to boot.

I'm in the "former" category, where after about a month I realized (a) I like to eat more than I like to cook, and (b) the time it took me to prepare 3 meals a week made it actually more of a stress-inducing thing to me than a relaxing thing.

Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time

#177

Post by war1025 »

village-idiot wrote: post #171
goldcd wrote: post #140

Always seemed a strange business model. Appealing to people who "want to cook", but doing so by turning yourself into a production-line assembler. Like saying your want to learn carpentry, by buying some Ikea flat-pack. What confused me (and makes me think I've overlooked something) is why nothing more interesting has come along from the supermarkets. In the UK at least, they're all online and deliver - but they all…

That and the people who cook at home either: 1. Love to cook. 2. Are quite price sensitive. The first group were never going to use blue apron. They have the skills and the interest to do it all themselves. The latter group is tricky to hold onto: margins must be relatively thin, and there’s a high probability that these users will learn how to assemble their own recipes to cut out even the razor thin margins that bl…

There are several people I know who have used BlueApron for 2+ years. They are all married, no kids. They enjoy cooking, but they just as much enjoy going out to eat. They have steady, good paying jobs, so they are not price sensitive.

To them, BlueApron is an entertainment expense. It gives them variety in their diet, and makes for a good time when preparing it. Often they'll have friends over and add in some sides or something to make it a dinner date with people they'd otherwise just go out to eat with.

Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time

#178

Post by kakarot »

rayiner wrote: post #45
ghaff wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely a use case for these services. It's just a fairly narrow one. - Willing and able to cook for, ideally, more than one person - Able to plan a week ahead for the most part - OK with paying a non-trivial premium to have a lot of menu planning and shopping be handled by someone else I tried Blue Apron and thought it was "OK" but I could never really make these meal kit services work out for me. t obvio…

It's targeting a narrow intersection of people who are rich enough to pay $10 per serving for a meal, have the time to cook every night, and are okay with the lack of customizability in ingredients.[1] We considered it but it made no sense for us. It would save us a little money versus eating out all the time, but it doesn't solve the time problem (my wife and I both get home around 7:30 or 8:00 and need to get the f…

I cook because it's cheaper than eating out. But the trade-off is the time I spend researching and preparing healthy and diverse meals. I'm only feeding myself and fresh food goes bad quickly, so I also don't have the benefits of scale. The problem is, currently you can only pick two out of cheap, good and quick.

So a better product which solves a real problem needs to nail all three. It needs to be cheap, good (fresh, healthy and diverse) and quick.

Being quick involves subsidizing not only the meal prep but also the research involved in making good choices. Properly educating consumers on basic nutrition and using graphic labels to encode nutritional information at a glance.

Being good means sourcing fresh meat and vegetables. Properly flash freezing, separating, storing and shipping meals to maximize longevity and the area covered by each commissary kitchen.

Being cheap is the hard part. First, you and your shareholders have to be willing to put the consumer first. as Bezos did with Amazon. Profits are a side-effect of maximum efficiency, but the baseline is whether the customer is happy with the product.

You also have to reduce waste as much as possible by streamlining recipes and ingredients and measuring portions precisely. Reduce plastic use. If you ship meals with special packaging like refrigerants, encourage monthly rebates for customers who ship them back out in bulk.

It's not a hard problem, the issue is that of funding. Shareholders expect a certain margin or eventual buyout whereas the food industry has notoriously low margins to begin with. Existing convenience meal businesses tackle the higher end market as a result. But the convenience meal lifestyle is slowly becoming a necessity across demographics, and a company which tackles this issue smartly and aims for sub-$5 meals, and offers great bulk prices for monthly memberships, and is willing to not be raking in billions, will come out on top.

Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time

#179

Post by staticautomatic »

djhworld wrote: post #174
goldcd wrote: post #140

Always seemed a strange business model. Appealing to people who "want to cook", but doing so by turning yourself into a production-line assembler. Like saying your want to learn carpentry, by buying some Ikea flat-pack. What confused me (and makes me think I've overlooked something) is why nothing more interesting has come along from the supermarkets. In the UK at least, they're all online and deliver - but they all…

I think the biggest problem for me as a single person is the way most stuff sold in supermarkets is designed for family meals. Which is fair, families probably represent a significant portion of their customer base. But it becomes problematic for me because I either have to eat the same meal 4 days in a row (or freeze it) or only use half of the ingredients and shove the rest in the cupboard, or throw it away because…

Cue Steve Martin hot dog bun rant.

Re: Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time

#180

Post by motivated_gear »

_thejrk wrote: post #172
padobson wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still too much work! How about you give me a list of meals, I pick 50 or 100 of them, and then you give me a shopping list for the month including where to get it at the best price, taking advantage of bulk purchasing and overlapping ingredients. Then email/text/notify me every day with the recipe for dinner that night. I'll keep the left overs and use them for lunches. This should minimize time for planning and cost…

As a single father who sucks at everything kitchen.. i need dis.

If the blue apron team doesn't read threads like these and actually build things people want, they're finished.

They spent so much on advertising and promotions without improving their product offering.

Post reply on HN