Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by trashcan » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 12:46 AM UTC

hmcdona1 wrote: post #198

djhworld wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In Texas, H-E-B sells exactly what you are describing. They have four types of meal kits: eat, heat, cook, and prep. https://www.heb.com/static-page/meal-simple I buy at least 3-4 of them a week because they're perfect for a single person who wants to eat in and maybe not prep as much but still wants a wide variety of meals to eat.

Yep. The chipotle chicken breast with potato and broccoli is my favorite.

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

#302

Post by tracker1 » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 1:04 AM UTC

asah wrote: post #295

AareyBaba wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cilantro/Basil/Parsley/Green onions: place the stems in a glass of water,cover with a plastic bag and keep in the refrigerator. It will last more than one week. Mushrooms: place in a brown bag in the refrigerator. They will last more than a week. They slowly dry up and can be rehydrated like dried mushrooms. Bananas: when they are about to ripen place in the refrigerator. The skin will turn brown and look miserable b…

Can confirm! Also, - bread is awesome in the fridge, lasts weeks. - put ice cubes in a plastic bag to stop sublimination - drown basil in olive oil, squeeze out the air, cover in olive oil, then refrigerate - lasts months - peppers: soak and refrigerate in vinegar I struggle with cheese - olive oil can work but it's awkward.

I HATE bread once it's been refridgerated/frozen... completely destroys the structure and texture of the bread. Only don't mind if you're going to do toast, french toast or some other bread pudding or stuffing application. It's unfit for sandwich use after.

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

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Post by BuckRogers » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 1:09 AM UTC

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…

There's a lot of innovation opportunity, some of which you already noted. Some chains are already doing it, but most aren't. The most basic service that most aren't doing is curbside pickup. That's the biggest missed opportunity. I'd never go anywhere else. Most grocery stores that I've seen doing that offer it for free. Add in a delivery option for a charge and you take a massive chunk out of Amazon Fresh's market, and I'd put more faith in a local supermarket than the online model of Walmart.

Agreed on the meal plan delivery services. I tried one of them and it was horrible. They have cheap, small portions of ingredients, and even left out ingredients when I used them. Probably out of stock, and didn't want to refund my sale and have even more oddball ingredients leftover. They were unapologetic.

Worse yet, they're rather tasteless if you actually know how to cook. My wife is beyond most chefs because she grew up in a Latin country. A Latin person who grew up in the kitchen with mom and grandma is pretty much the best place to get food in the world.

You could write an algorithm for everything, someone from a culinary culture will never be duplicated or surpassed in our lifetimes. You'd need a hell of a finely-tuned general purpose robot to taste test your food and adjust a recipe to your tastes as a human can.

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

#304

Post by jonwachob91 » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 1:10 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #128

naravara wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

As long as you have low customer acquisition costs you can still have a large stable business like this. Look at huggies diapers, some kids spend a lot longer in diapers than others but generally it’s a short but profitable window.

>>> Look at huggies diapers, some kids spend a lot longer in diapers than others but generally it’s a short but profitable window.

Diapers are a much more stable market, with predictable values in birth rates that can be used to expand or contract the business as needed. Excess supply can also be stored for an indefinite period of time.

With food and home cooked meals, you never know when someone is going to wake up decide they want to learn to cook. Do they decide to learn to cook when they are 18? When they get married? When they have kids? When they get diagnosed with some diet related health condition? There is too much uncertainty about when someone will enter the target segment for there ever to be a stable market. Excess supply also doesn't store well, it'll go bad before the market can absorb the excess supply ;)

Perishable goods have a very different business model than non-perishable goods ;)

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

#305

Post by all2 » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 1:17 AM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #290

all2 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have just described a value-add B2B SaaS; offers integration into existing retailer's online shopping portals. If this doesn't exist, give it six months and it will. If you want to try and swing something like this and need an extra set of hands, my email is in my profile.

There's literally dozens of people who have tried to do this recently and failed, and dozens more still trying to do it. How do you make money? How do you acquire customers cheaper than it costs to provide the service?

You don't go after the consumer. Consumers don't care enough and, as you said, the marketplace is glutted.

Instead, sell to grocery store chains that have existing infrastructure. In fact, you don't even build an app. Instead you offer an API that they can call when they want to implement this sort of functionality.

Optionally, you offer to do the integration (though this seems like it could make for an awful headache). Make sure the docs are good and the customer service is better.

The point is to give the grocery chains a value add that their competition doesn't have: a way to plan meals effectively and order all the ingredients.

There are some very relevant comments elsewhere in this thread that call out waste, which is a problem I'm not sure how to solve.

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

#306

Post by dzhiurgis » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 1:20 AM UTC

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…

Every super market in NZ sells the kind of kit that Blue Apron et al delivers. So basically Blue Apron does just delivery.

That said I've never bought the kit there - they seem to be the same for weeks.

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

#307

Post by wgerard » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 1:20 AM UTC

dlubarov wrote: post #291

wgerard wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paraphrasing from another answer: You can do that, but shareholders can also do the following in response: 1) Demand a change in leadership, a sale, or any number of significant changes. 2) Bail out en masse and sell, lowering the price even further. Few investors want to jump aboard what appears to be a sinking ship. Eventually you'll hit the minimum market cap requirement as well, at which point a reverse stock spl…

> You can do that, but shareholders can also do the following in response: Why would investors retaliate over a reverse stock split though? All other things being equal, isn't it good for shareholders if the stock stays on the NYSE? > Reverse stock splits simply to avoid being delisted is telling investors "we have no idea how to change direction so we're just gonna kick the can down the road for a bit". 29 days isn'…

> All other things being equal, isn't it good for shareholders if the stock stays on the NYSE?

Shareholders would MUCH rather you have a plan to get back above $1/share. If this is your basement flooding, a reverse split is trying to soak it up with paper towels: It might work temporarily, but eventually you're gonna run out. Shareholders want to know you have a plan to fix the leak, or at least have a plan to call the plumber to fix it.

> 29 days isn't a lot of time, and even if the company quickly pivoted, they can't be sure about how the market will react.

29 days is to trigger the delisting process. NYSE will then contact them about their plan to become compliant (which gives them an extra 10 days to respond), and basically puts them on the equivalent of a PIP (and carries many of the same implications that PIPs do). They're then held to certain financial milestones, which can result in delisting if they don't meet them.

Depending on the company, the whole process can be pretty long - see, for example, HMNY which I think triggered the delisting process officially in June of this year, but obviously is still listed on NASDAQ. If Blue Apron does get delisted, it won't be until well into next year.

> Even if the company believes they can increase their valuation within 29 days, why not have a backup plan also?

Because it's not a plan. It doesn't improve the fundamentals of the company at all. It's an admission that you have no idea how to create more value and are merely buying time. Unless you truly believe that Blue Apron is on a great trajectory and just needs a few years for the market to catch up on that idea, a reverse stock split should anger you as a shareholder.

A backup plan is to take on debt, to replace every single executive, or to seek acquisition. A reverse stock split could be part of a larger plan, but it's not a plan itself. It's a tactic.

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

#308

Post by geodel » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 1:27 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #226

asdff wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some perishables like fruits and vegetables are terrible to buy. Cilantro comes in a massive bunch from which I take three sprigs, and its rotten in a couple days. Bananas are unedible until day 2, then I have maybe a 3-day window to eat all the bananas before they are flabby, brown, and mushy. Even if I throw a handful of arugula in every single one of my meals, its massive tub is barely half empty by the time it st…

As someone who often cooks for myself, bananas are a pretty terrible example because you can literally buy one banana if you want. Perhaps I've been violating a taboo all my life, but I have never had a problem breaking up a bunch of bananas in the store. Fresh herbs I agree. It's one reason I tend to grow them. [ADDED: There are also a lot of frozen and freeze dried options these days that I often take advantage of.…

With bananas I make a banana milkshake when they are too soft to be eaten. With cilantro bunch, I keep some for garnishing rest I make chutney. Simple recipe of cilantro, garlic, green chilies, slices of fresh/frozen raw mango or even raw mango powder and salt etc goes in blender and out comes the chutney.

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

#309

Post by sjwright » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 1:28 AM UTC

rbg246 wrote: post #298

ghaff wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who often cooks for myself, bananas are a pretty terrible example because you can literally buy one banana if you want. Perhaps I've been violating a taboo all my life, but I have never had a problem breaking up a bunch of bananas in the store. Fresh herbs I agree. It's one reason I tend to grow them. [ADDED: There are also a lot of frozen and freeze dried options these days that I often take advantage of.…

It's ok, I am the one who is quite happy to pick up the odds and ends and make a loose bunch

When I buy bananas, I tend to grab a couple of the ripest ones in the pile, plus a few of the greenest ones.

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

#310

Post by pessimizer » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 1:34 AM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #21

spyspy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the extremely small niche it fills. The market is people who have enough time and patience to cook their own meals, but not enough to grocery shop and look up a recipe. If you're new to cooking that's one thing, but I'd imagine many users eventually "outgrow" the service as they become more skilled and/or realize how much the convenience is costing.

We use a similar service that's closer to a CSA + recipe cards. We get a basic recipe and a bunch of raw veggies/locally produced products. Meal planning is work. Grocery shopping is work. Cooking is work. We've decided that cooking is the work we enjoy, and the other parts are work we'd rather pay someone to do for us. We are more than capable of putting together a meal plan, we just value our time more than money a…

> Meal planning is work. Grocery shopping is work.

There's definitely a time limit to this. As you get better at cooking, you get better at thinking of recipes that don't have ingredients that quickly spoil, and/or can be cooked from frozen, or can be frozen after cooking, or can be portioned out as part (let's say) half the meals you cook this week.

These habits accumulate, they don't appear all at once. Worse for a service like blue apron: cooking a lot of new recipes fosters that sort of thinking.

I think an important perspective to remember is that most styles of cooking were come up with by people who didn't have refrigeration, although they weren't as fragmented as we are (lots of single people and couples due to capitalist alienation.) When you tighten the constraint of the number of people being cooked for while loosening the constraint of how long ingredients will last and how long things you cook can be saved (without changing the taste much e.g. pickling and drying), things come out about even.