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

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

#311
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$10 per serving is egregious. Take a blue apron recipe with you to a grocery store, and I bet you can buy all the ingredients for $2.5 a meal.

> Take a blue apron recipe with you to a grocery store, and I bet you can buy all the ingredients for $2.5 a meal Where the hell are you shopping that you can self-construct a blue apron meal for $2.50? $2.50 will get you the basil to use in the recipe and that is about it. Then you need the chicken ($7 minimum) and produce ($5-$7). The starches ($2-$5). Any one-off spices (could be $1 or $15 depending). Sorry, but p…

To me, your prices seem unrealistic. You can get chicken for like $2 a pound, and you're not using a pound of chicken for a single serving of any meal, so it's something like a dollar or less per person. Starches are dirt cheap, $5 buys you enough pasta or rice or potatoes for at least a dozen servings. E.g. a five pound bag of rice is $3 in Walmart, and if it's a side to some chicken&produce dish, then that comes out to something like $0.20 for starches per person - an order of magnitude difference.

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

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No you don't. As a single parent you don't have time, and kids don't appreciate and in fact often don't like elaborate or gourmet food. Learn to make half-a-dozen simple dishes from memory. Pasta with meat sauce. Simple dishes with chicken, pork, fish, or beef, and vegetables. Stuff you can throw together with basic staple ingredients, minimal prep work, and minimal utensils. This makes shopping easier and minimizes…

> Avoid kitchen gadgets.

May I nominate one exception: a pressure cooker. This includes plug-in electric like the Breville Fast Slow Cooker. If you are able to chop carrots, you can make endless variety of stews, casseroles, soups and curries with straightforward recipes, minimal complexity, short cook times and not too much cleaning up afterwards. And they're the sort of dishes that make great leftovers.

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

#313
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…

All of that boils down to 'looking up a recipe, buying ingredients, and cooking them' :) i.e. the hassle we want to avoid.

I do agree however, that grocery stores will own this category.

Reasons it's not happening yet:

1) Grocery store chains tend to not be very innovative

2) The 'behaviour' of such things is still maybe niche. Most people will take the 'pre cooked'. It's like books: few people actually read.

3) My bet is that small, local providers like Blue Apron end up proving such things. Some of them will grow, but mostly we'll see a lot of players and a lot of brands, just like everything else in food.

Blue Apron is a rational premise, just not quite sticky enough for the price.

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

#314
post #24

Just reverse split: less shares, same market cap = higher price. wow no more penny stock status

Investors aren't stupid and realize a company doing a reverse split just to maintain the minimum share price is doomed. See also: $HMNY.

HMNY isn't a great comparison.

HMNY didn't really tank because they did a reverse split. They primarily tanked because they continued to dilute investors after their reverse split by issuing new shares and selling them to the public markets via their ATM offering.

Reverse splits cause further depression in share price, but pretty much any example other than HMNY would be better. i.e. Price dropping by 1000x after a split is not typical at all.

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

#315
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will do a reverse split, perhaps 10:1 to get the stock back up in price.

Doing a reverse split just to meet the share price requirements is generally viewed as a sign the company is spiraling out of control (i.e. investors will continue selling to cut their losses). I don't have the numbers offhand, but I would wager a large sum that companies in trouble doing reverse splits just to meet listing requirements almost always continue tumbling downwards. For a recent example, see Helios and M…

> I don't have the numbers offhand, but I would wager a large sum that companies in trouble doing reverse splits just to meet listing requirements almost always continue tumbling downwards.

If you believe markets are even slightly efficient, you'd lose this wager. Companies announce reverse splits before they happen. Therefore, any predictable price depression will be priced in before the split.

Put another way, your hypothesis is simple and easily testable. Because it's so simple, even if it held true at some point in the past, it would no longer be true because a hedge fund or counter party would have done the work to price it in pre-split.

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

#316

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…

Funnily enough I have JUST launched a little side project that is attempting to do exactly what you are describing. (Or will do). There's a few more features I need to add before I'd consider it MVP level and but it's getting close. http://cookmatic.co Basically you can paste in recipe URLs (so far only supports seriouseats and bonappetit) it parses the ingredient list and generates a shopping list combining everythi…

Have you taken a look at Paprika? It imports from almost any site, adjusts portions, and generates a combined grocery list. The only thing is doesn't do is the last thing: combine recipes in a way to minimize ingredient waste.

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

#317
post #222

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…

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…

Frozen bananas can also be used for banana bread pancakes (which are not only tasty, but don't require eggs--that's what the bananas are for). Recipe here (I use regular flour, not the whole wheat they call for): https://www.howsweeteats.com/2011/06/whole-wheat-brown-sugar...

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

#318
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…

A couple of years ago I became an empty nester and decided to get rid of my cars. I switched to delivery: CFA box, meat box, and regular grocery delivery.

My meals are a bit repetitive (I often make, as you note, the same meal for four days) but that makes my life easier. But what has amazed me is it really doesn't take long to make the kind of meals I like to eat -- often 30 minutes an almost always less than 60. I can't be bothered making fancy sauces and the like, so I eat healthier than I probably ever have in my life. It's really a great deal to feed myself for four days for only a few bucks and for not much more time per meal than it would have taken to heat up a premade package.

Even my gf and her kids like my cooking which astonishes me.

I live in Palo Alto so can use the BBQ year round -- BBQ and Instant pot account for a lot of my cooking.

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

#319
post #294

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…

Any tips for Avacados? I tried the brown bag but getting them to the right texture that isn't too hard or spoiled is maddening.

[deleted]

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

#320

I once worked for their biggest competitor - HelloFresh - as a door-to-door salesperson and I have to say... the way we were told to pitch to potential customers was terrible. We were told to sign up the customer and then then opt-out of delivery for a period of 5 weeks so the customer forgets that they’re still subscribed. The salespeople - mostly ~20 year olds - were also heavily exploited and the wages and commiss…

A sales job will always be one of the easiest ways to get hired in the US, and also one of the easiest ways to go unpaid and mistreated for a long time.

It's rare than anyone buys from an outbound sales person anymore, especially when it's not very complex or important.

I'm thoroughly surprised that food service companies would go door to door to beg for revenue. That is far more desperate than spam emailing,

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