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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Blue Apron

Podcast: Food Tech News Wrapup – Wonder Buys Blue Apron, Elon Breaks Ground on Drive-In

We’re back after a couple weeks off to wrap up some of the top stories of the week. 

Mike and Allen talk about these stories:

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Blue Apron Gives Time-Crunched Customers New Option With Heat & Eat Meals

For six months, I was an enthusiastic Blue Apron subscriber.

Each week I’d go on the website, eagerly choose my meals, and then spend an hour or so a couple of nights a week preparing dinner for my family by following Blue Apron’s cook-by-number instruction cards.

I liked it. The food was good, I learned new recipes, and it was fun.

But I still canceled. The reason? Life got busy, and it all seemed like just too much work.

As it turns out, I’m not the only one who doesn’t have 45 minutes a night to cook, which is why Blue Apron is debuting a new line of Heat & Eat meals that subscribers can microwave and have on the table in five minutes.

The company announced that the new ready-to-eat meals are available to most customers this week and will be available nationwide by November 1st.

From the release:

Heat & Eat meals were crafted to seamlessly complement customers’ Blue Apron Signature weekly recipes, providing them with more choice and flexibility in their weekly routine. Whether they are cooking for one, seeking a quick dinner option or an easy weekday lunch, Heat & Eat meals were designed to make meal decisions a bit easier. Heat & Eat meals are based on some of the company’s most ordered and top-rated dishes, and designed to be warmed in a microwave.

The new Heat & Eat meals will also come in single portions, a departure from the company’s traditional 2 or 4 person serving sizes for their cook-from-recipe meals.

It’s no secret that meal kit companies have long struggled with customer churn; just last year, Blue Apron explored strategic options as it ran short on cash due to high churn. However, the company saw an increase in customers in 2020 as people stayed home and cooked more, and early indications are some of the behavior changes may be permanent.

And now, by expanding their menu of options to include ready-to-eat meals (and adding single-serve portions), there’s a good chance the company will be able to reduce churn. I also suspect they’ll widen their addressable market to the time-crunched professional who cooks for themselves (Tovala’s sweet spot).

Had they had ready-to-eat meals when I was a subscriber, I might have stuck around. And who knows? With their expanded meal options, I might have to give them a second chance.

Blue Apron Adds Customization, Extra Boxes to Meal Kit Subscriptions

Blue Apron announced today it has expanded its product line to introduce more flexibility into its meal kit subscription plans, likely in a bid to reach a wider number of homebound customers. To do this, Blue Apron unveiled three new features: recipe customization, the ability to get multiple meal kit boxes per week, and more meals per week for the two-person box.

Recipe customization is the most intriguing of these options. Customers will be able to “customize select recipes” by swapping out choice of protein, switching a veggie for a starch, increasing portion size, and replace a meat portion with a plant-based protein. (Blue Apron has maintained a partnership with Beyond Meat since 2019.) 

Blue Apron subscribers will also have the option to receive multiple boxes per week. Subscribers normally get one box per week that contains all ingredients for Blue Apron meals for that week. This new feature gives customers the option for two boxes per week, for a total of eight different recipes that can be delivered at staggered times. 

Finally, Blue Apron has added an extra meal to its Two-Person Signature box for a total of four meals per week. 

That the extra features are all about customization and flexibility makes sense, given the uncertainty of the restaurant dining room and the fact that more consumers are eating in these days. Adding more choice to its offerings potentially allows Blue Apron to reach a wider audience. 

Blue Apron has struggled for the last few years, along with the entire meal kit sector. Of late, though, the company has seen something of a resurgence. On its most recent earnings call, Blue Apron said its customer base grew by 20,000, and average revenue per customer increased 25 percent year over year.

Other meal kit companies, including Sun Basket, Purple Carrot, and HelloFresh, have also reported an uptick in demand.

In today’s press release, Blue Apron said its new features will be available to all subscribers by the end of the year.

Pandemic Helps Push Blue Apron into Profitable Q2

Meal kit company Blue Apron announced profitable second quarter 2020 earnings today, driven in large part by the global pandemic. Blue Apron’s net revenue for Q2 was $131 million, up 20 percent over the previous quarter and 10 percent year-over-year. The company reached a net income of $1.1 million, or $0.08 diluted earnings per share.

In its earnings release, Blue Apron attributed the good numbers to the “impact on consumer behavior from the COVID-19 pandemic.” Translation: Q2 was smack dab in the middle of restaurants closing and people stuck at home, cooking more. It didn’t hurt that early on in the pandemic, panic shopping meant groceries at the store were harder to come by, pushing people to find alternate ways of getting dinner ingredients.

Blue Apron added 20,000 customers during Q2, and the average revenue per customer increased 25 percent year-over-year to $331. Orders per customer were also up 17 percent to 5.4 and average order value increased to $61, the highest level since 2015. You can see the company’s growth in this chart from the earnings release:

While Blue Apron was a pioneer in the meal kit space, it’s a market that consumers seemed to have soured on in recent years. While meal kits send you all the ingredients, those meals still take a long time to prepare and cook. But the pandemic turned everything on its head, creating an any-port-in-a-storm situation. If you’re stuck at home for many months, may as well try out a meal kit shipped directly to your door.

Today’s earnings report is the first time in a while that we’ve written anything positive about Blue Apron. The last few stories we’ve done on Blue Apron here at The Spoon were basically preparing its coffin:

Will this bump be sustained? In providing guidance for its Q3 results, Blue Apron said its outlook is “reflecting certain assumptions regarding the company’s business, trends, historical seasonal factors, and the continuing impact of COVID-19 on its business, including as a result of changes in consumer behavior and grocery alternatives.” The company is expecting revenue to grow year-over-year to $112 million with a net loss of no more than $18 million.

Could the COVID-19 Outbreak Save Meal Kits?

When I get anxious or stressed out, my natural response is to cook elaborate meals for myself. Following complex recipes soothes me.

But I understand that that is absolutely not the case for many folks out there. Nonetheless, in a time where we’re not supposed to be leaving the house, there’s only so much delivery you can order in — and so many meals of spaghetti you can make.

That’s where meal kits could come in handy. They’re delivered to your door (no venturing out to grocery stores!), contain ingredients for a balanced meal, and give folks who might not be super comfortable in the kitchen some training wheels to get them cooking. On top of that, most meal kit services are at least slightly cheaper than ordering delivery, especially when you factor in tip.

I reached out to a few meal kit companies to see how the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent social distancing is affecting them. And the news was uniformly positive! Unlike many food-related companies, meal kits are actually seeing a boost in sales.

Purple Carrot’s founder and CEO Andy Levitt told me that the company had seen a “sharp increase in demand for our plant-based meal kits since COVID-19 has been shifting consumer behavior.” A representative from HomeChef emailed me that the company was seeing an “unprecedented increase in orders” with “more people cooking at home.” Over email, Blue Apron’s CEO Linda Findley Kozlowski also noted that the company had seen “a sharp increase in consumer demand.” No one would disclose exact numbers.

All of the companies I contacted emphasized that their employees were following CDC guidelines to ensure food safety during sourcing and packing. One benefit of meal kits is that the ingredients are packed in a warehouse, which means there are also fewer people touching your food and less chance of contamination than in a supermarket.

As we’ve written about time and again on The Spoon, the meal kit industry has been struggling for quite a while. Will this recent boost in subscribers be enough to sustain meal kits? Levitt is optimistic; he anticipated that the demand would continue even after the COVID-19 pandemic dies down.

I’m perhaps less so. The basic problems for meal kits — managing disparate supply chains, encouraging customer stickiness, making recipes easy enough for anyone to cook, and competing against food delivery — will still be present in our post-coronavirus future.

True, maybe some folks who are trying out meal kits now will get hooked and decide to continue on that path. But overall, if meal kit companies want to survive I think they’ll have to continue to innovate to cater to shifting consumer needs by focusing on retail, enabling more customization, and creating easier, faster recipes.

But for now, meal kits are filling an important need for consumers who want to cook more at home, but aren’t sure how. It’s a small but noteworthy silver lining in the time of COVID-19.

Why a Blue Apron Sale is a Good Idea, and Who Might Buy It

Meal kit company Blue Apron said on its Q4 earnings call today that it was “evaluating a broad range of strategic options” to revive its struggling business — including a sale of the company or its assets.

To say the least, the company’s Q4 earnings were not good: sales have dropped more than 30 percent over the last quarter and the company posted a loss of $1.66 per share, both of which were bigger dips than expected.

Sales aren’t the only way forward for Blue Apron. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company is also considering raising more money, as well as a merger with other meal kit companies.

But for my money, Blue Apron’s best option would be to sell, sell, sell. Blue Apron has been hustling hard to claw itself out of its downward spiral with little to no success. The company halted its partnership with Walmart-owned Jet.com in August. Deals with Beyond Meat and Weight Watchers to make specialized kits haven’t pulled up dragging sales, either. And just last week the company rolled out its new Meal Prep Kits aimed at aspirational, Instagram-savvy millennials.

However, none of those initiatives could solve the two of the big reasons that consumers didn’t stick with Blue Apron meal kits: time and convenience. Even with the simple recipes and pre-prepped ingredients, meal kits still take time to make — and they’re not always markedly cheaper than just ordering food delivery, which is more convenient than having to cook at all (plus no dishes). Some customers also chafe at being locked into subscription models.

These challenges aren’t unique to Blue Apron. Competitors like Hello Fresh, Purple Carrot and Marley Spoon are also trying to figure out how to attract customers and, most importantly, keep them loyal to their brands. But that’s just it — there are so, so many players in the meal kit game, likely due to its relatively low barrier to entry — and they’re all competing for the 93 million Americans who, according to NPD, have stated that they would like to try meal kits. Other players include deep-pocketed retailers like Kroger (which sells Home Chef meal kits) and Albertsons, which are rolling out their own in-store meal kits, and even CPG companies like Tyson.

In short, the competition is just too fierce, the margins are too thin, and the market’s not getting any bigger. Blue Apron has been struggling ever since its dismal IPO in 2017, and at this point it seems like no amount of corporate brainstorming or brand partnerships will save it.

In this author’s opinion, it’s time to sell.

So who would step up and buy Blue Apron? My colleague Chris laid out a comprehensive list of potential buyers in December of 2018, and I think it still holds true. The biggest contenders? Retailers who don’t already have their own meal kit service (hi, Walmart!), CPG companies, other meal kit companies, and even dark horses like Uber. Or maybe private equity groups would just acquire Blue Apron and sell it for parts.

Despite its troubles, Blue Apron has significant assets to offer. According to its latest quarterly report, the meal kit company reported $454.9 million in net revenue in 2019 with thousands of orders per month. It also has a nationwide logistics network and supply chain, which is one of the trickiest parts of meal kits. Not to mention years of customer data related to what food people are buying, and where they’re buying it.

All of that could make Blue Apron an attractive purchase, especially at a low price point. Maybe by the next earning call we’ll have a better idea on whether Blue Apron will continue to try and turn the tides, or if it’s going to cut and run.

Will Blue Apron’s New Meal Prep Kits Help The Company Get Out of Its Rut?

Beleaguered meal kit company Blue Apron is making yet another attempt to boost declining sales with a new service: meal prep kits.

The new kits come with everything you need to prepare four meals for two people (so eight meals in total). It takes 1.5 to 2 hours to make the components of all the meals, which are meant to be packed away into containers to be reheated or eaten chilled throughout the week.

Blue Apron has four prep kit options: Signature, Carb Conscious, Pescetarian and Multi-Cooker. They shake out to around $72 per box, or $8.99 per serving. The kits don’t come with containers, and the website notes that you’ll need 16 storage vessels to hold your food and sauces (eight large, eight small).

The prep kits are already available to people in select states on the East Coast with a planned delivery date for February 24. Blue Apron will expand their availability nationwide later this year.

Blue Apron’s meal prep kits

You have to give Blue Apron kudos — it’s experimented tirelessly to come up with ways to revitalize its struggling business. So far the company has teamed up with Beyond Meat and Weight Watchers, and last year it even started offering same-day delivery. So far, none of these have done too much to jump start sales for Blue Apron, which reported a 35 percent slump in Q3 of 2019.

So could these meal prep kits finally be a win for the company? I actually think it has a better chance than, say, incorporating Beyond Meat into their menus. Meal prepping is a growing trend and it’s definitely more convenient to get all the ingredients to make four different meals send right to your door.

But even with the prep kits, Blue Apron will still face two big issues: inconvenience and price. Setting aside two full hours to prep four days’ worth of meals may be a smart time investment, but it’s still kind of a long time — especially for those who aren’t very cooking-savvy. And what if you end up going out for lunch or don’t want to reheat that salmon you cooked four days ago? The prepped meals will also cost around $8 per serving, which is not markedly less than grabbing a sandwich or deli salad.

Long story short, while the meal prep kits are an interesting bid, I don’t think they’re enough to entice new consumers to try Blue Apron — or keep them coming back. Then again, 93 million Americans are meal kit curious, so there’s definitely a market out there. If they want to tap into those potential customers, I think Blue Apron would be better off following in the footsteps of other meal kit companies and selling its kits (meal prep or otherwise) in retail, instead.

Cooks Venture Raises $12M to Spread Regenerative Agriculture through Heirloom Chickens

Today regenerative agriculture company Cooks Venture announced the close of a $12 million senior secured financing round provided by AMERRA Capital Management.

Founded by Matthew Wadiak, the ex-COO of meal kit company Blue Apron, Cooks Venture is an agtech company selling slow growth heirloom chickens with the lofty goal of saving the planet through regenerative agriculture. As we wrote this spring just after the company’s launch:

Chickens are just the first step for Cooks Venture, whose end goal is to show how regenerative agriculture can slow — or even stop — climate change by sequestering carbon in soil. Next up, they’ll start raising and selling cattle, pigs, and vegetables, all sustained on the same plot of land as the chickens.

For now, Cooks Venture has a farm in Arkansas where it raises its chickens and two poultry processing facilities. Their heirloom chickens cost $15 to $20 and are available through the Cooks Venture website as well as FreshDirect (in the Northeast) and Northern California meat distributor the Golden Gate Meat Company.

On the surface, Cooks Venture’s process might not seem all that unusual. Create a farm that grows crops which can be used to feed chickens, all on the same land. What’s so radical about that?

What you might not know (as this author did not) is that the vast majority of American farmland is dedicated to growing crops — often in huge quantities — that are not destined to feed humans, but to feed animals or produce fuel. In order to grow such large quantities of a single crop quickly, farmers often have to rely on agricultural companies which sell seeds that require inputs like fertilizer and herbicides. That isn’t good for us, or the planet.

Regenerative agriculture, on the other hand, looks at soil microbiology plan which crops to grow and sequester carbon in the process. Wadiak argues that it’s more economically viable than relying on seed companies for constant inputs of fertilizer, pesticide, and the like. “It’s a trifecta of wins: for farmers, for us, and for consumers,” Wadiak told me over the phone earlier this week.

So why isn’t everyone growing their food regeneratively? Corn and soy subsidies are partly to blame, but according to Wadiak, the real reason regenerative agriculture isn’t more widespread is because, well, people just aren’t doing it. At least, not at scale.

Wadiak is confident that Cooks Venture can demonstrate that regenerative agriculture is a viable option through its use of technology. The company employs heat unit mapping and data science to predict which crops will grow best in which soil.

Cooks Venture is growing quickly for company that only started a few months ago — they now have over 100 employees — but Wadiak knows that they have a long way to go. “We’re working on multi-multi-year systems,” he said, referring to the timeline for the company to install its regenerative agriculture plan.

That’s where the new funding will come in. Cooks Venture will use it to renovate and expand its 800-acre poultry processing facility to handle up to 700,000 chickens per week. It will also use its new capital to partner with agroecologists in order to develop new sustainable agriculture practices.

Blue Apron Ends Its Jet.com Partnership to Focus on Its ‘Core’ Business

Meal kit company Blue Apron announced this week it is terminating its partnership with e-commerce site Jet.com.

On its August 6 Q2 2019 earnings call, Blue Apron CEO Linda Findley Kozlowski said the company needed to focus on its core business, which is its direct-to-consumer sales of meal kits.

“We have not kept up with the ever evolving needs and preferences of our customers over the past couple of years, and we are behind it,” Kozlowski said on the call, adding that part of the reason for that is because the company “redirected attention of way from innovating in our core offering as we tested alternative distribution channels for the past year and a half.”

Blue Apron made its meal kits available for delivery via the Walmart subsidiary Jet.com in 2018 in NYC. At the time, the company appeared to be looking for ways to revitalize its struggling business through third-party sales channels (the company sold meal kits for a time at Costco stores, too).

But based on this week’s call, that move appears to have been a distraction, and Blue Apron seems to believe stepping away from these third-party sales channels and tapping “unrealized opportunities” within its core business model is the place to invest time and resources at the moment.

To that end Kozlowski outlined a new strategy on the call for the company’s future that includes focusing on fresh food, offering more convenience and flexibility in terms of menu options, making Blue Apron’s various digital touchpoints easier to use, and increasing marketing efforts.

But even if Blue Apron is able to pull its subscription-model business back on track, the company’s long-term viability is still uncertain. Right now, meal kits only account for 21.9 percent of online grocery services used in 2019. NPD recently reported that 93 million adults in the U.S. want to try a meal kit, but the same research also highlighted a shift away from traditional dinner-only mail-order meal kits towards ones that can be found in retail stores and/or cater to other eating times, such as lunch and snacks.

Some meal kit companies have already responded to these trends: Kroger and Home Chef started piloting new meal offerings like “heat and eat” and lunch options, which they sell in Kroger stores. Sun Basket, too, expanded its options to include breakfast, lunch, and snacks, though the company remains a direct-to-consumer subscription service like Blue Apron.

Meanwhile, Blue Apron itself has always had an issue with customer churn, partly because its kits tend to be expensive and time consuming, even for people who love to cook. That means what the company winds up offering customers in terms of more flexibility and convenience in the future will surely give an idea of how successful the company’s renewed focus on its core business will be.

Can a Beyond Meat Partnership Help Blue Apron Spike Orders? (Probably Not.)

Today Blue Apron announced it would begin selling Beyond Meat products in its meal kits next month. According to CNBC, this news caused the struggling meal kit company’s stock to rise 33 percent during morning trading.

Blue Apron x Beyond Meat kits will be available starting this August. The kits will feature Beyond’s new “meatier” burger patties. The recipes are basically tricked-up beyond burgers (Caramelized Onion & Cheddar, Jalapeno & Goat Cheese, etc) with a vegetable side.

The choice to add Beyond Meat to their meal kits seems to be Blue Apron’s attempt to appeal to a flexitarian audience. It’s also a way to capitalize on the booming alternative protein market: data released today by the Good Food Institute shows that sales of plant-based foods rose 11 percent in last year alone and that the plant-based meat category is worth $801 million.

But this is also an attempt by Blue Apron to draft off of some of Beyond Meat’s viral success, especially after the plant-based meat company’s news-grabbing IPO boom earlier this year. It’s no secret that Blue Apron has been on a downward spiral lately, struggling to grow and keep a subscriber base. Last month the company had to split its stock to keep it above $1 in order to avoid being delisted on the New York Stock Exchange. It makes sense that they would want to hitch their horse to Beyond, which has had the biggest IPO pop since the 2008 financial crisis — and whose shares are still soaring at a whopping $172 bucks per share (at the time of this writing).

Lately it seems like Blue Apron has been trying everything to stay afloat. It recently partnered with WW (formerly Weight Watchers) and has also tried to follow other meal kit companies into retail with a Costco partnership, which stopped abruptly at the end of last year. They currently have a Jet.com partnership for next-day meal kit delivery (though it’s only in NYC for now).

On Beyond’s part, the Blue Apron partnership seems like a low-risk way to get into more households. This is the plant-based meat company’s second meal delivery partnership. The first is with Trifecta, the pre-made meal delivery service geared towards health-conscious consumers. Seeing as Beyond is trying to do everything and anything it can to grow revenues in the wake of going public, and other meal kits likely want in on this meatless action, I’m guessing we’ll see them entering into more meal kit partnerships coming down the road.

Long-term, the deal might not work out as well for Blue Apron. Despite today’s stock surge, I doubt all the trendy partnerships in the world will save the struggling meal kit company. As my colleague Jenn Marston wrote, if Blue Apron wants to dig itself out from its hole, it needs to make some fundamental shifts to address its core problem: customer acquisition and retention. Adding trendy plant-based meats is one way to draw attention to the service and pick up a few more flexitarian customers, but it won’t solve any underlying issues.

SimplyCook Closes Series A Round for Its Flavor-Focused Meal Kit Service

London-based meal kit company SimplyCook just closed a 4.5 million Series A funding round, led by Octopus Investments (via TechCrunch).

Rather than ship full meal kits a la Blue Apron or HelloFresh, SimplyCook focuses on the extras involved with making a meal: herbs, spices, and sauces. Each “kit” is shipped with recipe cards and whatever flavorings the meals call for.

It’s yet another example of what the meal kit could be, and joins others that cater to mealtime extras: coffee, baked goods, and booze are also popular.

But don’t think SimplyCook simply ships powdered flavorings you could just as easily scoop out of a jar yourself. The company says it creates its own flavor blends of different ingredients that take the form of pastes, oils, rubs, and stocks, in addition to dried herbs and spices. Flavorings are pre-portioned, as well. Customers need only add the whole food ingredients called for on the recipe card. The company also sells its kits in-store at retail outlets in the UK.

There are some folks who can glance at a shelf full of spices and create an amazing meal with them on the fly. Most of us can’t, and so a subscription service that exposes customers to more flavor combinations and tastes could appeal to a pretty wide swath of people. Because there are no proteins or produce shipped in the kits, the monthly price is a lot cheaper than, say, HelloFresh or The Purple Carrot. That in turn translates to less risk in the consumer’s mind about spending money on a meal kit service that may or may not line up with their tastes. And since SimplyCook ships non-perishable items, there’s less risk for both the company and the consumer: the former doesn’t have to worry about food spoiling in transit; the customer doesn’t feel pressure to immediately make the dish the day it arrives.

Stateside, there are many SimplyCook-like options. RawSpiceBar, based out of the Bay Area, is $8/month for three fresh-made spices and corresponding recipes. You can build your own spice kit based on your dietary needs and/or preferences, and from there get even more granular in terms of what you want in a recipe, be it casserole dishes, grilled items, or, of course, raw foods.

Spice Madam is more expensive, at $20/month. Each month’s box contains spices and recipes from a different region, plus cultural info about that part of the world and a music playlist. Plus, 5 percent of each box goes to charity.

SpiceBreeze also focuses on different regions of the world, including flavors for between two and four different areas in one box. The only downside to this one is that you get just two dishes per month.

As for SimplyCook, it’s only available in the UK right now, though this new funding round will, the company expects, “fuel international launches.”

Real Talk: Who Should Buy Blue Apron?

Blue Apron’s stock price has dropped below $1, losing 90 percent of its value since going public last year. The company keeps missing revenue targets, laying off people and a recent retail partnership with Costco was halted for the holidays.

It seems increasingly unlikely that Blue Apron will be able to pull itself out of this tailspin, and a sub-one dollar share price certainly won’t help. All this could make Blue Apron an attractive and affordable acquisition target. Grocery Dive laid out a few options for Blue Apron, but I feel like we can go a little deeper: Who should or would buy Blue Apron?

WHAT WOULD A COMPANY BE BUYING?
So what does Blue Apron have to offer? According to its Q3 results, the company has 646,000 customers who generate an average of $233 in revenue, with sales of $150.6 million. Blue Apron also has an active, nationwide logistics and mail order fulfillment operation as well as a supply chain in place. It also presumably has a fair amount of consumer data around when, where and what people are buying.

RETAILERS
There aren’t many retailers left who need a meal kit solution. Albertsons owns Plated. Kroger owns HomeChef. Amazon makes its own meal kits. Maybe Walmart? They are making their own meal kits, but Bentonville loves a bargain, perhaps it could jumpstart that offering with a Blue Apron buy. Or maybe Target could jump into the game. Adding meal kits to its groceries would make sense, and is on-brand for the store where you can pick up everything for your house.

OTHER MEAL KIT COMPANIES
The remaining independent meal kit companies don’t have the money to afford Blue Apron, even at a discount. HelloFresh is the market leader and done some acquisitions, but it seems to be redundant for a company with HelloFresh’s existing reach and business. True Food Innovation acquired Chef’d earlier this year, but is focused more on the retail experience–not mail order.

CPG COMPANIES
I’ve asked before whether the future of meal kits is frozen dinners. Nestlé owns Stouffer’s, which has rolled out a frozen dinner meal kits in grocery stores. Tyson has their own frozen meal kits as well. Perhaps there’s a brand extension into either mailing frozen meal kits direct or extending into fresh food.

DARK HORSES
Maybe Uber? Hear me out! Uber Eats is a growing part of that company’s business, and it’s already invested in ghost kitchens to make the food it delivers. Maybe an acquisition could ditch Blue Apron’s existing mail order and turn it into more of a same day meal kit delivery to your door service.

Or perhaps this is an opportunity for a more old school company like Schwan’s. They are already have robust lines of consumer and retail food delivery, and the company has bought into new meal kit businesses before with an investment in baby food meal kit company, Raised Real.

PRIVATE EQUITY
It seems like there’s always a private equity deal to be had. Maybe Blackstone or the Carlyle Group could come in and sell it for parts or combine it with some other of their portfolio companies.

But what do you think? Is there a good fit out there for Blue Apron not on this list? Leave a comment and let me know!