Blue Apron getting desperate
Emailed on February 21st 2020 in The Friday Forward
To quote Term Sheet's Polina Marinova, "Blue Apron, the meal-kit company backed by the likes of Bessemer Ventures and First Round Capital, is trying just about everything to raise cash."
During its fourth-quarter earnings report Wednesday, the boxed-dinner maker said it was considering a merger, a potential sale of all or a part of its assets, a capital raise through public or private markets, or some combination of the above.
Once valued at $2 billion, Blue Apron now sits around $58 million in private markets. Turns out, the model of prepping-meals-and-pairing-with-cooking-instructions is easily replicated, marketing spend is high, and the act of cooking itself is still time-consuming.
Meal kits aren’t completely dead: HelloFresh, which trades in Frankfurt, is currently valued around $4.1 billion and has traded healthily since its IPO.
Here's a free idea: Blue Apron should take advantage of the Airpod craze and double down on an audio platform. Pop in your headphones, grab your meal kit, and have a Michelin Star chef talk you through cooking the meal. Meal kits aren't defensible, original content is.
