Malartu

View Original

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.


Subscribe to Get More Snippets Like This Straight To Your Inbox Every Friday

See this content in the original post