Comes now one of my least favorite companies: Blue Apron. I have been a critic of Blue Apron for an extended period of time. Today, we talk disruption and its push back implications.
We have spoken of them thrice before:
I will not whip up on Blue Apron as I have before. Today, I will use it for another purpose.
The meal kit business has been frothy and nobody has had a tougher time swimming through the froth than Blue Apron.
Blue Apron came public — raising $300MM — during the same week that Amazon announced the acquisition of Whole Foods. Bad timing, bad luck. That, however, was only the beginning.
Blue Apron — APRN NYSE — is a meal recipe/delivery company (OK, meal-kit delivery is the right buzz word, shoot me) that went public back in 2017. It was once upon a time a Unicorn. Here is what the stock has done since coming out at $10/share in July 2017 and thereby earning it a title as a $2B Unicorn. Bravo! Oh, wait. Belay that bravo, please.
As you can also see, things have not gone so well since then. Most recently the last founder has shed the CEO role as the company brought in a new CEO, Linda Findley Kozlowski, the former COO of Etsy. [All of the founders have flown the coop now.]
LFK left Etsy when they eliminated her position. She had been with them for three years. Folks fancy her an expert in eCommerce and consumer-focused business. She was also the COO of Evernote and the Director of Global Marketing and Customer Experience at Alibaba Group Holding, Ltd. Player, to be sure. Tough hill to climb.
Big Red Car here with his Blue Apron on. Haha, that’s a joke y’all, just like everything else about Blue Apron.
If you don’t know about Blue Apron, a meal kit delivery company which just went public, let the Big Red Car ‘splain it to y’all.
Blue Apron went public on the NYSE recently at $10/share having been “underwritten” by Goldman Sachs, Citigrope (haha), Morgan Stanley, and Barclays as the leads. It sold 30MM share and raised $300MM.
Yesterday, it was revealed that Amazon (recent offerer for Whole Foods) registered the trademark: “We do the prep. You be the chef.”
The filing said that Amazon would be preparing food kits for cooking and assembly as a meal. OK, so you recognize that, right? That’s Food Aprons core competency.
The Illuminati read this to mean Amazon/Whole Foods is going after Blue Apron and others in the meal kit delivery business. Just to be clear Blue Apron is the largest in the business followed by HelloFresh (German company). But, Amazon/Whole Foods has an incredible installed base, complete command of the order/delivery business, and an incredibly well focused existing customer base. Plus, Whole Paycheck is already a huge volume buyer of … wait for it … FOOD.
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