Subscription-Based Delivery: Blue Apron
In September of this year, Blue Apron, a meal kit subscription service, celebrated its 10th anniversary. While today there are a plethora of meal kit subscription services, Blue Apron was a pioneer in this industry. To date, Blue Apron has served over 480 million meals!
Blue Apron boxes are filled with pre-measured (often pre-chopped) ingredients and the accompanying recipes. The company has expanded to include some oven-ready meals as well. Customers are given options for each week, and they can choose which meals they would like. Deliveries can be made each week or paused when customers choose to skip a week.
In 2015, Blue Apron began offering a wine service, providing direct-to-consumer wines. Recipes from Blue Apron highlight which bottle of wine a customer may want to select. Another new tactic is offering 4-serving meal kits at Costco.
Today, the subscription meal kit space is flooded with competitors. For example, NBC highlighted several “winners” in a recent article–the list included Blue Apron, Hungryroot, Home Chef, Sunbasket, Factor, Freshly, Bistro MD, and Splendid Spoon. However, there are many others.
Questions:
1) Clearly, competition in subscription-based meal services is growing rapidly. Using the ideas from Chapter 16, how should Blue Apron respond to these competitive threats? Make sure to use chapter links here!
2) While Blue Apron only operates in the U.S., its competitor HelloFresh (founded in Germany) operates in many countries. Chapter 14 outlines four conditions that lead to success when expanding the global footprint of a company. Based on these conditions, should Blue Apron expand internationally? Be sure to provide your rationale.Strategic Market Management