Blue Apron Inc. is an American

ingredient An ingredient is a substance that forms part of a mixture (in a general sense). For example, in cooking, recipes specify which ingredients are used to prepare a specific dish. Many commercial product (business), products contain secret ingredie ...

-and-

recipe A recipe is a set of instructions that describes how to prepare or make something, especially a dish of prepared food. A sub-recipe or subrecipe is a recipe for an ingredient that will be called for in the instructions for the main recipe. His ...

meal kit A meal kit is a subscription service–foodservice business model where a company sends customers pre-portioned and sometimes partially-prepared food ingredients and recipes to prepare homecooked meals. Services that send pre-cooked meals ...

company headquartered in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, operating its services exclusively in the United States. It offers weekly boxes containing ingredients, which also includes suggested recipes that must be cooked by hand by the customer using the pre-ordered ingredients. As of September 2016, the company had shipped 8 million meal servings. In June 2017, the company went public with an initial public offering.

History

Matt Salzberg, Ilia Papas and Matt Wadiak first began sending customers boxes containing the ingredients to cook recipes in August 2012, packing and shipping the first 30 orders themselves from a commercial kitchen in

Long Island City Long Island City (LIC) is a residential and commercial neighborhood on the extreme western tip of Queens, a borough in New York City. It is bordered by Astoria to the north; the East River to the west; New Calvary Cemetery in Sunnyside to the ...

. In May 2014, the company announced that it would be launching a fulfillment center in

Richmond, California Richmond is a city in western Contra Costa County, California, United States. The city was incorporated on August 7, 1905, and has a city council.

. In November 2014, Blue Apron launched Blue Apron Market, a store featuring kitchen tools and cookware. In December 2014, the company opened another fulfillment center in

Jersey City, New Jersey Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.Arlington, Texas Arlington is a city in the U.S. state of Texas, located in Tarrant County. It forms part of the Mid-Cities region of the Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan statistical area, and is a principal city of the metropolis and region ...

in June 2015, the company began shipping to the contiguous United States. In September 2015, Blue Apron launched Blue Apron Wine, a direct-to-consumer wine delivery service that sends customers six 500 ml bottles per month. The wines, made specifically for Blue Apron, are purchased directly from vineyards and sent directly to customers. In October 2016,

BuzzFeed BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content. Ke ...

reported a history of safety and health violations at the company's

Richmond, California Richmond is a city in western Contra Costa County, California, United States. The city was incorporated on August 7, 1905, and has a city council.

distribution center. The company attributed the problems to operational issues while scaling up during its early days. In February 2017, the company announced that it would be opening a fulfillment center in

Linden, New Jersey Linden is a city in southeastern Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is part of the New York Metropolitan Area, located about southwest of Manhattan and bordering Staten Island, a borough of New York City, across the Arthur Kill ...

. On June 29, 2017, Blue Apron had its

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

of 30 million shares of class A common stock (ticker APRN) priced at $10 per share; it is the first U.S. meal-kit company to go public. Since going public, Wall Street has cut Blue Apron's stock price in half. By October 2017, prior to its next earnings report, the company had announced a company-wide realignment, 6% of employees laid off at both the corporate offices and fulfillment centers, estimated to be a couple of hundred jobs. On November 30, 2017, Blue Apron announced that Brad Dickerson would be replacing Salzberg as CEO; Salzberg will remain chairman. As of March 26, 2018, Blue Apron has lost 81.4% of its market value since its initial public offering. In May 2018, Blue Apron began selling 4 servings meal kits at 17

Costco Costco Wholesale Corporation ( doing business as Costco Wholesale and also known simply as Costco) is an American multinational corporation which operates a chain of membership-only big-box retail stores (warehouse club). As of 2022, Costc ...

locations in California, marking the company's entrance into physical retail and Tim Bensley, formerly of

Acosta Sales & Marketing Acosta is a sales and marketing agency currently headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida. Their clients include Clorox and Coca-Cola, among others. History Acosta was founded in 1927 by Lou Acosta. An office in Tampa was opened and the service are ...

, entered as CFO. On August 2, 2018, Blue Apron, announced the total number of customers who paid for a meal delivery had a decrease of 24 percent during the second quarter of 2018 compared to the previous quarter, and the company also indicated total orders had slipped by 23 percent. In April 2019, Brad Dickerson was succeeded by

Linda Findley Kozlowski Linda Findley (formerly Linda Findley Kozlowski) is the CEO of Blue Apron, a meal kit delivery service. Early life and education Findley grew up in North Carolina. She received a bachelor's degree from Elon College and a Master of Arts degree fro ...

as the new CEO of the company. However, Dickerson remained at the company as an adviser. In November 2020, Alan Blake was succeeded by Charlean Gmunder as the new COO. Blake left the company in June to lead operations at Kettle Cuisine.

Environmental impact

The company and other meal kit companies have been criticized for creating excess

packaging waste Packaging waste, the part of the waste that consists of packaging and packaging material, is a major part of the total global waste, and the major part of the packaging waste consists of single-use plastic food packaging, a hallmark of throwa ...

from the individually packaged ingredients. As of 2017, Blue Apron partners with farms that limit agricultural chemicals and promote

soil health Soil health is a state of a soil meeting its range of ecosystem functions as appropriate to its environment. In more colloquial terms, the health of soil arises from favorable interactions of all soil components (living and non-living) that belong ...

through crop rotation to grow specialty crops for the company.

References

External links

* * {{Authority control 2017 initial public offerings Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange Online food retailers of the United States American companies established in 2012 Retail companies established in 2012 Transport companies established in 2012 Internet properties established in 2012 Publicly traded companies based in New York City Subscription services 2012 establishments in New York (state)