Executive Briefing
What happened to Blue Apron?
Marc Lore’s Wonder is putting $APRN shareholders out of their misery. Also: Nike wants more ‘everyday’ runners. And was Lulu-Mirror worth it?
By Dan Frommer on Saturday, September 30, 2023 at 8:00 am
One of the more unhinged things I did during the pandemic happened last May: Knocked sideways in bed recovering from a Moderna booster shot, I feverishly binge-watched several hours of Blue Apron’s inaugural Investor Day summit.
By then, the meal-kit pioneer’s stock price had fallen 98% since its 2017 IPO. Blue Apron’s prospectus declared that it had “reimagined the traditional grocery business model” and would take share from its customers’ spending on groceries, ordering takeout, and dining at restaurants — more than $1 trillion in total addressable market.
But that didn’t materialize. Despite a pandemic-era boom in home cooking, and a momentary spike in stock price, Blue Apron continued to lose share in the market it helped create — largely to Berlin-based HelloFresh — and was still unprofitable.
Chart of the Day
By the middle of 2022, the ten-year-old company was deep into turnaround mode.
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