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Blue apron is tasty and fun. I hope they sicceed in some fashion. Seems like the kind of thing young couples would do for a year, and would be a great alternati
by jeffdavis 9y ago
Blue apron is tasty and fun. I hope they sicceed in some fashion. Seems like the kind of thing young couples would do for a year, and would be a great alternative to spending money and time at restaurants.
But they need to get the customer acquisition costs down enough that they make good profit in that first year. After that, people will either lose interest in cooking or get so interested that they do their own shopping and recipes.
To get a lot of long-term customers would require a cultural shift. They are probably a bit early, but it might happen.
- speedplane 9y agoBlue Apron is a great company with a solid product that could easily make a good profit. The problem is that they can't sell themselves to VCs as a fun way for couples to cook and spend time with each other. They have to disrupt the dinner market, and convince VCs that they have sky-high evaluations.
- ghaff 9y agoPresumably there are some economies of scale, startup costs, and minimum volume to make all this work. But, yeah, with some clever PR and promotion you'd think you could get a business of this type to the point where it's a fairly attractive niche business. With less pressure to max out revenue per customer now it could even be a more attractive product that could more easily survive alongside grocery delivery. But, as you say, there's all this growth pressure to win the land grab and dominate the category which puts customer acquisition costs through the roof. [Added: Having said that, I think churn is always going to be a problem with a business like this once the novelty wears off.]
- intoverflow2 9y ago> a great alternative to spending money and time at restaurants You realise that isn't a chore, right? It's supposed to be fun.