Subscription-based meal kit service Blue Apron wants to kickstart growth for its lagging business and that might entail a change to its business model. You may soon be able to buy Blue Apron meal kits in stores. This will allow the company to cater to a wider audience that may not be interested in paying for a subscription but wouldn’t mind buying a meal kit once in a while.
Despite being one of the first meal kit delivery services on the market, Blue Apron is having to keep up with intense competition and that’s dragging down its business. Bringing its meal kits to stores will be an acknowledgment that the subscription-based model isn’t enough to keep the company above water.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Blue Apron had 750,000 subscribers as of last month which is a significant decline compared to its peak of more than 1 million subscribers in 2017. The subscription-fee aside, another major reason for the decline is believed to be the easy availability of meal kits at supermarkets. That wasn’t really a thing back when Blue Apron first emerged on the scene.
The report mentions that while Blue Apron executives aren’t saying right now how much the in-store meal kits are going to cost, they have confirmed that the company is in “active conversations with a variety of retailers and plan to have product in stores in 2018.”
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