What happened
Shares of Blue Apron Holding, Inc. (APRN) were heading lower Tuesday as the company's latest effort to drum up new sales seemed to fall flat. The meal-kit service's stock hit another all-time low on today's slide, falling 10% as of 3:28 p.m. EDT.
So what
Blue Apron said it would partner with Grubhub (GRUB) to make its meals available for on-demand delivery. To start, Blue Apron is testing the pilot in select zip codes in New York City with two-person meals available for $18.99 to $25.99 and four-person meals from $34.99 to $45.99, plus a $3.99 delivery fee.
Image source: Blue Apron.
This is the first time Blue Apron meals have been available through such a channel, and CEO Brad Dickerson called the program,"a complement to our core offering, giving consumers -- for the first time -- the option to have a Blue Apron meal delivered to their doorstep in less than an hour."
Blue Apron menus on Seamless and Grubhub will rotate weekly, and the company is also making artisanal products like cheese and broth available on the platform. Though it's smart for Blue Apron to experiment with new channels as it's doing with a pilot program with Costco, selling through Grubhub may not be the most logical step. Customers turn to Grubhub and other such delivery platforms for a quick takeout meal from a restaurant. They're using the service in lieu of cooking so it seems unlikely that many of them will choose to wait to have a meal delivered that still needs to be cooked.
Blue Apron is also restricting delivery times to 4:30 p.m to 8:30 p.m.
Now what
It doesn't seem like selling on Grubhub is going to rescue Blue Apron. Competition in the meal kit space remains fierce, and profits are hard to come by, especially as Blue Apron's price points are still higher than buying dinner ingredients at the grocery store.
With the stock falling below $1.50 a share for the first time, a buyout remains a possibility, but it's hard to see a fundamental turnaround happening anytime soon.
