Blue Apron APRN
Blue Apron, founded in 2012 by Matt Salzberg, Ilia Papas, and Matt Wadiak, promised to revolutionize dinner by delivering pre-portioned ingredients and recipes to your door, effectively making everyone a home chef—if only for 30 minutes. The company rode the wave of meal kit mania to a 2017 IPO, but the stock quickly tumbled, as it turned out that getting people to cook was easier than getting them to stick around. Blue Apron’s struggles with customer retention, coupled with fierce competition from cheaper grocery store alternatives and an onslaught of copycats, made its initial $2 billion valuation seem like a distant memory. Leadership changes, including Salzberg’s exit, didn’t help the brand’s waning relevance. Today, Blue Apron is more a cautionary tale than a culinary triumph, showing that while the idea of curated cooking might be appetizing, the reality of running a meal kit empire is a far messier affair.