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Re:Blue Apron falls 9% on fourth day as a public company by ChuckMcM on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @08:47PM (#14707378)
One of the differences is that Supermarkets don't have the freedom of operation that Blue Apron does. Years of tight margins and increasingly complex stocking and merchandising restrictions in exchange for incentives has created something of a quagmire there. You're locally owned small market, sure. But don't look at Safeway or Krogers to be able to jump onto this trend either quickly or cost effectively.

Those constraints would seem to be the only reason another startup, curbside, continues to exist :-)

Re:Blue Apron falls 9% on fourth day as a public company by jonwachob91 on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @08:56PM (#14707410)
Publix, a regional chain that OWNS the South East and was recently ranked by Consumer Reports as the most loved grocery store in the US, is already doing this. They don't advertise it very well, but they started offering it a few weeks ago.

EDIT: including some extra deets about their size (since that was your primary argument against it happening) -> $34B in Revenue (2016), Operating Income $2.94B (2016), Assets of $17.46B, and 200,000+ employees.

Re:Blue Apron falls 9% on fourth day as a public company by ChuckMcM on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @09:32PM (#14707555)
... and privately owned. Which helps a lot in this case. That said, if they are successful at duplicating the Blue Apron model effectively then I expect that would be sufficient "proof" for the shareholder driven grocery chains.
Re:Blue Apron falls 9% on fourth day as a public company by paulddraper on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @10:20PM (#14707728)
Hm. Publix has their stuff together then. They will make for tough competition.

Quite solid in price/friendliness/quality.

Re:Blue Apron falls 9% on fourth day as a public company by CincinnatiMan on Thursday July 06, 2017 @10:12AM (#14710546)
Kroger is currently running trials of meal kits in select Cincinnati-area stores (their home turf). They cost $14 for the same amount of food as a $20 Blue Apron 2-serving recipe, and most of the ingredients are pre-chopped. The recipes are less "exotic" than BA though. More details can be found here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpearson/2017/05/17/krogers...