BLUE APRON AND SPECIALTY FOODS Team 8 – Logan Besuden, Monica Madrid, and Kirk Zafirovski

Research Objective and Methodology Identify the market size for meals that met various dietary restrictions Is the market large enough to justify the investment and added complexity? Methodology We started with individual interviews, both people with and without dietary restrictions Based on feedback from the interviews we designed a survey We examined online reviews for Blue Apron We analyzed Plated and Hello Fresh business models and financial data

Results – Interviews We conducted eight (8) one-on-one interviews. Six of the eight, had dietary restrictions of some sort (vegetarian, gluten free, dairy free, pescatarian, and food allergies) Two interviewees had used Blue Apron in the past, both stopped because of dietary issues. The other four with dietary restrictions all expressed an interest in a delivery service that catered to their dietary needs The two others without dietary restrictions were non-committal about a food delivery service

Results – Surveys The data from our survey was inconclusive for whether Blue Apron should or should not consider specialty meals – although limited data suggest a range of $10-15 per meal for specialty meals The survey data show that consumers believe subscription meal services are too expensive (48%), prefer to pick their own groceries (52%) or are not aware of the category (14%) We did not have enough survey takers with dietary restrictions, with only 5% of respondents identifying a dietary restriction, despite available data suggesting more than half of US households have restrictions

Recommendations Given the results from our interviews and survey data, we recommend Blue Apron focuses on customer education There is an opportunity for Blue Apron to educate consumers on how much they are spending on groceries and that Blue Apron is a cost- competitive alternative There seems to be two types of awareness – the category exists, and how the category actually works. We found a lot of people do not understand that the meals have to be cooked The eventual market for custom dietary meals could be a good brand extension in the future, but is likely too costly at this point