Blue Apron Pioneered Meal-Kit Subscriptions. Here’s Why It’s Scrapping Them

Earlier this year, The Hollywood Reporter asked Charlie Brooker, creator of Netflix’s anthology series Black Mirror, how he can take almost any topic to a dark and dystopian place. Brooker admitted to having “a lot of neuroses and worrying about horrible but logical consequences. I can’t look at anything without thinking, ‘How could that hurt me?’” he said.

Thus far, the long-running series hasn’t taken on the topic of home meal kits—but maybe it should. Next week, Blue Apron will begin airing three spots that head of marketing Raina Enand is first to say are distinctively Black Mirror-like.

“Hopefully when you watch it,” she said, “it should look like something that you would not expect from Blue Apron.”

And you probably wouldn’t. That’s because the characters in these spots are trapped in a nightmare realm controlled by nefarious subscription plans—which have been Blue Apron’s revenue model since its 2012 founding.

But now that model is gone, replaced by à la carte ordering.

The three ads—the final piece of a comprehensive brand overhaul—follow a similar story line. They open with people trapped in a gray, Orwellian world where it’s impossible to do anything from unfasten a seatbelt to get a beverage from a vending machine without committing to prepayment.

“We turned subscription fatigue into a dystopian fever dream,” said Angela Campos, creative and commercial director of Quirk, the agency behind the work. “Trust me, it’s a lot more fun to watch than to live through.”

These slate gray visions give way to a happier, freer world where purchase flexibility and consumer autonomy have returned. “Somewhere along the way, you had to subscribe to everything—even dinner,” intones a narrator in one spot. “With the new Blue Apron, you don’t.”

The video segments alone are an ambitious effort: three 30-second ads with six 15-second cuts; a 15-second homepage app video; a 16-minute video; 10 videos for social media; and seven audio versions.

But one question looms behind all of it: why is Blue Apron scuttling its revenue model in the first place?

From meal kits to á la carte

Because times change. England said that the fast-paced life that made meal subscriptions look like a good solution a decade ago has now grown so hectic that subscriptions feel confining and out of date. 

“Life is really different now,” she said. “Busy families need more control and flexibility.” Committing to a weekly meal plan, she added, is “just not how people eat food.”

To increase flexibility, Blue Apron has doubled its menu offerings to 100 and added two new kinds of kits. Assemble & Bake is aimed at families and can be prepared in 10 minutes, while Dish is a single-serve meal that comes ready to put into the oven. Those who still prefer the subscription option will enjoy rewards such as Blue Apron+, which offers perks like free delivery and Auto Ship and Save, which lets customers dial their delivery frequency anywhere from weekly to just one week a month.

The other reason Blue Apron is changing its business model is more systemic: the company has needed a major overhaul for years.

Wonder Group bought Blue Apron in 2023 for $103 million, a shadow of the $1.9 billion valuation Wall Street gave it after its 2017 IPO. But operational complexities, high marketing costs, and increased competition caused the brand to slip from those heights almost immediately. By the end of 2017, Blue Apron’s net losses tallied to $210 million, while its customer count shrank by 15%.

In fact, high customer attrition rates assail the whole meal-kit industry, a love-’em-and-leave-’em world in which customers pivot among introductory offers instead of staying loyal to one service. Research conducted by the Wall Street Journal in 2023 showed that a staggering 90% of customers for the five leading meal-kit brands abandoned their memberships within a year of signing up.

A hill to climb

As part of the brand relaunch, Blue Apron has also reworked its website, toning down the blues in favor of ochre and flax “to make the food the star of the show,” Enand said. Food photography has also changed to “look like a plate on a countertop in your home—it should feel identifiable with your life.”

Yet even if all the new tweaks resonate with customers, category leader Hello Fresh still commands some 75% of the market—leaving open the question of whether these efforts, calculated as they are, will deliver the needed results.

Digital transformation authority Craig Miller, author of Bricks and Clicks: How We Drove Sonic into the Digital Age, believes the revenue model shift will help Blue Apron reclaim some market share, “but would most likely be a short-term win and difficult to sustain.”

“The tradeoffs and drawbacks for a no-commitment model may more than offset the benefits,” Miller continued. “An increase in operational complexity in their supply chain will continue to put a strain on their customer service levels and overall profitability.”

But Enand remains confident that the hard work will pay off. 

“We’ve been working on this for the past year, listening to customer feedback on what the market is moving towards, and we really thought about this as all encompassing from every aspect of the business,” she said. “Calling it a rebrand is actually doing it a disservice. It’s really a relaunch of the company.”