Blue Apron Pivots From Subscriptions to Pay-as-You-Go Meals

After more than a decade of subscription meal services, Blue Apron’s tastes are changing.

The company announced last week that it would transition from a weekly subscription model to a new pay-as-you-go system for meal kits, with new offerings that include one-pan meals and microwavable dishes.

“People don’t like to eat the same every single night of the week,” Whitney Pegden, senior vice president and general manager of Blue Apron, told Bloomberg News in an interview.

“While a lot of people like the idea of that level of regularity in their life, it’s not realistic. I think that today’s customer, especially if you think about the young, busy family, they really need flexibility in any solution that’s going to help them actually get through their week.”

That report notes that this new system marks a major change for Blue Apron following its acquisition by Wonder in 2023. That company, which also owns Grubhub, began incorporating Blue Apron’s meal kits into its food-hall delivery application in February and has been enjoying increased popularity, with prepared and microwaveable meals accounting for roughly half of all meals sold through the app.

The news follows a report from last week that HelloFresh was investing $70 million on a significant expansion of its meal-kit service. The goal is to more than double the number of meals offered by the company, and enhance its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to make deciding on recipes easier.

The company aims to bolster brand loyalty and attract customers as inflation drives up the price of food, Assaf Ronen, HelloFresh group president, told Bloomberg.

While “$70 million is a very large check,” he said, “the more we invest in customers, the more they stay with us.”

In related news, recent research by PYMNTS Intelligence shows that as consumers switch from remote work to hybrid/office-based jobs, they’re finding out how much the evening commute impacts their dinner prep time.

Of the workers surveyed for the report “Back-to-Office Mandates Drive Demand for Fast Food, Weekend Shopping and Subscriptions,” 75% who had food subscriptions from services like HelloFresh and Blue Apron had joined those platforms within the last six months. By contrast, just 51% of remote workers with food subscriptions had signed up inside the same period.

“The rise in food delivery subscriptions calls for subscription management platforms that can handle recurring payments, offer easy cancellation or modification options, and provide clear billing information to consumers,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this year.