Blue Apron went public at $10 a share and was sold six years later for $103M

Blue Apron was the American meal-kit pioneer that defined the category: pre-portioned ingredients and recipes delivered to your door. The company went public on 29 June 2017, pricing 30 million shares at $10 each on the NYSE under the ticker APRN. It was one of the most anticipated tech IPOs of the year.

The stock was halved by October 2017. By March 2018, Blue Apron had lost 81.4% of its market value since the IPO. In August 2018, the company reported that paying customers had fallen 24% in a single quarter and total orders were down 23%. The meal-kit model — high customer-acquisition cost, low repeat purchase, heavy packaging waste — was proving structurally unprofitable.

Three CEOs in six years could not fix the arithmetic. The company laid off 6% of staff in October 2017, closed fulfilment centres, and tried to pivot toward retail partnerships. Revenue in 2022 was $458 million, a fraction of what the IPO valuation had implied. By 2023, the company had 165 employees.

In November 2023, Wonder Group — Marc Lore's food-services conglomerate — acquired Blue Apron for $103 million. The company that had gone public at a valuation implying billions in future value was sold for roughly the price of a single Manhattan apartment building. The APRN ticker was delisted.