Blue Apron’ s home-cooking protects it from Amazon

Bloomberg

Blue Apron Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Officer Matt Salzberg said the company is keeping its focus on home cooking and related products, a narrow purview that will help shelter it from competitive threats like Amazon.com Inc.
The meal-kit company, which at one point suggested it could become an alternative to or even eventually replace grocery stores, is now concentrating on providing all the tools for cooking at home, from ingredients to cookware to recipe books. It’s a strategy that aims to stay out of the way as e-commerce giant Amazon threatens to swallow up the grocery and fresh food-delivery market. There are “a lot of other opportunities to do additional add-ons around different cooking occasions,” Salzberg added.
“Fundamentally, Amazon wants to solve a lot of things to a lot of people,” Salzberg said at Bloomberg’s Sooner Than You Think conference at Cornell Tech in New York.
While most of its products are sold directly to consumers through the Blue Apron website and mobile app, the New York-based company is considering other avenues for sales growth. In fact, it currently sells its branded cookbooks on Amazon, Salzberg said.
“We see our brand potentially existing in other places as well,” including Amazon and retailers, he said. “We look at partnerships all the time.”
Blue Apron has endured mounting setbacks this year, starting with a disappointing June initial public offering that was hurt by Amazon’s bid to buy natural grocery chain Whole Foods Market Inc.