Blue Apron continues to incur losses while making moves toward long-term profitability.
Blue Apron announced Thursday (Feb. 10) a 7% year-over-year revenue decrease in the fourth quarter of 2021 and a $26.4 million net loss, nearly three times its $10 million Q4 2020 losses. Amid these losses, the company is working toward fulfillment center improvements to operate more efficiently and cost-effectively.
In an interview with PYMNTS, Blue Apron CEO Linda Findley discussed how the company’s fulfillment centers and its in-house kitchen operations set the company up for greater profitability in the long run.
“We have a huge amount of automation,” she said. “We have world class equipment in the facilities… We actually have the ability without a significant amount of capital infrastructure to lean into scale and growth and complexity for the next couple of years. The fact that we have this ability to do the individual portions ourselves creates margin advantage… The cost winds up being overall lower at scale.”
While some competitors purchase ingredients pre-packed, Blue Apron does so itself in facilities equipped with automated technologies, which both boosts profit margins and gives the company greater control over its foods, she said.
The company announced Monday (Feb. 14) a $5 million private placement investment, after which the company’s stock price fell roughly 9%.
In the Long Run
One of the ways that the company intends to make the economics of the model…
