Amazon to cook up meal kit service, adding to Blue Apron woes
- Tuesday, July 18th, 2017
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Amazon’s $13.7bn (£10.7bn at the time) acquisition of healthy supermarket chain Whole Foods Market wasn’t its final delve into the world groceries. The eCommerce giant has decided that it wants to get into the meal kits.
The decision will move Amazon into direct competition with meal kit service Blue Apron, which already suffered heavily due to Amazon’s Whole Foods purchase, and other food services – including those it already sells meal kits from – around the US.
On July 6, as first reported by The Street, a trademark application revealed that Amazon was planning to enter the territory with the tagline “We do the prep. You be the chef”. 
Blue Apron went public in the wake of Amazon’s Whole Foods acquisition announcement, and was hit hard as a result. The company’s stock currently sits 35 per cent below its IPO price of $10 a share, and is doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better for the meal kit provider any time soon.
