Blue Apron CEO banks on coronavirus cooking habits remaining post-quarantine
Blue Apron customers have 'found quite a bit of solace in the ability to cook together'
As more people cook from home because of the coronavirus lockdown, meal kit delivery service Blue Apron anticipates strong sales growth in the three months through June
“We’ve already seen changes in the way people are cooking at home and changes in the behavior that indicate they will continue cooking at home [when the lockdown ends],” Blue Apron CEO Linda Findley Kozlowski told Fox Business on Thursday.
“Feedback from customers has indicated that they’ve actually found quite a bit of solace in the ability to cook together and they’ve raised their confidence level in being able to cook at home and do it much faster and easier than they have before," she explained.
CORONAVIRUS SHUTDOWN WILL INSPIRE MORE AMERICANS TO COOK FROM HOME
Findley Kozlowski's optimistic outlook for the company comes a day after Blue Apron reported a first-quarter loss that widened nearly four-fold from the year before to $20.1 million. Shares of the company slid as much as 28 percent on Wednesday, despite the beginning of an uptick in consumer orders from Americans stuck at home.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| APRN | NO DATA AVAILABLE | - | - | - |
“A lot of the shelter-in-place orders came at the end of Q1, which is why it's bolstering our revenue and our cash for Q2," Findley Kozlowski said.
As restaurants across the country limit services to takeout and delivery, separate research shows that more than half of Americans, 54 percent, say they’re cooking more, and 46 percent say they’ve baked more than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a survey from Hunter, a food and beverage communications firm.
BLUE APRON SHARES SINK AS QUARTERLY LOSS WIDENS TO $20.1 MILLION
As a result, Blue Apron says it has already started hiring more workers.
“We have a big need in our fulfillment centers to be able to employ people, to help pack some of those boxes and get more food out to more people. We have everything in place that we need for the uptick in volume," Findley Kozlowski said.