As inflation continues and the impending recession weighs heavily on consumers’ minds, many customers are making changes to their food purchases. While the overall situation of the economy may have an impact on customer decisions, meal kit manufacturer Blue Apron is seeing that the price increases they have implemented have not really had any visible repercussions.
Blue Apron President and CEO Linda Findley said that the meal kit supplier has recognized certain factors force customers to reconsider their purchases while others have a surprisingly minimal influence when reviewing the company’s financial performance for the second quarter of 2022 with analysts.
Blue Apron has shown that pricing measures have not negatively impacted sales by studying the behavior of consumers who “choose not to purchase” from the company using “focus groups, polls, and incredibly deep data analysis.”
Findley added that by being able to differentiate between price fluctuations and macroeconomic factors, “we think about our communications, marketing campaigns, and the pricing quite effectively.” Furthermore, we are aware that not all of what we are experiencing is directly related to the change in price but rather has a macroeconomic origin.
According to Randy Greben, the company’s chief financial officer, the meal kit provider found that price increases implemented about a year ago, before inflation had the same effect on consumers’ minds as it does now, had “almost no incremental churn or change to order frequency.” This was discovered through the “test and learn philosophy” of the business. This year, the company has not seen the “small levels of churn that we would have expected.”
Consumer behavior “was only temporarily influenced” by the price increases made across areas, according to Berlin-based Marley Spoon, which provides meal packages in eight countries across three continents, on a teleconference with investors in late July.
