Think of it this way: If Blue Apron’s COGS in 2016 were 50 percent of revenue instead of 67 percent, the company wouldn’t have lost $55 million it would have made an $80 million profit, even after its high marketing costs and the money it invested in building infrastructure.īut getting to 50 percent (or whatever the final target is) isn’t easy for a company like Blue Apron. But those percentages are probably still too high. Blue Apron’s COGS has been moving in the right direction: 93 percent in 2014, 77 percent, 67 percent.

The worrisome figure in Blue Apron’s June 1 filing is the cost of goods sold (COGS), which includes the labor and materials to create the meal kits, but not marketing and administrative expenses. The question is whether Blue Apron’s model will turn profitable-and when.

And though the dollar losses have been increasing, they represent a smaller and smaller percentage of revenue: 40 percent in 2014, 15 percent in 2015, and 7 percent in 2016. That’s not necessarily a bad thing it costs money to build a business, and Blue Apron has done a great job of finding customers and building out its infrastructure-the company says it can now serve 98 percent of the United States population. The rest of the time the company has lost money: $31 million in 2014, $47 million in 2015, $55 million in 2016, and a daunting $52 million just in Q1 of 2017. Pretty fabulous, right? Here’s the bad news: Blue Apron has had just one profitable quarter in its history-Q1 of 2016, when it made about $3 million. That’s up 40 percent from first quarter last year, and though Blue Apron says that Q1 tends to be its strongest quarter for revenue, there seems every chance that revenue this year will top a billion dollars. For the first quarter of 2017, sales were $244,843,000, and the company delivered 4.3 million orders (each typically consisting of multiple meals) to more than a million customers. Over the next two years, sales grew by 338 percent and 133 percent respectively, bringing total revenue to $795.4 million. First thing to notice: Blue Apron has been growing like a house afire.

Student discount blue apron