DoorDash and Blue Apron cook up meal kit expansion

DoorDash’s work with Blue Apron is similar to the efforts close competitor Instacart has made in recent years to add direct-to-consumer (DTC) and meal kit companies like Quicklly, Sunbasket and ButcherBox to its marketplace.

Like those partnerships, the DoorDash tie up offers for Blue Apron a sales opportunity beyond its traditional online subscription, and comes at a time when demand for meal delivery remains high.

“These types of strategic partnerships are an important market opportunity for us to expand our reach and provide customers with access to our products without a subscription,” Adler said in the announcement. “We’re committed to providing them with even more convenient ways to bring Blue Apron into their kitchens each week.”

Along with New York, Blue Apron’s Heat & Eat meals are also available via DashMarts to delivery consumers in New Jersey, Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The single-serve Heat & Eat options include cheesy truffle cavatappi, Spanish-style beef and rice, and soy-miso chicken and udon noodles. All dishes can be heated and ready to serve in under five minutes.

This isn’t the first time DoorDash has teamed up with a company to offer meal kits. The company partnered with Dream Dinners in 2021 to make its family meal kits available on-demand. That summer, DoorDash made summer grilling kits from Beyond Meat available for a limited time.

DoorDash has been ramping up its DashMarts since it launched the service in 2020. The online market sells a wide variety of products from fresh meats, produce, and baked goods to household essentials, personal care items and medicine, DoorDash noted.

After making its fortune in restaurant delivery, DoorDash is now pushing aggressively into grocery delivery, and has teamed up with scores of food retailers over the past few years. Prabir Adarkar, DoorDash’s chief operating officer, told investors during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call in February that its third-party U.S. grocery business grew just shy of 100% year-on-year in Q3 and Q4.

The expansion comes amid a challenging period for Blue Apron, which received a delisting warning from the New York Stock Exchange (the company says it has a plan to avoid this scenario) and corporate layoffs amid a cash crunch. Blue Apron also lost its former CFO Randy Greben in October and has Mitchell Cohen, an outside hire, serving as interim CFO until a replacement is found.

Last year, Blue Apron started making its meal kits available through Amazon and Walmart.com.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the day DoorDash and Blue Apron announced the expansion news. The companies made the announcement on Wednesday.