Blue apron made it's big debut in a small warehouse district of Long Island city, queens. The company instantly appealed to a variety of consumers who found grocery shopping to be extremely burdensome. Each day, customers would receive perfectly portioned meal kits with a new recipe, fresh raw materials and cooking instructions. It's that hassle-free and that easy. Yet, when we take a closer look into the company's operations and supply chain, we begin to see that delivering 8 million meal kits a month is far from easy. Customers expect their kits to arrive fully equipped and on time-otherwise they go without a meal. For this reason, Blue Apron has managed to build a sophisticated software that allows them to achieve high capacity without sacrificing quality.
In the midst of a growing consumer base, Blue Apron has developed a very efficient routine. Work goes around the clock in 3 shifts making sure that 500 employees are working during each period. In order to average a consistent cycle and task time, whiteboard softwares and iPads tell employees how many portions they must complete per minute to remain on schedule. Similarly, to minimize queue time and…show more content… Managers are required to spend time communicating the daily goal to workers in order to minimize future costs. Every morning, a group of workers spend time inspecting the new shipments of ingredients for quality before they are even distributed into boxes. Having a trustworthy and consistent supplier is essential to Blue Apron's success. Also, the specialization of jobs and constant attention to detail helps to minimize appraisal costs. However, regardless of how perfect the meal kits, it is difficult to predict how customers will react. For this reason, Blue Apron focuses a lot of its attention on smart marketing and one month free offers to keep customers coming back for
