Blue Apron and Chewy both went public on the promise of customers who come back automatically. Their filings tell two very different stories, and the difference comes down to what the subscription asked of the customer.

Blue Apron: refilling a leaking bucket

Blue Apron sold weekly boxes of ingredients and recipes. It went public in June 2017. The expected price range was cut from $15–$17 a share to $10–$11 Reported, and the offering priced at $10 Filed. The quarter before, it reported numbers that most DTC brands would envy:

FiledBlue Apron Holdings, first quarter 2018 report and results, with 2017 comparisons; IPO prospectus, June 2017.

The number that mattered was the last one. A quarter of revenue went to marketing, much of it to replace customers who didn’t stay. Independent card-panel data from Second Measure in 2016 found that 28% of Blue Apron’s customers were still subscribed six months after their first purchase Reported. The pattern outlasted the IPO. Of Blue Apron’s customers who started in January 2022, 15% were still buying 11 months later, and that was the best of the meal kits Second Measure tracked: Home Chef kept 11%, HelloFresh 9%, Marley Spoon and Sunbasket 5% Reported. Second Measure changed its dataset in 2022, so the two years aren’t directly comparable.

Customer counts tell the rest. Blue Apron reported 786,000 customers in the first quarter of 2018, 336,000 in the fourth quarter of 2021 and 298,000 in the fourth quarter of 2022 Filed, about 71% below the quarter before the IPO Derived. In November 2023 the company was acquired by Wonder for $13 a share, about $103 million Filed. That price came after a reverse stock split Reported, so it can’t be compared directly with the $10 offering price.

Plenty of customers liked the food. The problem was the ask. A meal kit subscription asks the customer to plan meals around a box, find an evening to cook, and decide every week whether to skip. It adds a chore. The novelty that sold the first box wore off, and each week gave the customer another chance to notice.

Chewy: taking a chore away

Chewy sells pet food and supplies, and its subscription, Autoship, is the opposite kind of ask. Here’s what its most recent annual results report Filed:

FiledChewy, Inc., fourth quarter and fiscal 2025 results, March 2026. “Autoship customer sales” includes everything Autoship customers buy, not only their Autoship orders.

Look at the terms, as Chewy’s site states them in September 2026: 35% off the first Autoship order, up to $20, then an extra 5% on select brands. Change, skip or reschedule anytime, and change the date up to 48 hours before shipping Reported. The ongoing discount is small. The control is nearly total. And the product is a 30-pound bag that a dog empties on a schedule, which nobody wants to carry home or remember to reorder.

Blue Apron’s subscription asked customers to keep doing something. Chewy’s asked them to stop.

How to read the pair

It isn’t a clean comparison. Chewy is a retailer with a huge catalog and pharmacy and vet services, and its Autoship figure counts everything Autoship customers buy. Blue Apron had problems beyond the design of its subscription. But the lesson survives the caveats. When a subscription removes a task, customers stay because the subscription saves them work. When it adds one, every delivery is a fresh decision, and the program spends its life paying to replace the people it loses.

Do this

• Write two sentences. The chore your subscription takes away, and the chore it adds: deciding whether to skip, storing extra product, remembering to pause before a trip. If the second sentence is longer, fix that before spending another dollar acquiring subscribers.