From Subscription to Freedom: Raina Enand on Blue Apron’s New Era of Flexible Commerce

0:00I think that it absolutely changes everything. And so the first is the most important message that we're going to market right now is like making sure that people understand that what they knew about Blue Apron is different. So the most important message that we're hitting right now in the funnel is this is not what you know or thought of. We're not the same Blue Apron. We're not a subscription and we're not like a difficult meal kit. To thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape, brands must move in an ever increasing pace. I'm Matt Britton, founder and CEO of Suzy. Join me and key industry leaders as we dive deep into the shifting consumer trends within their industry, why it matters now, and how you can keep up.

0:40Welcome to the Speed of Culture.

0:47Up today on the Speed of Culture podcast, we are joined by Raina Enand, the head of marketing at Blue Apron, a wonder company. With over a decade of experience scaling innovative brands across beauty, e-commerce, and food and beverage, Leina has read marketing teams to major transformations from being Wonder's first marketing hire to now guiding Blue Apron's brand relaunch. Leina, so great to see you today. Thanks so much for joining. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Likewise. So a lot of people have heard of Blue Apron, but maybe not everyone knows exactly what the company does.

1:16For those listeners who aren't as familiar, would you mind just describing Blue Apron's business as well as Wonder and the other companies that are in that broader portfolio? Absolutely. So Blue Apron sells meal kits. A meal kit is basically a meal that comes pre-packaged with pre-portioned ingredients and a recipe card that you can follow step-by-step to make a home-cooked meal at home. But kind of the benefit of that is that everything is pre-measured, pre-organized for you, as well as you don't have to invest in these obscure sauces or ingredients that you probably want to use again for another recipe.

1:52So it kind of really minimizes the waste and encourages you to try new things that maybe you wouldn't do before. Blue Apron also sells pre-made meals that kind of go in your microwave or oven that actually don't require any cooking at all now. And I know that Blue Apron has recently become part of Wonder. So describe what Wonder does and how that changeover opportunity for Blue Apron. So Wonder is a company that has an app that allows you to order from multiple restaurants all at one time. And so you can visit a Wonder Store within a physical restaurant. And in the physical restaurant, there's about 30 restaurants that are being cooked and made in that one physical space.

2:31So if you walk in, it doesn't look that big, but it's like a dining room with a giant kitchen in the back. So it's like a ghost kitchen? Is that the best way to describe it? Is it a ghost kitchen? It's not a ghost kitchen because there is a dining hall. So think of it more like a food hall or a food court. So when you go to a food hall or a food court, each restaurant usually has its own stand. At a Wonder Restaurant, there's one stand. But you can access all the brands through that like one counter. But there is a place for you to dine in and sit and eat. Ask Comberto Ghost Kitchen, which wouldn't have those things.

2:58And the best part is that you can actually order from multiple restaurants at once for pickup or delivery. And so one of my favorite things is that my husband always wants to eat wings and I am not a big wing person. And so when we order dinner from Wonder, I can order from the Chinese restaurant and he can order from the wings restaurant. It all comes together in one order and one delivery. Perfectly piping hot. Got it. So the synergies between Blue Apron and Wonder are kind of clear. One's delivering pre-cooked meals. The other kind of combines multiple restaurants. But ultimately, it's all about delivering food and giving consumers sort of the comfort of eating at home with the convenience of having other people cook.

3:36That's right. The long-term vision for Wonder is deep out for mealtime. And so it's that one-stop destination where anything that you wanted for food would be located in that one app. In the Wonder app today, you can actually order both from Wonder restaurants, but you can also access Blue Apron through the Wonder app right now. Gotcha. Now, Blue Apron has obviously experienced huge boom since the pandemic as people couldn't go to restaurants. Has that momentum stayed? And how has, I guess, since COVID, the business model and overall growth of Blue Wonder change as kind of the world has gotten back to normal?

4:12Yeah, I think the biggest change as the world has gotten back to normal is that people have lost time. During COVID, like all that time that you spend commuting or doing other things, you had that time to be at home. And so you did see a surgence in people adopting meal kits because it was a way for them to cook through a 45 minute or a 60 minute recipe at home. And it was almost like one of those projects that you picked up. Like, I don't know if you picked up a skill during COVID. I learned how to cut hair. but I feel like a lot of my friends learned how to do sourdough or insert one of these very popular trendy things here.

4:47Since COVID has happened, people have lost time. Like now what people are looking for is, and that's really what the new Playburn is focused at, is like people are like, I am time starved. I come home from work at five o 'clock and my second shift begins. I have two very hungry children who are screaming at me and I need to get dinner on my table in 30 minutes or less that is like fast, delicious and nutritious. And so that's what a lot of the new focus of Blue Apron is all about is giving customers flexibility, but also simplifying the experience so that we can meet the need of consumers as the need has shifted from a post-COVID era.

5:23Yeah. I mean, there's also other trends like obviously urbanization and people staying in cities for longer, as well as the growth of two income households. So I would imagine all of those are drivers of demand for blue labor. Yeah, definitely. So when you look at the consumer, obviously there's lots of trends in the food and beverage space that are changing tastes and behaviors. What are some of the broader trends that you're seeing with consumers that you think are opportunities for the business moving forward? Yeah. So the broader trend that we're seeing is one is control. So a lot of customers want to be able to control exactly what goes in their meals and have a really good understanding of the different nutritional values and benefits of it.

6:06And so now 70 % of the menu of Louis brand is actually customizable and you can actually choose what proteins you go into it. You're going to see in the, I can't really talk about it yet, but you're going to see us continue to double down on this concept of customization and control and giving that to consumers in the coming months. with new product development that will come out. The second is protein. Protein is the number one most sought after attribute in the food and bag industry. It's experienced double digit growth for the past five years in Google Trends. Wow, why is that you think? It's just all health, like people just want less carbs, more protein, just changing overall preferences?

6:43Yeah, I think that it's partially driven by like the health trend, which is, I think there's a few different factors. The first is the health trend, which is protein makes you feel full longer. And so the more protein you can get in your diet relative to carbs or like empty calories, the better. And the second is, I think, with you're seeing a lot of an increased focus on, not that this is a bigger trend, but a minor trend is picking up a lot of speed on like GLP-1s and things like that. Like those also require you to have a pretty high protein diet. Yeah, I would imagine it's going to have a huge impact moving forward GLP-1s.

7:15Yeah. And so the new Dish by Blue Apron product line that we just rolled out as part of the new Blue Apron launch has an entire focus on protein. So every meal is made with a minimum of 20 grams of protein. The actual number of grams of protein is printed right on the packaging as well as the calories, really giving that nutritional control to our customers. a lot of the meals have like 30, 45, 40 grams of protein really trying to like amp up how much you can get. So, because I know that a lot of people are trying to hit their, and I feel like in the 90s, people would count calories. And now like in 2025, people are counting protein and grams of protein they're eating in a day.

7:53Interesting. And obviously in order for you to continue to build the business, you have to focus across the funnel. And I guess the top of that funnel is making sure that you're continuing to drive overall awareness and interest in Blue Apron. Let's talk about the Blue Apron brand. How do you see the brand evolving? What are some of the brand pillars? And what are some effective channels that you've leaned into to continue to build the brand? Yeah, absolutely. So the interesting thing about the new Blue Apron launch, so just to kind of take a step back, the new Blue Apron that just rolled out two weeks ago is a big transformation of the company.

8:27We walked away from subscription, which is as the first meal kit company in America, we created subscription and the concept of meal kits in this space. Everyone's going towards subscription. It's very interesting that Blue Apron is moving away from it. Yeah, I think let's like put a pin in that because I'm going to circle back to that comment. And so walking away from subscription is like a massive change. Rolling out two new product lines, Assemble and Bake and Dish by Blue Apron, which are really aimed at an easy, quick meal that you can get your dinner on your table. Brand new rebrand, new website, new app.

8:58And all of this is intended at giving customers an understanding that this is not the Blue Brand that you used to know. Blue Brand has incredible brand awareness. I think like in my experience being on the brand, it's really hard to find someone that's either neither heard of Blue Brand nor tried Blue Brand at one point in their life. Like I know a number of people who say, oh, I work on Blue Brand now. They'll be like, oh, yeah, I did that thing once or twice a few years ago, et cetera. But I think where Blueprint has lost its way is actually a step lower in the funnel, which is in the consideration part of the funnel.

9:32And that's really what the new relaunch is aimed at, is like changing the way people consider us. Changing the notion that meal kits are long and time intensive and subscriptions are difficult and lock you in and difficult to manage. And so a lot of the new branding and new campaign that's actually going to be rolling out in a few days right after Labor Day is going to be aimed at really breaking those preconceived notions that people have with the Blue Apron brand and like shattering them apart. And so Blayburn will be entering Upper Funnel for the first time in a few years, coming back with a big boom.

10:09So we'll be back in linear TV, connected TV, podcast, streaming audio. We were like one of the first brands to advertise in podcasts and podcast advertising first debuted well over a decade ago. And we haven't been in the podcast space medium for at least five years now. And so we'll be coming back in a pretty big and exciting way in the coming weeks. She mentioned the move away from subscriptions. And obviously, subscriptions are a great thing in terms of the business model because recurring predictable revenue. What went behind that decision? Because that's a major structural shift in the business model.

10:44And I would imagine it wasn't a decision that was taken lightly. Just talk to me about that process and what that means for the brand and the business and frankly, how you spend your time moving forward. Yeah, absolutely. You know, for the past year, we've been looking at consumer trends. We've been talking to customers, understanding what our data is telling us. And really, the takeaway that we got is I need more flexibility. My life is too unpredictable. Bluebird was historically a weekly subscription. There was no other option to be weekly. And the reality is, is like every week your life changes.

11:19Sometimes you have leftovers. Sometimes you go on vacation. Oh, true. Sometimes people travel, right? Yeah. Sometimes your in-laws brought you a bunch of food. And like the amount of frustration you hear from customers being like, oh, I forgot to skip my week or I forgot to do this. And I love Boyfriend, but like it was just too much for me to manage the notifications on my phone to remind myself to either skip that week or like change my settings for what meals were coming my way. And so in the new BlayBrand, we walked away from subscription to give customers that flexibility control. But really what it is is really opening up the funnel to allow customers to shop the way they want to.

11:57So you can come to BlayBrand and shop a la carte, buy whatever you want. I think we draw a lot of parallels to like almost like an Amazon. So you can go to Amazon, you can buy whatever you want. You can sign up for their membership. You can sign up for BlayBrand Plus and you can get free shipping. but we also have this product called auto ship and save there is a large customer base that enjoys the load of weekly meal planning that blueprint takes off their plate the fact that i don't have to think about what meals i'm going to make every week and blueprint does all of it for me and so we have a new product feature called auto ship and save that allows you to tell us how many meals you want at what delivery cadence you can like basically control every setting of the what have been subscription, but is now just like a product feature that you're toggling on and off and control exactly what you get.

12:48And so it's more, I think like now I'm more excited that the funnel is more open to like an increased TAM and allows me to go after more consumers and give them more options. Like Boyfriend is here to meet you as compared to forcing you to meet us and our business model. We'll be right back with the Speed of Culture after a few words from our sponsors. I would imagine though as a marketer, when you have a subscription base, the notion of driving usage is important, but you have the revenue coming in from subscriptions. Obviously, you want to prevent churn and make sure that people are getting benefit from it.

13:20But now it's a completely different ballgame because you need to continually drive trial. Somebody could use it once and their chance of using it twice, I would imagine, is far less if they're not a subscriber because they can go do other options. So does that change the way that you think about marketing and the messaging that you put out to consumers and even the channels that you lean into? Yeah, I think that it absolutely changes everything. And so the first is the most important message that we're going to market right now is like making sure that people understand that what they knew about Blue Apron is different.

13:54So the most important message that we're hitting right now in the funnel is this is not what you know or thought of. we're not the same blue apron we're not a subscription and we're not like a difficult meal kit when we think about the funnel going forward i think it's interesting that there's one way to approach this problem which is how do you bring customers in and like keep them but there's an interesting way of also approaching this problem which is the inverse in a subscription model if someone doesn't want to be a customer anymore and they churn i don't actually have a mechanism to save them other than trying to keep them in the subscription It's a black and white, you're in or you're out.

14:28That's it. As compared to now, if someone doesn't want to be in a subscription but wants to be able to come in and out of Blueprint and use it the way they want to, I have more ways of saving that customer because I have more options to give that customer to shop with us, which is a tool that I actually didn't have previously. And so I think it's actually might be a little bit easier. I'm hoping that it will be a little bit easier from a marketing perspective because instead of saying like you're in or you're out, we can say, okay, great. If this doesn't work for you, why don't you try this one or try this?

14:59There's trade-offs and you also have a bigger tam. So I think that it'll be different. And if the product is great, which a lot of people obviously love the product. And I think you're only going to open up more opportunity that way. And I agree that I think consumers want flexibility, especially with something like eating. You're right. They do travel a lot. Their lives are changing more than ever before. They're mobile, their Zoom-based work, so people can work from different locations. So to be locked into something, I've personally been locked in the meal plans before, and I've always camped with them for that exact reason.

15:27So I think it makes a lot of sense that you're looking at things. And I think to your point earlier about how everything is a subscription, I think that's also a little bit of the consumer, the global trend that's causing the burnout. For me, the other day, I bought a new scale, and to use the scale to measure my weight, I had to subscribe, which was absurd. And I got so frustrated. And so I think that there are a number of like those examples that you can come up with that even like right before COVID, that did not exist. That you would like say that, oh, now I have like all these different subscriptions just to use daily devices in my household.

16:04That's right. And it is growing. And there's subscriptions for your smart thermometer in the house and for your scale and for your doorbell and everything else. And not to mention the 20 subscriptions you need to watch TV. So it does add up for sure. So obviously in terms of continuing engaging with consumers, content is a huge piece, especially if looking at Gen Z, who this year for the first time ever in America, the average age of a first time mother is Gen Z. And Gen Z grew up staring at the mobile device. And when they're staring at the mobile device, it's not from traditional media sources, but from other people, which is where creators come in.

16:38And I would imagine in your space, that's a big topic and a big area of focus is creators getting into news feed, really driving a robust content strategy. And just curious to hear your thoughts on how the creator economy has evolved and some of the efforts you're eyeing in that space. Yeah. A big part of our relaunch, the strategy, I've kind of coined the term own the feed. Own the feed to me has different components. One component is influencers and content creators. The second component is organic social and user-generated content. And then there's a third component of paid advertising and paid social, which we traditionally know.

17:13And we made the choice to bring our influencer program in-house and manage it directly one-on-one with content creators. I knew that content creators were going to be a big part of our relaunch strategy because of your exact point. People get their content from different sources nowadays, but also food is such an intimate product. And it's such a great glimpse into someone's life and how a meal kit can make that eating time occasion really joyful and really simple. And you really can only bring that level of like authenticity and that level of like pureness of like, what does dinnertime look like in someone's home through really great partnerships and content creators.

17:55I think like you really get to see that like warmth to this, the people sitting at the table, the whoever is cooking the meal, how long it took them and what they were doing. And so actually like a really big conversation that we had was, should we bring on a celebrity to be the face of the new Blu-A brand and be part of the relaunch marketing strategy? And I actually advocated to, instead of doing that, to bring on like a hundred content creators and take that investment and put it into the content face and bring on as many people as we could to talk about the new Blu-A brand. And so that's what you're going to start to see go live in the coming weeks.

18:29But to me, the content creator space is to be successful. The most important thing is that we have the best relationship with our content creators and that they can be as authentic to their audience and their voice as possible. And so we try to keep our brand guidelines as really loose and have it more as like a relationship going back and forth, which is why we brought it in-house because if you're talking directly to the person that sits on the team, then you're like, hey, great idea. Or what about this? we can bounce ideas back and forth and so that we can get the best content that feels great for our brand, but also the creator itself.

19:01Yeah, it's interesting you bring up celebrities because obviously, as I'm sure you're aware of, Martha Stewart just got behind this big meal delivery venture. And I think there's two ways to build brands in this day and age in 2025. One way is kind of the way that Blayburn's done it, which is hard work over time, building trust, building loyalty, or there's a sort of like quick fix solution of partnering with a celebrity. I just recently had an article yesterday. There was like 17 celebrity boosted tequila brands that shut down last year. So I do think we are entering an era where people are really starting to doubt the authenticity of those types of partnerships.

19:36And just attaching a celebrity to a brand launch, even if they're a quote unquote partner, isn't as impactful as it was when we saw Jennifer Aniston behind Smartwater or Dr. Dre behind Beats. I mean, or George Clooney behind Casamigos. There was a period where it really made sense. And now I feel like even that world might be a little bit oversaturated. At the same time where traditional celebrities are losing a little bit of a mystique and power relative to these creators who have, to your point, much more authentic, deep-rooted relationships with their audience. Yeah, I literally could not agree more.

20:09And I think especially when you're thinking about a Gen Z audience, that is exactly like the level of, I think, like mystique or misnomer that brands are always like trying to pull over. And like Gen Z is very astutely aware of those things. Absolutely. So to talk about you and your career and shifting gears a little bit here, Raina, I know that you worked at Jet for three years prior to joining Wonder. And obviously, the common connection there is Mark Lohr, who is the founder of both companies, as well as Diaper.com, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce in our era and someone who I have a lot of admiration for.

20:45What's it like to work under an organization that's driven by Mark Lohr? And what about the culture that he builds was so exciting for you that you decided to spend essentially the last nearly 10 years of your career working under him in different capacities? It's a great question. So the funny part of the story starts is that Jet was my favorite job that I have ever had. It was the best company. The culture was incredible. It was a place where everyone you worked with was so smart. Any idea you had, no matter how bold it was, was encouraged to go after. and really like just a place where it like kind of had this like no big egos no bias like just everyone was in it and the culture was really built to like if you had an idea everyone was like yeah go for it go test it go and like why isn't it live now and when I heard rumblings that some jet people were getting together to start wonder I was like hi I'm coming me too I'm running I don't like you're not doing this without me this is the best job I've ever had and I'm coming with you guys.

21:50And so you're right that I have like stayed with it. I think to me, the biggest thing that I've learned in my career is that one of the most important things to me is who you work with and who you work for. And the people that Mark attracts in his orbit are exactly true to the wonder culture as it is in the Jack culture, which is like a total empowerment from top to bottom. Like I never felt like if I didn't have an idea or if I wanted to like run something that maybe felt a little brand dangerous or brand crazy, Mark was always there to say, go for it, try it, test it, let's learn from it. To him, the better thing is that we actually try to learn than if it like worked or didn't work.

22:29And I really value that aspect. The second is speed. Mark operates at the speed of light. And I think I like really thrive in that type of environment as well. There is a bias towards an extreme bias towards action and then being action oriented and quick versus like slower methodical, if that makes sense. Because again, it kind of all roots back to that, like learn as fast as you can, because if you learn it, then you can quickly optimize it and fix it and change it, et cetera. And then third, Mark is an incredible visionary. I mean, I just truly believe in what we're building here at Wonder.

23:03And I think like when you hear Mark talk about building the super app for mealtime in an app where you can get anything related to food in one place and something that doesn't exist anywhere in the market. To me, it's really inspiring. And I think Wunder is very poised to hit that goal. And it's really exciting to be part of. Yeah, for sure. It's been really inspiring to see the growth of his companies and Blue Apron obviously has a huge potential and obviously challenges in a competitive space. But obviously, you guys serve a huge market. So it will be exciting to see this new story unfold. To wrap up here, Raina, would love to hear from you, your learnings from your career.

23:40You've worked at a lot of great companies. We didn't even mention L 'Oreal, which is another place that you spent time at. When you look back at your career journey, what is some of the skill sets that you think you've been able to accumulate over time that have put you in a position that you're in today that maybe some of our younger listeners can take note from as they're beginning their journey? I was really intentional in how I crafted my career to spend enough time in different functions of marketing to learn them enough to be dangerous, but not get pigeonholed. And I think that was something that I like really quickly figured out.

24:11I spent time in brand marketing and paid social and paid search and in offline media, but I didn't want to be the director of paid social. And that was something when I figured that out, what I wanted to know was how can I piece all these pieces together and really use my experience in different roles and functions in industries to understand actually like the consumer journey doesn't stop when you acquire them. There's also all the CRM part of it. There's the LTV part of it. And I think one of my superpowers that I gained from my work experience is being able to see how different dots connect against different teams or different marketing functions that sometimes can exist in silos or people don't realize that if you pull on this thread, it actually impacts this thread itself.

24:55And so what I would encourage everyone on my team is that even if you are our CRM manager and you're really interested in learning paid social, are you really interested in understanding how paid media works? I love to include those people in our meetings. I love for them to meet with the paid social manager, to understand how the campaigns work. If you want to move to a different part of the team or to pick up a different project, that's something I'm like always encouraging for people on my team, because I think that the more you can understand how different parts of marketing actually interact and impact each other, the more successful you'll be later on in your career.

25:31Absolutely. As well, things are changing so quickly. I think understanding the confluence of different factors and a lot of which we talked about today, whether it be industry trends, evolutions in business models, like where you're going from moving away from subscription models, and of course, to the consumer and all the drivers of the consumer, which we talked about today, including the pandemic and GOP ones and the rise of Gen Z as a household buyer. I mean, it's an exciting time, but you definitely have to be on top of your game and have your finger on the pulse of the consumer always, or you're going to get lost in this crazy world we're in.

26:01Yeah, absolutely. Marketing is always part science, part math. It sure is. Absolutely. So to wrap up here, we always ask our guests if there's a saying or mantra that helps encapsulate their career during the day. So what comes to mind for you? The number one thing that my team will say that I constantly say to everyone on my team, which I think is like my own personal mantra is like, if you see something, say something. And that applies to if you see an idea or you see a campaign that you find interesting, Let's talk about it all the way to if you see something in the data that doesn't make sense, say something about it.

26:34But I think that the best thing I can do is like my mantra is just speak up and like ask questions as much as you can. Because assuming that someone has already thought of that is like always the wrong assumption. And so you'll see that like it's just something I like probably say like 15 times a week, which is like see something, say something. I also think it's a great message for younger women in the workforce, especially in advertising. I think it's important that they speak up, but they don't feel like they have to cower down. It doesn't matter who's in a room. If it's a bunch of old executives that are in the room, it doesn't matter if you have conviction in what you believe and speak up and speak your truth because that's how you're going to break through.

27:11Couldn't agree more. Absolutely. Well, it's clear you've done that, Raina, and it's been a great discussion today. And congrats on all your success and looking forward to great things for this new journey with your business, Blue Apron. Thank you so much. It's been a great pleasure talking to you. Absolutely. On behalf of Susie and I would team, And thanks again to Reina Anand, head of marketing at Blue Apron for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the Speed of Culture podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, see you soon, everyone. Take care.

27:39The Speed of Culture is brought to you by Suzy as part of the Adweek Podcast Network and A-Guest Creator Network. You can listen and subscribe to all Adweek's podcasts by visiting adweek.com slash podcasts. To find out more about Suzy, head to suzy.com. and make sure to search for The Speed of Culture in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else podcasts are found. Click follow so you don't miss out on any future episodes. On behalf of the team here at Susie, thanks for listening.