Year: 2019

Blue Apron is introducing a lower-cost version of its meal kits, initially only for Jet.com shoppers in the greater New York City metro area. The new kits, called “Knick Knacks,” still require refrigeration, but require customers to supply their own protein and produce to complete the meal. But by dropping the two most expensive ingredients from the meal, the company has brought the price down to $7.99, compared with prices that ranged from $17 to $23 for the meal kits that launched on Jet last fall.

As you may recall, Walmart subsidiary Jet announced in October that it would begin selling Blue Apron’s meal kits to its City Grocery customers. Jet had relaunched its site the month prior with a new focus on serving the needs of urban shoppers, which included same-day delivery of groceries. The revamped site is now localized to where shoppers live, with images and messaging specific to the customer’s own city.

The localization efforts would begin in New York, Jet said at the time, before rolling out to other major U.S. metros like Boston, Philadelphia, and D.C.

Jet then became the first online retailer to sell Blue Apron’s meal kits – giving the meal kit company a needed boost at a time when its subscriber base had been in decline.

Though Blue Apron’s name had become synonymous with meal kits, they were beset with challenges on all sides – including then fast-growing competitors like HelloFresh, an inability to reduce unit costs, customer base declines, and the challenges in converting newcomers to subscribers in the face of competition from ready-to-eat meals, delivered on demand and available at most markets today for pickup.

With Knick Knacks, Blue Apron is tackling some of the issues with its meal kits – namely, the high cost and the need to subscribe to receive them.

The company announced Knick Knacks last week on its earnings call, where it reported still very concerning numbers.

Earnings were down -62% year-over-year at $-0.18 and quarterly revenues dropped by -28% to reach $150.62 million, versus $210.64 million in the same period a year ago.

At this point, the future of Blue Apron is very much tied to how well its strategic partnerships, like this with Jet and the other with WW (formerly, Weight Watchers), eventually play out.

The new kits themselves will include a combination of pre-portioned spices, sauces, grains, and dairy ingredients from Blue Apron’s premium suppliers, such as crème fraîche from Vermont Creamery, furikake from Mara Seaweed, and preserved lemon puree from NY Shuk, as well as Blue Apron’s own proprietary products, such as its line of custom spice blends, the company says.

The debut collection includes the following:

• Za’atar-Spiced Chicken
• Mexican-Spiced Chicken Quinoa Bowl
• Japanese-Style Steak & Rice Bowl
• Creamy Shrimp Gnocchi

The kits are available in New York’s metro only for the time being for both same-day and next-day delivery. The company declined to say when they’d hit other markets, or if Blue Apron would sell the kits elsewhere, like in Jet parent Walmart’s stores.

Blue Apron’s new launch comes at a tough time for the food delivery industry as a whole. Earlier this year, meal delivery business Munchery failed after having raised $125 million, Doughbies, Sprig, Maple, Juicero, Josephine also folded.

On the heels of a recently-filed class action lawsuit over wages and tips, as well as drivers and shoppers speaking out about Instacart’s alleged practices of subsidizing wages with tips, Instacart is taking steps to ensure tips are counted separately from what Instacart pays shoppers.

In a blog post today, Instacart CEO Apoorva Mehta said all shoppers will now have a guaranteed higher base compensation, paid by Instacart. Depending on the region, Instacart says it will pay shoppers between $7 to $10 for full-service orders (shopping, picking and delivering) and $5 for delivery-only tasks. The company will also stop including tips in its base pay for shoppers.

“After launching our new earnings structure this past October, we noticed that there were small batches where shoppers weren’t earning enough for their time,” Mehta wrote. “To help with this, we instituted a $10 floor on earnings, inclusive of tips, for all batches. This meant that when Instacart’s payment and the customer tip at checkout was below $10, Instacart supplemented the difference. While our intention was to increase the guaranteed payment for small orders, we understand that the inclusion of tips as a part of this guarantee was misguided. We apologize for taking this approach.”

For the shoppers who were subject that approach, Instacart says it will retroactively pay people whose tips were included in payment minimums.

You can read the full blog post at the bottom of this post. For background, Instacart had previously guaranteed its workers at least $10 per job, but workers said Instacart offsets wages with tips from customers.

The suit alleges Instacart “intentionally and maliciously misappropriated gratuities in order to pay plaintiff’s wages even though Instacart maintained that 100 percent of customer tips went directly to shoppers. Based on this representation, Instacart knew customers would believe their tips were being given to shoppers in addition to wages, not to supplement wages entirely.”

In addition to the lawsuit, workers have taken to Reddit and other online forums to speak out against Instacart’s paying practices. Since introducing a new payments structure in October, which includes things like payments per mile, quality bonuses and customer tips, workers have said the pay has gotten worse — far below minimum wage. In one case, Instacart paid a worker just 80 cents for over an hour of work. Instacart has since said it was a glitch — caused by the fact that the customer tipped $10 — and has introduced a new minimum payment for orders. So, Instacart paid the worker $10.80, but just 80 cents of it came from Instacart.

While Instacart has said this was an edge case, Working Washington says this has happened in other cases. In another case, Instacart paid a worker just $7.26 (including cost of mileage) for over two hour’s worth of work.

“We heard loud and clear the frustration when your compensation didn’t match the effort you put forth,” Mehta wrote in the blog post. “As we looked at some of the extreme examples that have been surfaced by you over the last few days, it’s become clear to us that we can and should do better. Instacart shouldn’t be paying a shopper $0.80 for a batch. It doesn’t matter that this only happens 1 out of 100,000 times – it happened to one shopper and that’s one time too many.”

Here’s the full text of Mehta’s post:

To Our Shopper Community:

Every day, millions of people entrust Instacart to help get the food they need to feed their families and get back valuable time to spend with their loved ones. By delivering to and for our customers, you’ve become household heroes for millions of families across North America. This past week however, it’s become clear, that we’ve fallen short in delivering on our promise to you.

As you know, we’ve made changes to our shopper earnings model over the last year. These changes were designed to increase transparency while also keeping pace with a rapidly-evolving industry. In doing so, we’ve tried, in good faith, to balance those needs, but clearly we haven’t always gotten it right.

As a company, we remain committed to listening and putting our shoppers more at the forefront of our decision making. Based on your feedback, today we’re launching new measures to more fairly and competitively compensate all our shoppers. As part of this, our earnings approach moving forward will adhere to the following:

• Tips should always be separate from Instacart’s contribution to shopper compensation

• All batches will have a higher guaranteed compensation floor for shoppers, paid for by Instacart

• Instacart will retroactively compensate shoppers when tips were included in minimums

Below are details on each new element of shopper earnings, which we will be rolling out in the coming days.

Tips Should Always Be Separate From Instacart’s Contribution to Shopper Compensation – After launching our new earnings structure this past October, we noticed that there were small batches where shoppers weren’t earning enough for their time. To help with this, we instituted a $10 floor on earnings, inclusive of tips, for all batches. This meant that when Instacart’s payment and the customer tip at checkout was below $10, Instacart supplemented the difference. While our intention was to increase the guaranteed payment for small orders, we understand that the inclusion of tips as a part of this guarantee was misguided. We apologize for taking this approach.

All Batches Will Have a Higher Guaranteed Floor for Shoppers, Paid by Instacart – We’re instituting a higher minimum floor payment from Instacart on all batches. Today our minimum batch payment is $3. Depending on the region, our minimum batch payment will increase to between $7 and $10 for full service batches (where a shopper picks, packs and delivers the order) and $5 for delivery only batches (where a shopper delivers the order after a separate person picks the groceries). These increased batch floors will be consistent for all shoppers within a particular geographic area. In addition to the higher guaranteed floors, Instacart will also pay a quality bonus and peak boosts for orders that qualify. Any tips earned by shoppers will be separate and in addition to Instacart’s contribution.

Instacart Will Retroactively Compensate Shoppers When Tips Were Included in Minimums – Over the coming days, as we transition to the new higher minimum floor payments, we will make you whole on the transactions that have occurred since the launch of this feature. Specifically, we will proactively reach out to all shoppers who were adversely affected by instances in which Instacart’s payment was below the $10 threshold. For example, if a shopper was paid $6 by Instacart, to compensate for our mistake, he or she will receive an additional $4 from Instacart.

In creating these changes to improve, enhance and create clarity for shopper compensation, these new measures will do the following:

1. Better protect shoppers from smaller, outlying batches. We heard loud and clear the frustration when your compensation didn’t match the effort you put forth. As we looked at some of the extreme examples that have been surfaced by you over the last few days, it’s become clear to us that we can and should do better. Instacart shouldn’t be paying a shopper $0.80 for a batch. It doesn’t matter that this only happens 1 out of 100,000 times – it happened to one shopper and that’s one time too many. We believe that these new guaranteed floor minimums will better protect our shoppers going forward.

2. Customer tips will no longer have any impact on Instacart’s contribution to shopper earnings. With an average tip of $5, our customers regularly recognize shoppers with tips for the services they provide. We believe that with these changes customers will continue to be able to recognize great service and have full confidence that their tips are going to the shopper who delivered their order, with no impact whatsoever on what the shopper receives from Instacart. As always, shoppers will receive 100% of their tips, regardless of the batch compensation.  

3. These changes will increase Instacart’s overall contribution to our shopper’s earnings and we believe that the change in tip structure will separate Instacart from an industry standard that’s no longer working for our shoppers and our customers.

Finally, I want to thank you for your feedback. It’s our responsibility to change course quickly when we realize we’re on the wrong path and we believe today’s changes are a step in the right direction.

Apoorva Mehta

Founder & CEO of Instacart

One of the most important upcoming events in the space industry is undoubtedly the advent of SpaceX and Boeing’s competing crew-bearing capsules, which the companies have been working on for years. But today brings yet another delay for both programs, already years behind schedule.

Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules will in the future be used to send astronauts to the International Space Station and conceivably other orbital platforms. As such they are being engineered and tested with a rigor greatly exceeding that of ordinary cargo capsules.

It isn’t an easy task, though, and both companies have come a long way, we’re well past the original estimated service debut of 2017. When it comes to shooting humans into space, of course, it’s done when it’s done, and not a day before.

This month was to be a major milestone for Crew Dragon, which was scheduled to make an uncrewed test trip to the ISS; Boeing planned to perform orbital tests soon as well, but both have been put off, according to NASA’s Commercial Crew blog:

The agency now is targeting March 2 for launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon on its uncrewed Demo-1 test flight. Boeing’s uncrewed Orbital Flight Test is targeted for launch no earlier than April.

These adjustments allow for completion of necessary hardware testing, data verification, remaining NASA and provider reviews, as well as training of flight controllers and mission managers.

In other words, they’re just plain not ready. Close, but for human spaceflight close isn’t good enough.

The rest of 2019 will, if there are no serious delays, be filled with further milestones in the program. Here’s the tentative schedule:

• SpaceX Demo-1 (uncrewed): March 2, 2019
• Boeing Orbital Flight Test (uncrewed): NET April 2019
• Boeing Pad Abort Test: NET May 2019
• SpaceX In-Flight Abort Test: June 2019
• SpaceX Demo-2 (crewed): July 2019
• Boeing Crew Flight Test (crewed): NET August 2019

This summer, then, should be a momentous one for space travel. In the meantime the only way to get people into orbit is the Russian Soyuz system, which has proven itself over and over but ultimately is both outdated and, well, Russian. A homegrown, 21st-century alternative is rapidly becoming a must-have.

Back in 2016 we had Robin up on stage demonstrating the possibility of a robotic mower as a service rather than just something you buy. They’re still going strong, and just introduced and patented what seems in retrospect a pretty obvious idea: an automatic door for the mower to go through fences between front and back yards.

It’s pretty common, after all, to have a back yard isolated from the front lawn by a wood or chainlink fence so dogs and kids can roam freely there with only light supervision. And if you’re lucky enough to have a robot mower, it can be a pain to carry it from one side to the other. Isn’t the whole point of the thing that you don’t have to pick it up or interact with it in any way?

The solution Justin Crandall and his team at Robin came up with is simple and straightforward: an automatic mower-size door that opens only to let it through.

“In Texas over 90 percent of homes have a fenced in backyard, and even in places like Charlotte and Cleveland it’s roughly 25-30 percent, so technology like this is critical to adoption,” Crandall told me. “We generally dock the robots in the backyard for security. When it’s time to mow the front yard, the robots drive to the door we place in the fence. As it approaches the door, the robot drives over a sensor we place in the ground. That sensor unlocks the door to allow the mower access.”

Simple, right? It uses a magetometer rather than wireless or IR sensor, since those introduced possibilities of false positives. And it costs around $100-$150, easily less than a second robot or base, and probably pays for itself in goodwill around the third or fourth time you realize you didn’t have to carry your robot around.

It’s patented, but rivals (like iRobot, which recently introduced its own mower) could certainly build one if it was sufficiently different.

Robin has expanded to several states and a handful of franchises (its plan from the start) and maintains that its all-inclusive robot-as-a-service method is better than going out and buying one for yourself. Got a big yard and no teenage kids who can mow it for you? See if Robin’s available in your area.

Microsoft launched a new ad campaign for its Office suite today. Usually, that’s not something especially interesting, but this one is a bit different. Instead of simply highlighting the features of Word and Excel, Microsoft decided to pitch Office 365 and Office 2019 against each other (as an extra gimmick, it used twins to do so, too). But here’s the deal: Microsoft really doesn’t want you to buy Office 2019, and the ads make that abundantly clear.

The reason for that is obvious: Office 365 is a subscription product while Office 2019 (think Office Home & Student or other SKUs) comes with a perpetual license, so that’s a one-time sale for Microsoft. Subscriptions are a better business for Microsoft in the long run (hence its recent focus on products like Microsoft 365, too).

For the longest time, the annual non-365 Office release was simply a snapshot of the state of the Office apps at a given time. That changed with Office 365. Now, Office 365 users are the ones who get all the online features, including a bunch of AI-driven tools, while the Office 2019 versions don’t get any of these.

Office 365 subscriptions start at $70 for personal use and $8.25/month for business users. Office Home and Business is a one-time $250 purchase.

Unsurprisingly, in the new ads, which give the actors twins various challenges to perform in the likes of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, Office 365 beats Office 2019 every time. Yawn. The ads aren’t very good and you will cringe a few times (though sadly, they are no rival to Microsoft’s worst commercial ever, 2009’s Songsmith debacle), but you’ll definitely come away with a sense that Microsoft really wants you to subscribe to Office 365 and not buy a perpetual Office 2019 license and then maybe buy the next update in 2025.

An investigation by Consumer Reports may force electric scooter businesses to double back on safety measures.

The magazine found electric scooters caused 1,545 injuries in the U.S. since late 2017, according to data collected from 110 hospitals and five public agencies in 47 cities where Bird or Lime, the leading tech-enabled scooter-sharing platforms, operate.

The news comes shortly after UCLA published a study finding that 249 people required medical care following scooter accidents, with one-third of that group arriving at the hospital in an ambulance.

“These injuries can be severe,” Tarak Trivedi, an emergency physician at UCLA and the study’s lead author, told CNET. “These aren’t just minor cuts and scrapes. These are legit fractures.”

Despite commentary from scooter CEOs suggesting otherwise, safety doesn’t seem to be a priority for businesses in the space. Given the nature of the industry, taking a ride on an e-scooter or a dockless bike without a helmet is the norm. That, coupled with failed hardware, irresponsible riding practices and access to scooters in the evening, has unsurprisingly led to several accidents and even casualties. Just this past weekend, the city of Austin reported a pedestrian riding a Lime scooter died after being struck by an Uber driver. The Lime scooter rider was traveling the wrong way down an interstate.

Lime, Bird and other leading scooter providers do provide free helmets to riders and don’t encourage poor scooter etiquette, but ensuring riders actually carry helmets or don’t do stupid things like travel the wrong way down a busy road is impossible.

With a fresh $310 million in Series D funding for Lime, announced today, it will be interesting to see how the company ramps up safety efforts.

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1. Spotify buys Gimlet and Anchor in podcast push, earmarks $500M for more deals

Spotify is going after podcasts in a major way in 2019.

The music streaming service confirmed that it has snapped up two podcast networks — Gimlet and Anchor — in undisclosed deals. But that’s not all: Spotify also said it has plans to spend a further $400 to $500 million “on multiple acquisitions in 2019” to get even deeper into the space.

2. Meditation app Calm hits unicorn status with fresh $88 million funding

As meditation grows in popularity across the U.S. — the CDC says it tripled from 4.1 percent in 2012 to 14.2 percent in 2017 — Calm has capitalized on the craze by offering a suite of mindfulness and wellness tools, from guided meditation sessions to a product called “Sleep Stories,” via a subscription.

3. Instacart faces class-action lawsuit regarding wages and tips

The suit alleges Instacart “intentionally and maliciously misappropriated gratuities in order to pay plaintiff’s wages even though Instacart maintained that 100 percent of customer tips went directly to shoppers. Based on this representation, Instacart knew customers would believe their tips were being given to shoppers in addition to wages, not to supplement wages entirely.”

4. Angela Ahrendts is leaving Apple

Ahrendts joining Apple in 2014 was massive news, with her having served as the CEO of the luxury fashion brand Burberry from 2006 to 2014. She led the charge to “reimagine” Apple’s retail stores, shifting them to what she hoped felt more like a “modern-day town square.”

5. YouTube’s CEO says it will continue addressing monetization issues, admits Rewind 2018 was ‘cringey’

The letter seems unlikely to satisfy creators who are still trying to recover revenue or gain a better understanding of how YouTube’s policies are enforced.

6. Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3 billion valuation

Reddit is raising $150 million to $300 million to keep the front page of the internet running, according to multiple sources. Leading the round is Chinese tech giant Tencent.

7. Snapchat shares soar as it stops losing users, shrinks losses in Q4

Snapchat isn’t growing again, but at least it didn’t hemorrhage any more users in its Q4 earnings report — the company stayed flat at 186 million daily users.

Microsoft’s Build developer conference is returning to Seattle May 6 to 8. This is a bit of a surprise since Microsoft itself leaked May 7 to 9 as Build’s dates last month, after all. But then Google’s announced exactly those dates for its I/O confab and like last year, Microsoft probably had to scramble a bit and we’ll get back-to-back developer keynotes from Microsoft and Google in early May.

To say that timing is a bit awkward is an understatement, but we’ll be there and do our thing and then fly out to California at night and do it all over again for Google I/O. For developers, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue, though, given that the target audience for both events is quite different.

Build is typically Microsoft’s biggest show for developers. Other events, including its massive Ignite show in Orlando, have a stronger emphasis on IT and productivity, but Build is where you can expect announcements around Windows, new developer tools and its Azure cloud, but also updates to how developers can integrate their tools and services into products like Office.

Since Microsoft will likely announce the next version of its HoloLens at MWC in Barcelona in just a few weeks, I think it’s a safe bet that Microsoft will also emphasize its mixed reality platform at Build.

Registration for Build opens February 27.

Lime just announced it has raised a $310 million Series D round. Led by Bain Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity Ventures, GV and IVP, the round values Lime at $2.4 billion.

“This new investment demonstrates the fundamental strength of our business and the increasingly rapid adoption of Lime,” Lime CEO Toby Sun wrote in a blog post. “The new funds will give us the ability to expand into new markets, enhance our technology, strengthen the team and pilot new opportunities. We will also continue investing in two critical areas: rider safety and city collaboration.”

In May, Lime partnered with Segway to launch its next generation of electric scooters. These Segway-powered Lime scooters were designed to be safer, longer-lasting via battery power and more durable for what the sharing economy requires,  Sun told TechCrunch last year.

But this partnership hasn’t been without its issues. In October, Lime recalled some of its scooters due to battery fire concerns. The next month, Lime put $3 million toward a new safety initiative called “Respect the Ride.” Safety, in general, is a major concern. In September, someone lost their life after a scooter accident.

This brings Lime’s total funding north of $800 million. Lime, which got its beginnings as a bike-share company, has deployed its scooters in more than 100 cities in the U.S. and 27 international cities. Since June, Lime has more than doubled the number of cities where it operates in the U.S. Lime has also partnered with Uber to offer Lime scooters within the Uber app.