Meet the Chefs at Blue Apron
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00 My two co-founders, Matt and Ilya, had known each other for some time.
00:03 I was good friends with my partner, Matt.
00:07 They had been out and they'd been cooking and had gone to a bunch of stores and made
00:12 this big meal for their friends.
00:14 I think it took four or five hours to go shopping and get everything ready.
00:17 We've all done that before.
00:18 Yeah, they turned it into a whole ordeal.
00:22 They were chatting about it and my partner, Ilya, said to Matt, "That was really fun,
00:26 but it would be great if somebody would just drop that stuff off at my house."
00:29 He said, "But nobody would ever mail you all the ingredients and it seems like it would
00:32 be a real pain in the butt to do that."
00:35 Matt actually said, "You know what?
00:36 That's a really good idea.
00:38 I think we should look into it further."
00:40 I was his food buddy.
00:42 I had my own food and events business at the time.
00:46 He called me up and I was good friends with actually his fiance and their whole family
00:49 and everything.
00:50 We'd been out on some dates together and everything with couples.
00:53 He's like, "Hey, Matt.
00:55 I've got this food idea.
00:56 Will you come and talk to me?"
00:57 I was like, "Who is this crazy finance guy who wants to start this food business?"
01:01 He doesn't know anything about food.
01:03 Started hanging out with him and talking about it.
01:05 It actually, the more we discussed it, the more it made sense.
01:07 We joined up in the summer two and a half years ago.
01:13 It just kind of went from there.
01:15 We partnered up and started the company and the rest is history.
01:19 We're serving well over a million meals a month now all over the country.
01:23 We deliver nationwide all the way from California to New York and everywhere in between.
01:29 It's been really exciting.
01:30 Me and my two co-founders, Ely and Matt, started the company about two and a half years ago.
01:35 We had a tiny commissary kitchen in Long Island City.
01:38 We were just delivering to Manhattan back then.
01:40 We were packing all of the boxes by hand.
01:42 I think we did 20 boxes our first week that we just individually packed ourselves and
01:47 went out and ordered the food, went to the farmer's market and packed everything up.
01:51 Now we have three huge fulfillment centers, one in California, one in New York and one
01:56 down in Dallas.
01:57 We're growing every day.
02:00 Our customers really love the product and stick with us and cook our meals.
02:04 It's really great because for them it's like having their own personal sous chef in their
02:08 house, getting all of the stuff ready for them and they get to come in and just do the
02:12 fun part of it.
02:13 Now, when you guys were here as students, what did you think you were going to be doing
02:17 when you first came out of school?
02:19 Obviously, history and everything's taken you to Blue Apron, but what did you think
02:25 you were going to aspire to when you first graduated?
02:27 Really it was about going and finding the best places to work when I graduated, for
02:31 me at least, and just learning more and growing through the people that I had met here actually.
02:36 I mean, very similar answer.
02:39 I had no idea.
02:40 I mean, I had a lot.
02:41 I actually shouldn't say that.
02:42 I had a lot of ideas.
02:43 I just wasn't sure which one I was going to choose.
02:45 I ended up going back to school for a little bit and then coming back into the industry
02:48 and did a number of things.
02:50 I worked at some great restaurants like Blue Hill and followed a sustainable agriculture
02:55 path and then really ran through some really great restaurants.
02:58 But I mean, honestly, yeah, leaving here, the beauty of CIA is you have a lot of choices
03:02 when you leave and you just have to choose the right one and just stay on that path.
03:07 So I was unsure, but it's worked out well.
03:10 I'm happy where I'm at.
03:11 Awesome.
03:12 And Tim, what about you?
03:13 We haven't talked about this at all, but I was exactly the same.
03:16 The world was your oyster.
03:18 I really had no idea what I wanted to do.
03:20 Same thing.
03:21 I wanted to work at some of the best places I could.
03:22 I went down to New York, worked at Le Cirque 2000.
03:24 I was on the opening team at Per Se, just trying to get experience that way.
03:29 And then it sort of trickles down.
03:31 You figure out, maybe I don't want to work in restaurants all the time.
03:34 Maybe I should try some catering or some private chefing or things like that.
03:38 And that's kind of how we all connected in the private chefing world.
03:41 And yeah, it's been a fun ride.
03:43 I'm happy to be here.
03:44 I always tell a lot of young cooks email me and contact me on a regular basis.
03:48 And my advice is always don't worry about the money right away.
03:51 Go out and continue your education and learn more in the industries that you're interested
03:55 in.
03:56 And it doesn't necessarily have to be restaurants.
03:57 It could be industrial food.
04:00 It could be food service in some other capacity.
04:03 Or agriculture is a great industry up and coming for cooks.
04:06 But focus on learning more, cutting your teeth, and then figure it out over time.
04:12 So what's next for you guys?
04:13 What's the next big thing you're getting while you're here recruiting today, right?
04:16 We are.
04:17 We're hiring.
04:18 We have, just in our fulfillment centers, we have 60 open salary positions.
04:21 We have tons of positions in our company.
04:24 We're looking for all kinds of people, from people who work in food safety to work in
04:30 agriculture, to work as managers of people in our fulfillment centers, culinary people,
04:34 interns.
04:35 We have all kinds of jobs that we're constantly hiring for.
04:38 And that's a big thing for us.
04:41 In terms of our business, we're very much thinking about, we're continuing to grow very
04:46 aggressively and we're thinking about how we can be a better supplier of food to America.
04:52 In a lot of ways, we have the ability to reach more parts of the country as a food retailer
04:57 than almost any other business.
04:59 Even when you think about a company like Walmart, huge supermarket, biggest supermarket in America,
05:04 they actually don't even have as much reach because they get to about 80% of the population.
05:08 We can get to about 98% of the population through e-commerce.
05:12 It's really very much the future of the way I think a lot of people are thinking about
05:16 food and we're thinking about it and how to get food that's more sustainable, that's grown
05:21 more intelligently, and working with a lot of small and medium-sized farms to help manage
05:26 their farms and their crop rotations and create economies of scale through local agriculture
05:31 and allow us to work really intelligently with those companies and be able to provide
05:36 a high level of food, something that you might get at a farmer's market, baby zebra eggplants
05:40 or Chinese long beans that would traditionally cost $6 or $7 a pound at a farmer's market,
05:44 and we can sell it to our customers for a very small fraction of that because we're
05:47 really capitalizing on the economies of scale, working directly with those growers and intelligently
05:53 distributing that food to our customers.
05:54 We look to the farmers to dictate what we should be cooking and to be able to do that
05:59 on a scale and take the guesswork out of people planning menus in their own homes and deliver
06:03 that high-quality things.
06:05 We have people that are traipsing around the country in the corners of Iowa looking for
06:11 a really cool farm doing whatever, and it's just really exciting to be a part of that.
06:17 Where can anyone go if they want to learn more about Blue Apron?
06:19 So blueapron.com, we have all kinds of different resources including informational videos,
06:27 articles, we have a blog, we have information about our team, about jobs, and you can always
06:33 email us at our team page if you're looking to find a job with us or ask questions and
06:38 we'll get back to you.
06:39 All our content is open as well on the web, so you don't have to become a member of
06:43 Blue Apron to see the recipes.
06:45 You can go on there and cook one of these recipes yourself.
06:47 It's a lot easier when it gets delivered to your door though.
06:52 It's great to see a team of CI alumni who are doing such amazing things and being so
06:56 successful.
06:56 [Music]
07:07 (upbeat music)
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