Blue Apron, Plated and HelloFresh: How these food subscription services fare on social

With social channels like Facebook and Instagram being tailor-made for food content, you’d expect these services to soar on social. Here’s how three leading meal delivery services stack up in terms of user base, App Store rankings and social reach.

Blue Apron

Founded
2012
Users
Blue Apron claims to ship 3 million meals a month to customers across the country. It declined to disclose its revenue, but branding agency MBLM estimated its yearly revenue at around $120 million.
App store rankings
No. 20 in the Food and Drinks category in the U.S. on the Apple App Store, according to AppAnnie.
Social media presence
As the market leader, Blue Apron also dominates the category on social media. It has 900,000 followers on Facebook, where its posts tend to garner hundreds of likes and dozens of shares and comments. According from Unmetric, Blue Apron had the highest average engagement on Facebook between January and August versus Plated and HelloFresh, as defined by likes, comments and shares.

Blue Apron also has a hefty Twitter presence: Its handle, with 32,100 followers, was mentioned over 10,000 times in the same timeframe, according to social media analytics firm Brandwatch.

Plated

Founded
2012
Users
While Plated declined to quote its subscriber numbers or revenue, MBLM’s study estimates its yearly revenue at $100 million.
App store rankings
No. 178 in the Food and Drinks category in the U.S. on the App Store, according to AppAnnie.
Social media presence
Plated isn’t the biggest of the three on Facebook, but it’s the most active, publishing 499 posts between January and August (Unmetric). It also was the most interactive, responding to over 55.5 percent of fans’ posts.

Plated’s social media strategy focuses on how meals bring people together. It also has a dedicated YouTube channel, where it posts tutorials and food hacks. Sidney Blank, partner at MBLM, said that its #TBT posts featuring childhood photos of staff members enjoying family events have helped build the service’s social popularity.

Plated also is on Snapchat, where it shares behind-the-scenes footage from its test kitchen and interviews local sourcing partners. It also worked with Al Roker on his new cooking segment on Meerkat.

HelloFresh

Founded
2012
Users
HelloFresh reported roughly 280,000 subscribers globally as of March 2015. It now delivers more than 4 million meals per month across seven countries.
App store rankings
No. 57 in the Food and Drinks category in the U.S. on the App Store, according to AppAnnie.
Social media presence
HelloFresh positions itself as the purveyor of fresh ingredients, and it uses its social channels to promote that message, by way of #fresh hashtags and photography. The brand sees its social channels as forums for sharing engaging content, fun food facts, news and questions and answers about its product.

And apparently, it’s working: With 570,000 followers on Facebook, HelloFresh had the highest fan growth of all three services, growing 173 percent between January and August, according to Unmetric.