Blue Apron - Q4 2022

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning. Welcome to the Blue Apron Holdings Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. As a reminder, this call is being recorded today, Thursday, March 16th, 2023, for replay purposes. A slide presentation has been created to accompany today's remarks and can be accessed on the Blue Apron Investor Relations website. Should you need assistance on this call, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. On this morning's call, we have Linda Findley, President and Chief Executive Officer of Blue Apron, and Mitch Cohen, Interim Chief Financial Officer. Before handing the call over to the company, we will review the safe harbor statement.

Various statements that the company makes during today's call about its future expectations, plans, and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for the purpose of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by those forward-looking statements as a result of risks and other factors, including those described in the company's earnings release issued this morning and the company's SEC filings. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent the company's views only as of today and should not be re-relied upon as representing its views as of any subsequent date. The company specifically disclaims any obligation to update these statements. During this call, the company will be referring to non-GAAP measures, which are not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.

You are encouraged to refer to the earnings release and SEC filings where it has defined these measures, to review the reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Linda Findley, Blue Apron's CEO. Linda?

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Thank you, Drew. Good morning, everyone, thank you for joining us for an update on the business. On the call with me today is Mitch Cohen, Blue Apron's Interim CFO. To start, I will give you a brief overview of our fourth quarter and full year performance, then focus the rest of my remarks on improvements that we are already seeing in 2023. Mitch will provide a deeper dive into our financials, as well as the recent at-the-market offerings and our cash position. As many of you know, 2022 was a challenging year for our business. In the fourth quarter and year to date, we've made significant progress in addressing those challenges. We're effectively managing our cost structure and working towards stabilizing our balance sheet, all while making progress against key customer metrics.

Most notably, in Q4 2022, we achieved our highest average order value of $73.15. When compared to Q3 2022, this was driven primarily by orders from our strong core customer base, who are responding well to our product offering. The added variety of our menu continues to deliver great value to our customers. In 2022, we shipped over 6.5 million orders. Our meals reduce food waste, eliminate meal prep planning stress, bring variety into people's lives, connect families, and help develop healthy and creative habits. We sit at the intersection of the most critical aspects of health, sustainability, and community, and we also have the opportunity to provide jobs across multiple disciplines. Our customers rave about the quality of our meals and the unique flavors we bring to their table.

The value of our product is evident in our average orders per customer, which was up as compared to Q3 2022 at 4.9, and average revenue per customer, which climbed to $358, a new company record. Total customers over the 12 months ended December 31, 2022, was approximately 659,000, a slight decline of 3% from the equivalent period a year ago. For the fourth quarter of 2022, total customers were 298,000, down 7.6% sequentially and down 11.2% from the prior year. We believe a portion of the decline can be attributed to the reduction in marketing spend that we began to implement in Q4. We ramped down our brand investment, and in preparation for Q1, focused our resources on performance marketing.

We're already seeing improved marketing efficiency thus far in Q1, which I will discuss shortly. Seasonal and macroeconomic pressures on consumer spending due to the inflationary environment also had an impact on Q4 performance. It's important to consider the fourth quarter within the broader context of our strategy of achieving our goal of long-term profitability. This includes our efforts to manage our cash burn. Notably, as of the end of February 2023, we've seen a reduced cash burn of over 50% year-over-year as a result of ongoing expense reduction actions. I will discuss this in greater detail, along with how our work in Q4 is shaping 2023. We continue to execute against three strategic initiatives outlined during our last call that address the key fundamentals of the business.

This means, one, taking a more targeted approach to acquiring and retaining more profitable customers while reducing our marketing spend. Two, driving margin improvements. Three, executing disciplined cost management in PTG&A. Our focus on profitability is expected to put pressure on our top-line revenue and customer numbers in 2023. This is not to say that we are deprioritizing revenue and customer growth, but rather focusing our business objectives to support our path to profitability in the near term. As part of our efforts, we worked with our lenders to amend our debt agreement to pay down our long-term debt on an accelerated schedule. Mitch will discuss this in detail. What I will share is that this reduces our covenants, and we believe it gives us more flexibility as we continue to pursue other opportunities.

We are considering other options at our disposal to plan for the future success of the company. This includes potentially pursuing, evaluating, and executing financing opportunities, a business combination, or other strategic transactions. As I said before, when looking at the industry as a whole, it's highly fragmented and one that we believe is open for more consolidation. Diving deeper into our three initiatives, starting with marketing. We made significant strides over the past several months in positioning our marketing efforts towards profitability and scale. In the fourth quarter, we reduced marketing spend by 18% year-over-year to $17.1 million, in line with our commitment to a thoughtful and targeted approach to marketing. Throughout 2022, our efforts were geared towards building the foundational elements of brand equity and awareness.

Today, we have approximately 81% brand awareness and close to a 99% weekly retention rate for customers who are with us consistently for more than 13 weeks, which is our sweet spot in terms of retention. Having established a solid baseline, we're now focused on achieving a balanced marketing mix that is designed to propel efficient and sustainable growth. To do so, we're focused on leveraging the channels we know are efficient and investing in our dollars strategically to ensure we get the highest return. Starting in the third quarter of 2022, we began reducing our spend on upper funnel channels with a shift away from TV and out of home. We reallocated some of that spend towards performance-based and digital channels with a focus on delivering a strong CPA.

We're seeing positive progress in the first quarter of 2023. As of the end of February, we cut our cost per acquisition by half and increased our conversion rate by more than 25% sequentially. In the first quarter of 2023, we anticipate customer count will be up sequentially in line with seasonality. We do expect a decline year-over-year, in part due to our progress as we continue to make marketing more efficient throughout 2023 towards profitability. We continue to leverage partnerships to further unlock efficiencies in our marketing efforts. This week, we announced a partnership with Verizon on its new +play, which allows consumers to manage their subscriptions all in one place. As part of the platform, we are launching Blue Apron PLUS, a new savings program that unlocks exclusive deals.

We continue to work with DoorDash via their DashMart storefront and have expanded the availability of our Heat & Eat microwavable product to 11 markets in the Northeast, including New York City. Turning to our second priority. In the fourth quarter, our variable margin was 34.9%, a 2.7 improvement sequentially and roughly flat with the prior year. Variable margin was driven in part by the receipt of a $1.2 million credit related to a previous ingredient quality issue. Another key factor in the margin improvement is our ability to upsell customers on higher value products like premium recipes, customization options, and add-ons. For the full year, variable margin was 33.6% as compared to 35.8% in the prior year.

We were able to keep margin levels relatively stable in 2022 despite the ongoing inflationary environment and approximately 40% increase in customer menu options. As mentioned on prior calls, we increased menu options by leveraging our existing ingredient pantry and adding only incremental items that we believe are of value to our customers. To drive margin improvements in 2023, we are pairing the efficiency learnings and operations from 2022 with the rollout of a new organizational structure in our facilities. This new structure establishes accountability across the entire supply chain to deliver on improved efficiency and quality. It also provides a clearer path for our teams. The initial results are promising. Productivity metrics quarter to date are hitting levels we have not seen in the past eight quarters, even with an approximately 170% increase in product variety over the same time period.

We plan to build on this momentum and provide you with updates on our progress in the coming months. We are also enhancing and expanding our product offerings with an eye towards profitability. Our menu now features 84 options that address different meal moments. Notably, our seasonal boxes continue to be a hit. These boxes are created to help our customers bring to life memorable experiences with family and friends. In particular, our holiday boxes performed exceptionally well, with 2022 gross revenue more than double compared to our 2021 offering. This was in part driven by the optionality to purchase holiday-themed add-ons. Last week, we added our newest seasonal box, a brunch offering, to the menu available through Mother's Day. Our third and final commitment is focused on cost management with an eye towards right-sizing PTG&A.

In the fourth quarter, we took action to streamline our cost structure through expense management with reductions in recruiting fees and consulting spend. We also absorbed expenses related to severance charges associated with the December 2022 corporate headcount reduction. These initiatives, together with the reductions in marketing spend, are expected to drive up to $50 million in annualized cost savings, resulting in over 50% year-over-year reduction in our cash burn as of the end of February 2023. We continue to manage our operations to set the business on a path to profitability. Earlier this month, we announced that the New York Stock Exchange has accepted our plan to regain compliance within 18 months with the global market capitalization listing standard.

We are committed to maintaining our New York Stock Exchange listing and being in compliance across all listing standards. Before turning the call over to Mitch, I want to take a moment to thank every Blue Apron employee. From the fulfillment centers to our corporate office, they play a key role in our success, and I'm proud to call them my colleagues. Thank you. With that, let me turn things over to Mitch to walk through our financials. Mitch?

Mitchell Cohen (Interim CFO)

Thank you, Linda, and good morning, everyone. I'll begin with an update on our liquidity position before getting into the fourth quarter and full year results for the year ended December 31st, 2022. Our cash balance as of December 31st, 2022 was $33.5 million. In January 2023, we completed a $30 million at-the-market offering that launched in November 2022, selling approximately 29 million shares at an average sales price of $1 per share. With the completion of this at-the-market offering, our cash balance at January 31st, 2023 was $46.8 million. In February, we launched a new at-the-market offering, giving us the option to sell up to $70 million in new shares to provide us with greater flexibility to access liquidity resources.

The proceeds from this offering will be used for general corporate purposes, including paying down some or all of our debt and providing us with greater flexibility to pursue, evaluate, or execute on other potential financing or strategic opportunities. Substantially all of the $70 million remains available. As of the end of February, our cash balance was $46.3 million. In addition, on March 15th, we amended our note purchase agreement in a move that we believe can provide us with further financial flexibility. The amendment accelerates the pay down of our $30 million senior secured notes as well as accrued and unpaid interest into four monthly installments of $7.5 million. The first installment was paid in connection with the signing of the amendment.

The amendment also reduces minimum liquidity covenant on a dollar for dollar basis corresponding to our payments up to $10 million until the full payment of the debt. We expect to fully pay down this obligation and be free of covenants by the end of the second quarter. We view this as an effective use of our cash at this time as it reduces or removes covenants that previously restricted our ability to access the full amount of our cash on our balance sheet. We continue to have discussions with Mr. Sanberg and his affiliates regarding the outstanding $56.5 million private placement, of which we received $1 million in December 2022, and the $12.7 million gift card fundings owed to us.

As you recall, in November 2022, we entered into a pledge agreement with an affiliate of Mr. Sanberg, which provided us with securities of privately held companies as collateral to secure the equity funding obligation. These efforts reflect our commitment to diversifying our potential service sources of liquidity and removing our debt as we work to resolve the Sanberg funding delays. Our ultimate goal is to get on a path to a stabilized balance sheet and long-term profitability. Turning to the fourth quarter, net revenue was $106.8 million, down slightly sequentially and roughly flat year-over-year. The sequential decline was driven in by a reduction in our customer base and a reduction in total orders, partially offset by an improvement in AOV.

As Linda mentioned, average order value was $73.15, and orders per customer increased to 4.9. Price increases introduced in 2022, as well as ongoing efforts to add variety and customization to our menu, drove the solid performance in key customer metrics. These efforts have served to improve the stickiness of our product to our customers while also preserving the value of our product relative to other food options. Turning to expenses, variable margin was 34.9% in the fourth quarter. This is a 2.7 percentage point increase sequentially and a 0.4 percentage point decline over the prior year period. The sequential improvement was in part, $1.2 million supplier credit.

In the fourth quarter, PTG&A costs were $34.3 million, an 8.8% sequential decrease and a 6.9% decrease year-over-year. For the full year, PTG&A costs were $155.1 million, a 7% increase from the prior year. The fourth quarter decline year-over-year was primarily driven by a reduction in the accrual for corporate bonuses to be paid in the first quarter of 2023. The sequential decline was, in part, the result of corporate headcount reductions in 2022. As part of our other and management initiatives, we implemented a reduction in corporate overhead and administrative expenses such as consulting and recruiting fees and travel and entertainment expenses. We continue to look for further efficiencies and are making a portion of our Linden, New Jersey, and Austin, Texas, spaces to sublease out unused square footage.

Other expenses for the fourth quarter was 1.5%, representing severance related expenses associated with the corporate workforce reduction announced in December of 2022. Looking at the bottom line, we reported a net loss of $21.8 million for the fourth quarter, compared to $26.4 million in the same quarter last year. In the fourth quarter, adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $13.5 million in the fourth quarter versus a loss of $17.9 million in the same quarter last year. For the full year, we reported a net loss of $109.7 million compared to $88.4 million for the fiscal 2021. Our full year adjusted EBITDA loss was $79.3 million compared to $39.2 million in the prior year.

As Linda mentioned, our Q1 results to date are an early indication that our efforts are showing solid progress. We expect customer count to be sequentially following seasonal patterns and efforts to drive efficiency and improve our cost structure have already allowed us to realize a more than 50% annualized reduction in cash burn by the end of February or through the end of February. Our productivity metrics are also hitting their highest levels in the past eight quarters, and we have substantially lowered our Cost Per Acquisition. Before I turn it over to Q&A, I'd like to quickly discuss our outlook. In line with our comments last quarter, we are not providing any forward guidance at this time. As a business, we remain focused on achieving EBITDA profitability and stabilizing our overall balance sheet and liquidity position.

Let me turn the call over back to the operator to take your questions. Operator?

Operator (participant)

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Maria Ripps with Canaccord. Please go ahead.

Maria Ripps (Managing Director in Equity Research)

Good morning, thanks so much for taking my questions. First, understanding that you're not providing forward guidance, can you maybe discuss whether you're expecting to see a typical seasonality in Q1? You did mention sequential custom additions, do you expect to see sort of increase in revenue compared to Q4? Could you share any insights on what you've observed so far in the quarter?

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Sure. I can start, and then Mitch can jump in with anything else. Thank you so much for the question, Maria. We do expect to see some seasonality, except, you know, normal seasonality with Q1. It's where we dedicated a lot of our resources in Q4 that we sort of moved away from acquisition into focusing that acquisition on Q1, but still with much reduced and more efficient marketing spend. We will see some seasonality, but again, maybe more muted than in past years as far as the change between Q4 and Q1 as we continue to rationalize marketing spend. What we are particularly proud of, and I think is an incredible accomplishment, is the fact that we are able to more efficiently acquire our customers with that lower marketing spend.

We're playing more with the balance between promotions and our marketing spend, which will have a little bit of an impact on Q1 revenue just because of the contra revenue aspect of our promotions. That's been very effective for us, and it has helped us significantly decrease our cost of acquisition by about 50% and dramatically increase conversion. That is playing well for Q1. Yes, we will see some of that seasonality come through while we continue to gain efficiency. I think the other aspect that both Mitch and I mentioned that's pretty interesting is we are seeing levels of productivity we haven't seen in two years. Productivity was quite high, but with significantly more complexity, with about a 170% increase in complexity in our menu during that time.

We're seeing both, good seasonality, normal on the top line, and then also some improvements in bottom line as well.

Maria Ripps (Managing Director in Equity Research)

Thank you, Linda. That's very helpful. My second question is around your partnerships. So how have your partnerships with Walmart and Amazon have been performing since you launched them last year? Is there any material sort of contribution to revenue? What are your expectations for these channels in 2023?

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Yeah. We don't reveal specifically what those partnerships are doing. What I can say is, it is not material to our revenue. We're still focused mostly on the core products. They are doing well when it comes to really enhancing our technology and our ability to take a same-day order and deliver it immediately. That's actually something that's quite powerful for us, and we continue to see that opportunity expand for other potential uses in the future. They're good channels for us, but not necessarily material.

Speaker 6

I'd like to say not yet material. Hopefully in the future. Yeah.

Maria Ripps (Managing Director in Equity Research)

Got it. Maybe one more if I could. Could you maybe provide us with update on your product portfolio given your focus on liquidity and sort of cost reductions? Are there any sort of recipes or meals that you are maybe de-emphasizing or advocating more to customers given sort of maybe different variable cost structures?

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Yeah. Thank you. That's actually a really interesting question and an important aspect. We do continue to believe that adding variety is important both for growth of the company but also getting to profitability. Obviously with more variety, you tend to get these higher engagement numbers. All these customer KPIs, including AOV, are very related to the added variety. You might see that fluctuate going forward simply because of the promotional aspects, and that comes out of AOV. We might play with that as we think about adding more variety. It's important to note. That doesn't necessarily mean a negative impact on the overall business because it's the mix that actually matters. That variety is part of why you see this record average revenue per customer continuing to go up.

So it is an important part of our strategy. We've been able to refine a lot of our sourcing as well into Q1 of this year, being more efficient with how we think about buying proteins in particular, which tend to be one of the bigger aspects of margin play. We've been able to make that efficient as we've actually been working on the marketing and the overall productivity in the organization as well. We haven't necessarily had to de-emphasize anything. In fact, the seasonal boxes that I was talking about tend to be very good margin for us and good attractiveness for bringing in customers.

The mix is actually quite healthy, and we plan on continuing to expand it, but maybe at a slightly slower rate of expanding variety than we have in the past, while we focus on profitability.

Maria Ripps (Managing Director in Equity Research)

Thank you very much.

Mitchell Cohen (Interim CFO)

Our customer metrics are up.

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Yeah, all of our customer metrics reflect that with the, with the increased numbers. Sorry. Yeah.

Maria Ripps (Managing Director in Equity Research)

Thank you. That's very helpful. Thank you very much for the color.

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Absolutely. Thank you, Maria.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Ryan Meyers with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Ryan Meyers (Senior Research Analyst)

Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. This is kind of a follow-up on the last question, but you know, obviously saw another strong quarter of AOV growth. Just kind of wondering if you can unpack that a little bit more. You know, how much of that came from price versus how much of that just came from customers, you know, spending more on the platform, adding more to the boxes? Just be helpful to kind of understand what's going on there.

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Sure. It was about a 50-50 mix, Ryan. About half of it came from product expansion and continued growth of people adding more to the box, and then the other half came from the continued impact of our price changes, which we did pretty strategically to still stay within a good value within the market and against competitors. It was about a 50% split.

Ryan Meyers (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. That's helpful. Then, you know, throughout the year, obviously, we've seen kind of a continued decline in the number of customers and order count. But, you know, I know looking back on Q1 and Q2, there was, you know, some pretty significant investments being made into marketing. You know, are we just not, you know, seeing some of that flow through quite yet, or we didn't see that flow through in 2022, and now we're starting to kind of see some of that here in Q1? You know, I know you guys gave the commentary about the acquisition costs being down, but the, you know, the flow through being even more positive.

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Yeah.

Ryan Meyers (Senior Research Analyst)

Is there anything from, like, a customer demand perspective that we should be aware of?

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

We did see some of the impact of inflationary macro trends on Q4, but a lot of it was also just the pullback on marketing spend as we started to focus on more performance channels. Frankly, we pulled back on things that would impact Q4 in order to support Q1. We are seeing much more efficiency in our marketing channels. Again, we're continuing to play with the mix between promotion and marketing spend because that's actually an interesting lever for us going forward. Yes, the decline that you saw was actually due to both a combination of, yes, some macroeconomic trends while our core customer base remained very strong in spending more. We also did intentionally move some marketing dollars and reduce some marketing dollars in order to focus on Q1.

A lot of the spend that we made earlier in 2022 really focused on building that upper pool of customers, so that brand awareness of 81% that I was talking about earlier. That will serve us well in 2023 as we apply performance marketing to those on driving the customer base. Our focus right now is making sure that we're getting significant return on investment on our customers because it's all about getting adjusted EBITDA lower throughout the year, and that's really where we're gonna be spending our time. You will see some what I would call quieter numbers in customer numbers, and that's intentional as we drive towards profitability.

Ryan Meyers (Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. Thanks for taking my questions.

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question comes from Dan Kurnos with The Benchmark Company.

Dan Kurnos (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

For nuance, I guess on-.

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Okay.

Dan Kurnos (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

-sort of the marketing front.

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Yeah.

Dan Kurnos (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Can you talk a little bit about, first of all, from your existing customer base where you're starting to see, it seems like incremental traction again, and I know that was a sort of a historical strategy and a refocus point here? I mean, just kind of toggle between promo, new offerings. Like, can you talk a little bit about, like, how exactly you're marketing to them to drive the upsell? And then on the new customer ad count, you know, I guess we would expect that obviously to be muted.

The way that you go to market, is it kind of like, again, with that brand toggle with the contra toggle versus direct marketing, is that sort of like the market is more accepting of a lower upfront price and those people come in and subsequently convert, you know, with incremental add-ons because you're able to sort of offer them what looks like better upfront deal and since you have such strong brand awareness? Can just help me kind of think through some of those nuance there. Thanks.

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Sure. What we've talked about before, we do continue to see in marketing for meal kits in specific, which is people are very price sensitive at the beginning trying a meal kit, and then once they're in, they are far less price sensitive. A big part of what we think about going forward is how do we actually balance those promotional dollars? not just any promotional dollars, and I'll tell you a little bit about kind of some of the things that we're doing there, where we're focusing a lot more on the conversion side of the funnel. balancing those promotional dollars with media spend.

We have the ability to sort of say, okay, let's target fewer customers with a better promotion, bring them in, and then the lifetime value gets higher as they come in because they are engaging with those additional products and those additional add-on services, again, including some things like those seasonal boxes. It's just continuing to test, test and make sure that we're driving the best balance between those two. The price sensitivity coming in does not necessarily represent what's potential for long-term health. It's more about demographics and psychographics. You'll see our media dollars go down as we focus on some of those healthier targets. You'll see us playing with some of those promotional dollars to attract those media targets, but only paying for the conversions of those.

In some of the channels that historically had been a little bit more about overall traffic and registrations, like for example, affiliates, we're getting much more focused on the conversion and the health of the customer getting to that 13-week mark that we were just talking about. Does that answer your question?

Dan Kurnos (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, no, that's helpful. I guess it's, you know, obviously it's too early to ask about sort of, you know, initial new cohort retention from some of the new plans. I guess I'll save that for a future call.

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Well, Yeah, we can save it for a future-

Dan Kurnos (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

I'll let you answer that.

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Yeah, we can save it for future calls. What I will say is, we are very good at marking behavior throughout the entire early-stage process. We are seeing strong behavior from, you know, their early behavior patterns of order rate, et cetera, that tell us that this mix play is gonna be very interesting for us in 2023.

Dan Kurnos (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Well, that's helpful and a better answer than I expected this early on. Super helpful. Just on the cost side.

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Be careful about their price.

Dan Kurnos (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Well, yeah, no, I know. That's the whole point, right?

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Yeah.

Dan Kurnos (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

The other question, just on the cost savings front, you know, obviously, the other key component here, super helpful on the CPA metrics and the productivity. Just talk about sort of the phasing in timing of some of the cost savings efforts. You know, look, obviously we saw, you know, egg prices continue to finally come down. Those were ridiculous.

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Yeah.

Dan Kurnos (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

You know, how do we think about sort of the mix of variable versus fixed and incremental opportunities as we work our way through the year? Linda, just conversely, if you do get better traction with your marketing efforts, you know, is there a point at which you say, "Hey, listen, you know, this is working super well, maybe we wanna step on it a little bit here?

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Yeah. First of all, address the cost questions, and then I can get into some of the efficiency questions. On the cost side, we are absolutely focused on making sure that we can maintain our quality while still reducing costs. For that, for us, that's a lot about productivity and that continued management of food waste. Again, this is sort of that secret that most people don't understand about meal kits and continues to be really important not only for the company but for the customer. The reduction of food waste, eliminating that 40% that most, you know, 40% of food in the U.S. is mostly thrown out. We don't have that because of the fact that we order exactly what we need, and we send the customer what they need.

That is the key, along with labor productivity, which has improved greatly. As we said, we're seeing numbers we haven't seen since 2020, I guess, in productivity. Those two things in combination really help manage some of those food inflation costs. I think some of the challenges we had last year was we were struggling a little bit with inflation from all aspects of, you know, the supply chain. This quarter, we're already seeing significant improvements in being able to balance out both our food purchasing costs as well as increasing productivity in our fulfillment centers. No change in quality, but much more agile purchasing processes that will help us with that. On the marketing side, I do completely believe in marginal ROI marketing spend.

As we continue to test some of these different nuances and as we continue to manage the capital structure of the business, we will absolutely invest more if we can do it at the right return on investment. I'll be honest with you, for the most part, we'll be looking at shorter, return on investment right now, and then as we fix the capitalization of the business, we can look at, still very efficient paybacks, but allowing us a little bit more time on a marginal ROI basis. Yes, leaning in is a 100% what we plan to do as we learn what works best.

Dan Kurnos (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Thank you for bearing with my two multi-part questions and all of that.

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

No, no. It's totally fine. Hopefully, I hit all of it.

Dan Kurnos (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

You did. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, this will conclude today's question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Linda Findley for any closing comments.

Linda Findley (President and CEO)

Thank you everyone for your time today. We look forward to providing an update on all of our efforts soon. In the meantime, if you have any additional questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us directly.

Operator (participant)

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.