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Is the meal kit industry a good investment? If you were thinking of purchasing Blue Apron stock last week, its failing numbers might have tipped you in another direction. But Albertson Companies, the nation’s second largest grocery chain, announced on Wednesday that it will acquire meal kit service Plated. The news seemed to give Blue Apron stock a much-needed boost, and offered hope for the rest of the meal kit industry which is worth now an estimated $2.2 billion.
According to a company press release, Plated will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Albertson’s, and the deal is expected to close later this month. Albertson’s also said that it will begin to offer Plated meal kits at many of its stores and across its digital channels in addition to offering meals directly through Plated’s website. TechCruch reports that Albertson will buy Plated for between $175 million and $200 million. This could increase as Albertson has agreed to earnout payments based on how Plated performs.
Plated has marketed itself as a more upscale alternative to other meal kit services including Blue Apron, its recipes created by Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef Elana Karp. Plated’s boxes appeal to customers who want to expand their culinary skills beyond the basics. Plated offers meals that are inspired by different ethnic cuisines, including Malaysian, Swedish, and Moroccan food.
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The 2018 Olympics are around the corner, and thanks to the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and their annual competition Scouting Camp: The Next Olympic Hopeful, athletes from all over the country have a chance to compete for a place on the US Olympic team.
The national competition was held at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Two of the finalists began training with 24 Hour Fitness this past June, who partnered with the Olympic Committee to set up in-club tryouts to qualify to compete. Amanda Alvarez of Seattle won a place for competing in skeleton and Josh Williamson of Orlando placed for the bobsled competition.
“When I got the news via email that I’d advanced to the elimination round, I re-read it four times to make sure it was real,” said Alvarez, who is also a Personal Trainer with 24 Hour Fitness. “I have always wanted to go to the Olympic Games—I believe I was born to make Team USA.”
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Capital World Investors sold all of its shares in Blue Apron stock this past Friday, according to a report by Bloomberg News.
This withdrawal of support sends a signal to other investors that Blue Apron’s second most important investor has lost confidence in the meal delivery kit startup company. Blue Apron went public of June this year, and has since struggled to gain momentum, its stock price falling below expectations.
Another complication for Blue Apron was the entry of Amazon into the market. Amazon announced its acquisition of Whole Foods shortly before Blue Apron went public, and the online retail giant also began offering its own meal kits directly from the site. Analysts have speculated that Amazon seems to be positioning itself to compete directly with independent meal kit service companies, causing investors to shy away from Blue Apron who has struggled to make a profit despite its growth.
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Earlier this year the Better Business Bureau (BBB) gave STDCheck.com an "Award of Excellence". They were 1 of 292 companies to recieve the award in 2017. The online STD testing service was recognized as a "Distinction Winner" for service excellence. STDCheck.com is an accredited business of the BBB and has an A+ rating.
STDCheck.com provides a private online STD testing service. Customers can purchase 1 or more tests online and then visit a local walk-in certified lab to provide a blood and/or urine sample. STDCheck have partnered with more than 4,500 of these laboratories across the United States and Canada. Once a sample has been taken customers can expect the results of the tests to be provided in 1 to 3 days through their STDCheck.com online account.
To date STDCheck has performed more than 2,000,000 since the business started.
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Americans are crazy about at-home DNA test kits, with millions of people submitting their saliva samples in the hopes of finding out more about their genetic makeup. One group in particular hasn’t been too satisfied with the results however, and has been especially vocal in recent months: white nationalists.
An article in the New York Post detailed some 70,000 discussion threads about DNA testing on popular white nationalist website Stormfront, posted by more than 300,000 users. Sociologists at UCLA and the Data and Society Research Institute examined the posts, and found that one third of those who posted their findings were pleased with their ancestry test results, but the majority (two thirds) of posters were upset because they weren’t “100 percent” white European.
These customers either rejected or disputed the results from companies like 23andMe and AncestryDNA.
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On September 7, Equifax reported that its data system was breached and hackers stole personal information from over 143 million Americans. The hackers behind the attack, the company said, “exploited a U.S. website application vulnerability to gain access to certain files.”
According to Equifax, there was a bug in their open source software which was known prior to the hack. According to an article in Quartz, hackers could obtain information with “nothing but a browser, an internet connection, and some information about how the bug works.”
Financial experts and Equifax have urged consumers to protect themselves from identity theft in the wake of this hack. Equifax is providing a free tool for consumers to be able to check if they were affected by the recent breach on their website, requiring customers to enter their last names and six digits of their social security numbers.
