The brand equity of the company is poor compared to HelloFresh and Blue Apron.
There are many people in upper management that got there because of nepotism, not merit. In general, an inner social circle inconsistent with the talent structure runs the entire company. People's value to the company is more determined based on the how much the inner circle likes them, and less on merit. The inner circle operates unchecked and unabated and disagreeing with them is akin to political suicide.
The relationship between headquarters and their fulfillment centers is more strained than I have ever seen elsewhere. Fulfillment center leaders are infrequently consulted or informed on business decisions, stepped over, and do not feel like their voice matters. Leaders in the fulfillment centers are expected to own their area but step back and serve as gatekeepers if corporate wants to make a change on a whim. Plant Manager positions in most of the fulfillment centers are a revolving door.
The company's default position is reinventing the wheel when there are traditional tried and true approaches that would be more successful. The company has amazing opportunities to leverage its parent company, Kroger, for its vast continuous improvement and operations knowledge, but shows little interest in doing so.
The company has next to zero internal controls and couldn't follow a process consistently to save its life. This has led to many expensive business decisions that yielded little or negative return. Guilty parties are not held accountable.
The company has problems aligning on strategy & tactics from top to bottom as there is little respect paid to talent structure. Sometimes I would get direction from my manager's manager and my actual manager and it wasn't consistent or worse, in conflict.
The company prides itself on being data-driven, but this is localized in the outward facing side of the business and is not consistent or strong in internal operations. Some corporate teams do not make their analyses and data visible to stakeholders in the company so that their conclusions cannot be questioned.
The company's strong internal tech arm could be indispensable, but often chases the shiniest object and works on solutions because that solution is cool and fun to work on, and not necessarily because the problem it aims to solve is critical or even exsists.
The average age of an employee in the company is mid-twenties to early thirties. Salary employees are so easily offended that it makes it difficult to do your job. Hard conversations are necessary no matter the organization, and Home Chef has no capacity to have them. Feedback is almost always anonymous and not a two-way conversation which makes it difficult to action upon. Interpersonal issues between two people are typically communicated back and forth using a third person, which doesn't make sense.
