How about a knuckle sandwich to go with that kale and quinoa?

Blue Apron — the gourmet meal-kit delivery service whose rapid growth has spurred chatter that it could go public as soon as next year — has been struggling not only to keep up with demand but with a troubling spate of violence among workers at its Jersey City, NJ, distribution warehouse, an investigation by The Post has found.

Just three weeks ago, on Sept. 20, bedlam erupted inside the facility as three fights broke out during a single evening shift — prompting a frightened team of corporate supervisors to flee the premises, according to eyewitnesses.

In one of the scuffles, a male worker in the warehouse’s refrigerated packing room shoved a co-worker’s head into a meal-kit box half-filled with ice, frozen meat and veggies, says Lowell Hensley Jr., who was working one assembly line over.

“One had the other in a headlock — he was basically choking him in the box,” Hensley told The Post in a recent interview. “It went on for maybe about six seconds. Then everyone realized they weren’t playing, and some of the other employees broke it up.”

About an hour later, two female workers were pulled apart by co-workers after one pushed the other’s head in an escalating shouting match, according to two employees who spoke on the condition The Post wouldn’t use their names.

In a third scuffle, three workers dashed outside to fight — with a supervisor in hot pursuit — after one of them shoved and threatened a co-worker.

“One guy took his smock off” as he ran out, according to Hensley. “It was like one of those videos in jail, where a fight breaks out and everyone stops what they’re doing and gets rowdy.”

It got so bad a while ago that some employees regularly brought knives and razor blades to work, adds Saquina Johnson, a 20-year-old former employee who worked at the Jersey City fulfillment center for most of last year.

“Some people were saying they were used for opening boxes,” Johnson said. “Others said they needed to protect themselves.”

Rising concerns over weapons and violence prompted management last fall to post a sign, “No Firearms,” next to the main entry gate. Today, all workers pass through a metal detector and are subject to having their bags checked as they report for their shifts.



‘It was like one of those videos in jail, where a fight breaks out and everyone stops what they’re doing and gets rowdy.’ - Lowell Hensley Jr.

None of the three employee dustups at the facility, which employs more than 1,000 full- and part-time workers, was reported to police. But they have fueled chatter among workers ever since.

The fights are even starting to frighten supervisors.

At a hastily called “emergency meeting” after the three-fight shift, a manager told workers that a group of corporate supervisors, who just happened to be visiting the facility that day, “weren’t too happy about seeing that,” according to Hensley.

The truth is, Hensley noted, “They said they were actually scared to come back again.”

The chaos in Jersey City is an embarrassment for Blue Apron’s 33-year-old founder and chief executive, Matt Salzberg, who leads the well-funded startup and directs his growing army of workers from a lavish loft in Manhattan’s Flatiron District.

If Salzberg and his co-founders can’t improve their warehouse management skills, it could complicate the company’s reported ambitions to take itself public in a 2017 deal that could value the firm as high as $3 billion.

To date, Blue Apron has raised nearly $200 million from Silicon Valley investors, valuing the company at $2 billion.

Jersey City isn’t Salzberg’s only HR headache.

On Oct. 2, BuzzFeed reported incidents of violence were also commonplace at Blue Apron’s West Coast facility in Richmond, Calif. It’s more than just growing pains as the company has grown more than 10-fold over the past two years.

While the Jersey City dustups have been discussed among the workers, management has not publicly discussed the problems — until now.

On Monday, Blue Apron officials confirmed them.

“With over 5,000 employees nationally, it is unfortunate but unavoidable that incidents may occur from time to time, as they do at any employer of our size,” Blue Apron said in a statement. “If they do occur, we take immediate and appropriate action.”

Not all the problems are caused by workers, The Post was told.

Employees said sexual harassment and discrimination from management can be an issue, too.

“One supervisor for the morning shift got fired for sexual harassment — there was a lot of that going around,” one former worker told The Post of catcalls and other types of harassment that helped convince her to leave.

In response, Blue Apron said it conducted sex-harassment training for managers as recently as last week, and that the company’s HR department has an open-door policy and an anonymous tip line.

“We take our policy on sexual harassment very seriously, and would immediately terminate any employee found to violate our policy,” the company said.

Sometimes tempers in the warehouse, two miles southeast of the Statue of Liberty, flare so much that the trouble spills out onto the streets of Jersey City. No amount of building security can stop that.

The Blue Apron building has drawn more than half a dozen police calls since it was opened less than two years ago, according to records reviewed by The Post.

One of the flashpoints for employee fights is the commute. Workers at the out-of-the-way building have to catch a shuttle bus to the light-rail train. Miss the last shuttle bus and you have to take an expensive Uber ride.

On Sept. 27, a 20-year-old worker, Alexsis Herberk, was hauled to jail and charged with aggravated assault and unlawful possession of a weapon after she stabbed a female co-worker at the 45th Street light-rail station, according to an NJ Transit police report.

The two had just finished their night shift.

“I heard they were fighting over a guy — it’s usually something like that,” one Blue Apron worker told The Post in an interview last week, declining to give her name for fear of retribution from the company.

On Monday, a Blue Apron spokeswoman said the company had been unaware of the incident.

“If we determine that any of our employees acted in a manner that is inconsistent with our policies or values, we will of course take immediate and appropriate action, including termination,” said the spokeswoman, Nisha Devarajan, who added that the company would “never take disciplinary action for employees talking to the press.”

Other police calls to the fulfillment center involved accusations of petty theft, as well as seizures of suspected drugs including marijuana and heroin, according to reports.

Still, not every Blue Apron employee in Jersey City seemed unhappy — or even aware that the incidents had occurred.

“They’ve gotten rid of most of the knuckleheads who were causing problems,” said one male worker, about to board the light-rail train to an evening shift last week.

“It’s really not that bad,” said another, flipping over the ID tag around his neck to hide his name. “I’ve been here two months and I only saw one fight.”