HelloFresh is at the forefront of disrupting a multi trillion-dollar industry at the very beginning of its online transition. HelloFresh is a truly local food product, uniquely suited to individual tastes and meal-time preferences offering delivery of a giant box of delicious food with recipes to enable easy and enjoyable meal preparation for a weekly fee.
HelloFresh aims to provide each and every household in its 7 markets with the opportunity to enjoy wholesome home-cooked meals with no planning, no shopping, and no hassle required. Everything required for weeknight meals, carefully planned, locally sourced and delivered to your door at the most convenient time for each subscriber. Behind the scenes, a huge data driven technology platform puts us in the prime position for disrupting the food supply chain and for fundamentally changing the way consumers shop for food. HelloFresh has local founders across the globe who are able to leverage the global platform, and at the same time ensure that the HelloFresh product in each market truly reflects the local community.
The soft subscription model business enables us to leverage our weekly subscriber touch points to consistently manage supply chains and demand, and to optimize the customer experience as well as our business economics. Customers sign-up for a box containing between 2 and 5 meals per week for a flat fee. If the customer is out of town or unavailable he can easily cancel any week without a penalty provided they notify HelloFresh in advance.
Dominik Richter has been CEO since starting HelloFresh in 2011. He has responsibility for keeping a general oversight of the business and strategy. Prior to HelloFresh, Dominik worked with Goldman Sachs in London. Dominik graduated with a degree in International Business in 2009, and from the London School of Economics in 2010 with a Masters in Finance.
Thomas Griesel has been responsible for the logistics and operations behind HelloFresh since founding with Dominik in 2011. Previously, Thomas had spent time at OC&C Strategy Consultants and worked on a range of his own businesses and ideas. He graduated from with a degree in International Business Administration in 2009, and from the London Business School in 2010 with a Masters in Management.
2011
All the way back in 2011, Dominik and Thomas arrived in Berlin, intent on starting a new and disruptive business. With a love of healthy food, nutrition, cooking, and a desire to make access to healthy food as easy as possible for as many people as possible - starting a Food at Home business seemed the natural choice.
2012
After examining business models from Sweden to Japan to very local ideas, they and a group of like-minded individuals formulated the recipe for HelloFresh. The team started early in 2012 packing shopping bags in Berlin, Amsterdam and London with a view to target the highest density population areas in Europe. Quite quickly, they started getting requests from people outside those areas who all wanted to become a part of the HelloFresh family. Wanting to serve as many people as possible, the team developed a logistics model that enabled them to deliver to every single household across a given country.
2013
The HelloFresh product started to rapidly gain in popularity, as subscribers shared the excitement about their weekly boxes, with friends and colleagues. Subscriber referrals accelerated, as it became clear that HelloFresh had finally solved the “What’s for dinner tonight” problem for its subscribers.
2014
Having launched on the East Coast of the U.S in December 2012, HelloFresh moved to cover the entire country in September 2014. Over the short time since then, HelloFresh has grown rapidly to become one of the largest players in this market.
Questions
1. Do you consider HelloFresh a form of disruptive or sustaining technology?
2. Is HelloFresh an example of Web 1.0 (ebusiness) or Web 2.0 (Business 2.0)?
3. Describe the ebusiness model associated with HelloFresh.
4. Describe the revenue model associated with HelloFresh.