HelloFresh expands to Italy

Meal kit delivery service HelloFresh has launched in Italy. This is the second European expansion this year, after the company set foot in Norway this summer. The service is now active in 9 European countries.

HelloFresh is known as a leading food subscription company, delivering meal kits to customer’s doorsteps with ingredients and recipes. Italy can now be added to a list of 9 European countries in which the subscription service operates, including its home country Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg, France and the Netherlands as well as Austria, Switzerland and Sweden.

A new market

Compared to other European countries, the meal kit market in Italy is still young. This is partly because Italians prefer to cook at home instead of ordering meals, a local food industry consultant explained in an interview. HelloFresh therefore says it wants to ‘establish and define the sector consisting of 260 million households.’

The company will start out big, with around 75 percent of households being able to order meal kits at the beginning of the launch. The remaining households will follow in the near future, HelloFresh says in its press release.

The Italian market is ready for meal kits.

“We are looking forward to broadly establishing and leading the meal kit category in Italy”, co-founder Thomas Griesel says. “Our thorough analysis has shown that the Italian market is ready for meal kits and that the country offers great conditions to expand our total addressable market.”

New office and fulfilment center

To start operations at a high level, the food service has opened an office in Milan as well as a new warehouse. The fulfilment center is located in the Lodi province, not far from the city. The company is also set on sourcing local ingredients, providing traditional Italian recipes as well as recipes from 15 international markets.

Almost 4 billion euros in turnover in 2020

In the second quarter of 2021, HelloFresh delivered 254 million meals and accounted for 7.7 million active customers. Last year revenue more than doubled, amounting to a total turnover of 3.75 billion euros. It is no wonder that the company entered the top 10 biggest ecommerce companies of the Netherlands, which was only released this month.