Shipped to perfection

Sustainability, convenience and affordability haven’t necessarily been terms tied together in the farm-to-table movement, but one company is trying to change that.

HelloFresh is a three-year-old company that supplies the fresh ingredients consumers need to make weekly meals. The meals’ high-quality, pre-portioned foods are created by international chefs and approved by an in-house dietician.

Most meals take about 30 minutes to prepare, and also come with “recipe cards” — which are more like pamphlets — that contain easy-to-follow instructions and photos of what each meal should look like.

Transparency, inclusivity and a user-friendly website platform are all important aspects in HelloFresh’s mission, but the biggest priority is to provide fresh, local ingredients to its home cooks.

“Being local is of the highest priority to us. For example in the U.S., we have locations in Linden, New Jersey, in San Francisco and Dallas, and we do this because we want the time from farm to table to be as minimal as possible,” says Matthew Fitzgerald, vice president of marketing at HelloFresh USA.

Consumers can read profiles of all the current suppliers on the website as well. And recipes from weeks prior are archived in an easily accessible location on the homepage so they can be quickly referenced for both paid subscribers and those just looking for a new recipe.

Subscribers pay anywhere from $69 to $129 per week for boxes with three meals for either two or four people, and can stop their weekly subscription any time.

And HelloFresh has opened up on social media channels, where the hashtags #hellofreshpics and #hellofresh have brought about 10,000 and 20,000 photos on Instagram, respectively.

“I love it because we get to see how customers are interacting with the product [and] how they’re sharing it with their significant other or with their kids,” Fitzgerald says. “It’s a really fun community that’s developing and we’re trying to find fun ways to continue to stimulate that engagement with the brand.”

The concept of prepared meal delivery is not a new one, but HelloFresh has taken an innovative step for consumers with busy lifestyles by giving them more power over the way they want their meals prepared.

“You’re in control of the cooking process and hopefully we’re able to remove some of the stress of shopping along the way,” he says.
 

If you’d like to try Hello Fresh for yourself, sign up at www.hellofresh.com and use the code PRODUCE to get 50 percent off your first order.