HelloFresh’s growth strategy is based on three main levers:

1. Total addressable market (TAM) penetration - growing the core business and increasing the penetration in all existing markets

2. TAM expansion: Launching new geographies, internationalizing our existing brand portfolio, and expanding our offering by building new ventures or acquiring further companies

3. Better monetization of our customer base: Expanding our product range to other categories and previously non-penetrated meal occasions such as lunch and breakfast

Our Strategic Product Development and Strategy & Expansion teams are crucial to ensuring HelloFresh performs across all three of the levers. Both are led by Dr. Nina Wagner, Vice President New Product Development, Strategy, and Expansion, and the teams work in close collaboration with co-founder & CEO International, Thomas Griesel, and CCO Ed Boyes.

Thanks to the three main levers of its growth strategy HelloFresh has achieved significant revenue growth since its inception at the end of 2011.

Continuous improvement and innovation of our product

The Strategic Product Development team's aim is to expand, optimize and innovate our product portfolio. While the original meal kit business was focused on dinner solutions, the team is developing products for other meal occasions, like lunch and breakfast. Their objective is to capture a larger part of consumers' food budget, essentially attracting new customers and offering existing customers an increasing choice of options. They also support local markets by sharing insights and best practices from across the HelloFresh Group. One of their most recent projects is HelloFresh Market which offers a large assortment of products besides meal kits (e.g. side dishes, grocery items, and convenience food solutions) to our existing customers. After a successful launch in the Benelux, HelloFresh has been further expanding the offering to other markets, starting with the US at the end of 2021.

The team is also responsible for setting targets and for developing strategic guardrails for the growing number of markets in the International segment (all markets besides the US).

Serving additional food opportunities like charcuterie boards, allows HelloFresh to capture a larger part of consumers' food budget.

Introducing new markets and brands to the HelloFresh Group

The Strategy and Expansion team is focused specifically on new market entries, brand launches, new verticals/business models, and Mergers & Acquisitions. For new market entries, the team assesses potential future markets for HelloFresh and - if deemed an attractive market to launch in - develops a launch strategy and a market-specific business case. The team manages the launch together with other international functions (e.g. the “launch taskforce”) until they can hand over the full responsibility to the new local market team. Since 2021 alone, HelloFresh has entered four new countries (Norway, Italy, Japan and Ireland), growing its total addressable market by 35 million potential customers.

Regarding brand launches, the team identifies attractive opportunities to selectively expand our US brand portfolio to HelloFresh’s international markets. By introducing new brands with their own distinct value proposition,  we are diversifying our offer and reaching, even more, previously untapped customer segments around the world (e.g. expanding GreenChef to the UK and the Netherlands or EveryPlate to Australia). The team has also supported the development of new business models in the US and worked on multiple M&A processes (Factor & Youfoodz), from target screening to post-merger integration.

In 2020, colleagues attended an event commemorating the opening of the HelloFresh office and the introduction of new employees in Paris.

Data and experience drive decisions

Both teams work with various HelloFresh markets and functions, and they have a deep understanding of the food e-commerce industry, our product portfolio, and customer needs. As is common at a data-driven company like HelloFresh, all of the team’s recommendations are based on solid data analysis and business cases. Data helps to prioritize proposed initiatives, whether it is a product decision or a market launch.

Usually, each project manager gets assigned one project which then will be fully owned end-to-end. Due to the constantly changing focus of the teams, all members are generalists who come with strong analytical skills and strategic thinking, and who have usually gained extensive project management experience. This is why the teams also serve as talent pools for HelloFresh, and many of its members have stepped up into leadership positions within the company after a relatively short time within the team.

Are you interested in joining Strategic Product Development, Strategy & Expansion, or another HelloFresh team? Take a look at our open positions here. 

The team at this year's summer team event and boat trip to the river Havel in Berlin.