World Food Day (October 16th) is about more than just calories and nutrition. It’s about honesty, it’s about ending hunger and it’s about identity. 

As our size and global reach has grown, so has our responsibility to take action. Across our operation we have taken steps to forge lasting partnerships with organisations seeking to ensure everyone has access to nutritious food, regardless of their circumstances. 

For example, we have donated over a million free meals in the US this year through the ‘Meals with Meaning’ program, and fully expect to hit 1.5 million by December. We also donate weekly surplus food from our recipe turnover process, ensuring that we do everything we can to minimise the amount of food going to landfill. Moving into the festive season, we will continue our focus on these efforts, donating thousands of holiday meals across the world. 

On top of our regular donations of surplus food, in 2020 and 2021 we have ramped up our efforts to support communities threatend by food insecurity during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Globally, around a third of all food produced is lost or wasted, which contributes between 6 and 10 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions. This is because when we waste food, we waste labour and the precious resources used to create it. We must take steps to limit this and we’re proud to champion a model which reduces waste by design and is changing the way we think about shopping and eating. 

Food is a critical component of our identity. At HelloFresh, we continue to celebrate it’s cultural diversity and the powerful impact food can make in bringing people together. As a business however, our own identity is based on ensuring we are always doing the right thing by communities and ensuring that we can use our influence and scale to make a positive change. 

We look forward to engaging with many important debates this #WorldFoodDay and focussing our efforts on taking even greater action in the years to come. 

Volunteers prepare food for donation as part of the 'Meals with Meaning' program.