HelloFresh has just completed a successful first year of operations in Sweden! We are very proud to have had such a strong start into our 13th market, which crucially paved the way for our expansion further into the Nordics. Launching in Sweden was part of HelloFresh’s global growth strategy, which includes entering into new geographical markets.

What we achieved

With approximately 4.7 million households, the Swedish market offers great potential for HelloFresh. In addition, Sweden was one of the first markets to use meal kits, which is why we were especially excited and curious to introduce our product. Consumers in Sweden are familiar with the overall concept, so there was little need to educate them on the benefits of meal kits. We were optimistic that Swedes would welcome our delicious recipes, flexible and fast deliveries, and competitive prices – and they did!

“We are very pleased with our first year in Sweden. We have exceeded our initial goals and had a very positive reception," said Kristian Hald, CEO of HelloFresh in the Nordics. 

Being a global brand that is backed by a highly innovative technology platform and a scalable, state-of-the-art supply chain network, we are able to bring a lot of benefits to our customers in Sweden. We have established an ongoing dialogue with them to better understand their needs and we are continuously improving our service levels – to provide them with the most flexible option on the market. All of this would not have been possible without leveraging our extensive experience and proven synergy effects. 

Upon our launch, we also started to operate a local fulfilment center in Bjuv, near Helsingborg. By now, 150 employees produce the meal kits for our Swedish customers from there. We take pride in sourcing a large amount of our ingredients locally, which includes produce, poultry and meat. Our newly opened office for the Nordics is based in Copenhagen, and is home to a team of around 30 employees.

How we did it

During our first year in Sweden, we continuously grew and expanded our market share. Since the beginning of this year, we have managed to increase the volume of deliveries several times over. 

What was the recipe for our success and rapid growth?

• Since January 2020 we have expanded our service to the regions of Småland, Dalarna, Blekinge and Värmland, including the cities of Vaxjo, Ljungby, Kalmar, Karlskrona, Orebro, Karlstad and Gavle.

• We increased the number of possible delivery days from three to five, and offered new time-slots for the convenience of people working during the day.

• We introduced new tasty recipes and offered a greater choice of twelve different recipes per week.

• We introduced a new preference type “Quick and easy”.

• We started to offer more flexibility to our customers by giving them the “multiple up” and “seamless” options to easily increase the size of meals for when they have guests.

• We improved our entire supply chain by using optimization tools that we developed ourselves. 

Our plans for the future are ambitious. We will further expand our operations, improve our product and offer our customers even more flexibility. With this strategy in place, we are confident that we will eventually be the largest player in the Swedish meal kit market. HelloFresh Sweden is definitely on the right track.