Consumers are cutting back on their meal boxes: HelloFresh loses customers, but sees average order sizes grow. Moreover, meal service Factor is experiencing nice growth.
Buying behaviour normalises
In the third quarter, the number of active customers fell by almost 6 %, the number of orders fell by 3.6 % and the number of delivered meals dropped by 2.7 %. As a result, sales fell 3 % to 1.8 billion euros. Meal delivery companies are struggling with a normalisation of buying behaviour after the peak during the pandemic, especially as household purchasing power has been under pressure for quite some time.
Nevertheless, the meal box deliverer sees a positive evolution in the average order value (rising 7.5 % to a record high of 64.2 euros). That increase is due to price increases, product improvements and increasing interest in HelloFresh Market (the shop with kitchen ingredients, drinks and snacks). Customers are also buying more weekly meals per order.
HelloFresh also points to the continued growth of the company’s ready-to-eat offering. Since a few months, the prepared meal service Factor has been available and Belgium and the Netherlands. The ambition is to grow substantially throughout Europe.
