Useful HelloFresh Statistics – Global (Updated 2026)

Go back in time 15 years and nobody had invented the concept of a meal kit. Bundling up ingredients for specific recipes and delivering them to consumers around the world just didn’t exist.

Today, at-home meal kits are a multi-billion dollar industry. HelloFresh, in particular, has become well known across the world for helping millions of customers explore new ingredients, recipes, and cuisines.

They’ve served more than 4.8 billion meals in the last five years alone. That’s a lot of food.

Let’s explore a few interesting HelloFresh statistics, shedding light on the global meal delivery service.

HelloFresh Statistics at a Glance (2025)

Here are the headline numbers from HelloFresh’s 2025 annual report, the latest full year of results:

• €6.76 billion in revenue, down 11.8% on 2024
• 100.5 million orders and 851.6 million meals delivered
• An average order value of €66.80, with roughly 8.5 meals in every order
• €422.8 million in AEBITDA (adjusted profit), up 5.8% on 2024
• €1.24 billion spent on marketing, 18.3% of revenue
• 18,637 employees at the end of 2025
• 8,654 tons of surplus food donated to charity

The Start Of HelloFresh

When was HelloFresh founded?

HelloFresh was founded in November 2011 in Berlin, Germany. It was rebranded from the original name of Jade 1314.

Who founded HelloFresh?

The HelloFresh founding team was made of Dominik Richter, Thomas Griesel and Jessica Schultz (née Nilsson).

At the time, they were funded by a German startup incubator called Rocket Internet. Dominik came from experience at Goldman Sachs in Finance, whilst Thomas had experience as a strategy consultant. Jessica also came from a corporate strategy background, leaving the founding team without any experience in the food industry.

You can also refer to our history of HelloFresh detailing the story from the very start,

HelloFresh in 2026

What countries does HelloFresh operate in?

Today, HelloFresh operates in 16 countries around the globe. These are:

• Germany
• United Kingdom
• Australia
• France
• Austria
• United States
• Belgium
• Canada
• Switzerland
• Luxembourg
• New Zealand
• Sweden
• Denmark
• Norway
• Ireland
• Netherlands

HelloFresh was in 18 countries during 2025, but announced in February 2026 that it would leave Italy and Spain, as neither market offered a clear path to the scale and profitability it wanted.

What brands does HelloFresh operate?

Over the last 10 years, HelloFresh has expanded its offering to include 8 different brands. These offer different types of meal experiences, including ready-made meals. They’re often found competing in the same markets as the original HelloFresh brand. The 8 brands are:

• HelloFresh – The original meal kit service, delivering premium ingredients and recipes.
• Green Chef – Offers meal kits specially catered towards special, or restricted diets.
• EveryPlate – A budget version of HelloFresh offering simpler recipes suitable for families.
• Chefs Plate – Offers meals that can all be cooked within 15 – 20 minutes.
• Factor (formerly Factor75) – Fresh prepared meals in the USA and Canada, now expanding into Europe, and on trial in US supermarkets since early 2026.
• YouFoodz – Fresh prepared meals available in Australia.
• Good Chop – Premium butcher subscription in the USA.
• The Pets Table – Pet food subscription available in the USA.

Meal kits are still the core of the business, but ready-made meals (mainly Factor and YouFoodz) now bring in more than a quarter of the group’s revenue (more on that below).

Is HelloFresh an environmentally friendly company?

In 2020, HelloFresh announced that it had become the first global carbon-neutral meal kit company by offsetting 100% of its direct carbon emissions. That claim didn’t last: in October 2023 a Berlin court ruled that HelloFresh could no longer call itself climate neutral, because it couldn’t show that the carbon credits it bought delivered what they promised.

Its more recent progress is easier to measure. Since its YouFoodz kitchen in Australia switched over in 2025, all 28 of HelloFresh’s own production sites run on renewable electricity, and 96% of the group’s electricity came from renewable sources. Its meal kit business has also cut the food waste it sends to landfill or incineration, per euro of revenue, by 78% since 2019.

What is HelloFresh’s carbon footprint?

HelloFresh reported total greenhouse gas emissions of 2.43 million tons of CO2e in 2025, down 13% on 2024. Almost all of it (98%) comes from its supply chain rather than its own sites, and the ingredients themselves account for about 1.97 million tons.

Divide that by the meals delivered and it works out at roughly 2.9 kg of CO2e per meal in both years (our calculation, from HelloFresh’s reported totals).

Not everything is moving the right way, though. In March 2025, HelloFresh lowered its own 2025 food waste and emissions reduction targets, saying falling customer numbers had left its production sites less efficient and made the original goals almost impossible to reach.

How much packaging is used in HelloFresh deliveries?

Back in 2020, HelloFresh calculated that 97 grams of cardboard, plus 38 grams of plastic, were used to serve every single meal on average.

It now reports the total weight of packaging instead. In 2025 HelloFresh used 106,929 tons of packaging, which works out at roughly 126 grams per meal delivered (our calculation). About 80% of that was paper and cardboard, and 82% was recyclable.

Be careful comparing the two years: HelloFresh counted much more ingredient packaging in 2025 (23,129 tons, up from 12,782 tons) as its supplier data improved, while the boxes, liners and ice packs fell. Packaging for ready-made meals and pet food is included too.

HelloFresh Financial Performance

HelloFresh Revenue Growth

HelloFresh grew its global revenue every single year from its founding in 2011 until 2022. Revenue then flattened out for two years, before falling 11.8% to €6.76 billion in 2025 as HelloFresh cut back on marketing and chased more profitable customers rather than more customers.

Here are the exact figures for each year:

Where does HelloFresh’s revenue come from?

Meal kits still make up most of HelloFresh’s sales, but ready-made meals (mainly Factor in North America and YouFoodz in Australia) are now 28% of revenue. North America is by far its biggest market, bringing in 62% of group revenue in 2025.

Meal kits are also far more profitable. In 2025 the meal kit business earned an AEBITDA margin of 13.5%, while ready-made meals ran at a small loss (−1.2%) after production problems at Factor in the US.

Marketing Expenses (% of Revenue)

With the meal kit business model, marketing expenses make up a very significant portion of costs. HelloFresh spends an incredible amount of money on advertising, local campaigns, affiliates and welcome discounts. Let’s see how that looks in absolute figures.

HelloFresh spent €1,238 Million on marketing expenses in 2025, €200 million less than in 2024. Against revenue of €6.76 Billion, that resulted in marketing expenses costing 18.3% of revenue.

Let’s see how that’s changed over the last few years:

It’s amazing to see the impact of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, over halving the cost of marketing compared to global revenue. They still haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels of marketing spend, and the cuts have gone further in 2026: marketing fell to 14.9% of revenue in the second quarter.

HelloFresh Profit Figures

As with most Startups, HelloFresh spent the first 7 years of operation making a net loss. HelloFresh first made a profit in 2019. The figures displayed represent AEBITDA and brackets ‘()’ represent a loss.

To visualise how insane that profit growth was in 2020, check out this graph. 2025 was the first year since 2021 that AEBITDA went up, as a cost-cutting program saved HelloFresh €160 million.

The Growth of HelloFresh

HelloFresh Order Growth

Alongside strong revenue growth, HelloFresh saw order volume increase every year from 2012 until 2022. Orders have now fallen three years in a row, but HelloFresh still handled over 100 Million orders in 2025: 53.7 million in North America and 46.9 million across its international markets.

Delivering Millions of Meals

Unsurprisingly, the increase in orders correlates with huge increases in the number of meals HelloFresh have delivered. In 2022 and 2023, HelloFresh delivered over 1 billion meals each year. That’s a lot of food. In 2025 it delivered 851.6 million meals, the fewest since 2020, though the average order grew slightly to around 8.5 meals.

How much food waste does HelloFresh create?

Inevitably, when delivering millions of meals, there will be food waste. This happens at various points in the supply & packing processes, as low-quality foods are discarded or there are surplus ingredients after all customers have been served. The figures below are the food waste HelloFresh sent to landfill or incineration.

Food waste increased dramatically in 2021 alongside the increase in orders. However, it appears HelloFresh have improved their handling of fresh ingredients and significantly reduced food waste in 2022 despite another increase in meals served. In 2025, the amount sent to landfill or incineration fell by 37% to 2,147 tons.

Most of HelloFresh’s food waste never reaches landfill at all. In 2025 it produced 20,503 tons of food waste in total, and only about 10% of it was thrown away:

Donations alone made up 42% of all its food waste in 2025, with 33 of its 35 production sites also running an organics recycling scheme for food that can’t be eaten.

How many employees does HelloFresh have?

The average number of HelloFresh employees in 2025 was 19,065, down from a peak of 21,783 in 2024, as HelloFresh closed and consolidated production sites to cut costs. That’s still incredible growth from just over 1,000 employees in 2016. This figure includes head office staff, as well as staff at the HelloFresh packing facilities.

By the end of 2025 HelloFresh had 18,637 employees. The biggest workforces were in the United States (7,665 on average in 2025), Germany (3,122), Australia (1,653), the United Kingdom (1,569) and the Philippines (1,544).

HelloFresh in 2026 So Far

HelloFresh’s first half of 2026 shows the same trend: fewer orders, but customers who spend more on each box.

About €25 million of the profit drop came from extreme winter weather disrupting deliveries in early 2026. In September 2026 HelloFresh cut its outlook for the year, now expecting revenue to fall by 9% to 11% (at constant currency) and AEBITDA of €350 to €370 million, after deeper marketing cuts slowed new customer sign-ups. Results for the first nine months of 2026 are due on 5 November 2026.

Data Sources

We hope this list of HelloFresh statistics was useful. All of the data presented has been sourced from my own experience, along with the following sites:

HelloFresh Investor Publications (Annual Report 2025, quarterly statements) – https://ir.hellofreshgroup.com/en/publications

HelloFresh Non-Financial Report 2024 – ir.hellofreshgroup.com (PDF)

HelloFresh Group ESG – https://www.hellofreshgroup.com/en/esg/

RetailDetail – ‘HelloFresh may no longer call itself climate neutral’ (October 2023) – https://retaildetail.eu/news/food/hellofresh-may-no-longer-call-itself-climate-neutral

Capital Markets Day Presentation – https://ir.hellofreshgroup.com/download/companies/hellofresh/Capital_Markets_Day/CMD_Final_Presentation.pdf

Inc.com Article – ‘The worlds most ruthless startup’ – https://www.inc.com/magazine/201808/burt-helm/hellofresh.html

About Food Box Mate

Food Box Mate is an independent website run by a meal kit enthusiast based in Australia. No research is sponsored by HelloFresh, and I endeavor to provide the most accurate information possible. If you spot any issues, please contact me directly at david@foodboxmate.com.

Please feel free to use any statistics listed on this page, with attribution appreciated.

I’ve also reviewed HelloFresh in Australia, which you might like to check out.