An internet start-up is looking to take fruit and veg boxes to their logical conclusion with the launch of Hello Fresh - a grocery delivery service that provides all the fresh ingredients needed to cook a week’s worth of meals from scratch.

Hello Fresh provides recipes and delivers weighed and measured ingredients - including fruit and veg, fish, meat and dry goods- in the quantities needed to cook meals for households of different sizes.

The service is already available in Germany, and went live in the UK at the beginning of the year. It works on a subscription basis, with customers choosing from two plans that provide ingredients for either three or five meals per week.

A three-meal plan costs £39 a week for two, £59 for a family of four and £89 for six, while prices for the five-meal plan range from £49 to £129 a week. Delivery is included. “With Hello Fresh you save time, discover amazing food and provide a healthy diet,” the company says on its website, hellofresh.co.uk.

Hello Fresh claims all its recipes are developed by “world-leading” chefs and contain between 500 and 750 calories per person per meal.

The company has not yet started advertising but has approached food bloggers to encourage recommendations.

Hello Fresh is backed by Rocket Internet, a German start-up ‘incubator’ that runs a range of e-commerce companies, including Zalando, Germany’s biggest online shoe retailer. Rocket Internet is also a backer of online voucher scheme Groupon.

Hello Fresh is one of a number of recipe-based grocery services to launch recently. The concept was pioneered in 2007 by Swedish company Middagsfrid, which has since launched a subsidiary in Germany called KommtEssen, while fellow Swedish delivery service Linas Matkasse has moved into Germany under the Schlemmertüte name. Meanwhile, Freshocracy offers a “farm-to-table grocery and recipe delivery service”, which includes pre-measured pantry items, to households in New York.

Rocket Internet did not respond to requests for comment.

Topics