HelloFresh has reported a sharp decline in sales as the struggling food delivery company battles falling demand after the pandemic-era meal kit boom.
The German company was forced to make 900 UK job cuts last year with the closure of a delivery site in Nuneaton, and the demand for meal kits tumbled as revenue fell by more than 11% during 2025.
Sales slumped “against various uncertainties in the macroeconomic environment and a deliberate effort to target a smaller yet more profitable number of customers”, it said.
HelloFresh and competitors such as Gousto and Mindful Chef experienced rapid growth during the Covid lockdowns when people were told to stay at home, and at one point it was projecting revenues of €10bn (£8.6bn) by 2025. However, the market value of the company has collapsed dramatically in recent years, and turnover came in at €6.8bn last year.
The Berlin-based company’s share price has plummeted 93% since its 2021 peak as consumers turned away from convenience meals amid cost of living pressures. It fell 8% in early trading on Wednesday.
HelloFresh has responded with a savings drive in 2024, which led to job cuts and the closure of delivery centres in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. The company had 19,000 employees at the end of last year, down from almost 21,800 the previous year.
It also pulled out of Spain and Italy, saying: “Those markets do not currently offer a clear path to the scale and sustainable profitability.”
Total orders slumped 12% last year compared with 2024 as the number of meals it delivered tumbled by more than 100m.
HelloFresh said it expects a further fall in revenue of up to 6% in 2026, after manufacturing problems in the US caused it to shed customers in the country.
The chief executive, Dominik Richter, said: “Over the past year, we have seen consumer behaviour shifting decisively toward ‘eating real food’ … The debate is no longer simply about convenience, it is about the quality of what is convenient.
“Customers raise the bar constantly – and so must we.”
HelloFresh suffered an even sharper fall in revenues in the US, its biggest market, where it said manufacturing bottlenecks and “meal quality issues negatively affected customer retention” as sales fell by almost 17%. The company also partly blamed high interest rates and Donald Trump’s trade tariffs for making customers more cautious.
