HelloFresh made €369M in the pandemic — then lost €136M when kitchens reopened

HelloFresh is a German meal-kit company that went public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in November 2017 at a €1.7 billion valuation. The business model — pre-portioned ingredients and recipes delivered weekly — was the same one Blue Apron had taken public in the US five months earlier.

The pandemic was HelloFresh's moment. With restaurants closed and households cooking at home, revenue surged from €1.8 billion in 2019 to €3.7 billion in 2020 and €5.9 billion in 2021. Net income hit €369 million in 2020. The company expanded aggressively, hiring 14,635 people by 2021 and opening distribution centres on multiple continents.

When restaurants reopened, the spike reversed. Revenue peaked at €7.7 billion in 2024, then fell to €6.76 billion in 2025. Net income swung from €127 million profit in 2022 to a €136 million loss in 2024. On 8 March 2024, shares fell 46% in a single day after an earnings warning.

The retreat was global. HelloFresh launched in Japan in April 2022 and withdrew in December 2022 — eight months — admitting it had failed to achieve reasonable ROI. It filed for bankruptcy in Tokyo in September 2023 with 3 billion yen in debt. Distribution centres closed in the UK and US. In early 2026, operations ceased in Italy and Spain. The pandemic had built a €7.7 billion business on a habit that lasted two years.

Expanded capacity and entered markets on a two-year spike, then lost €136M when kitchens reopened; Japan lasted eight months, Italy and Spain were abandoned.

The pandemic spike was circumstantial, not structural: when restaurants reopened, the convenience premium of a meal kit could not compete with the experience of eating out

Aggressive expansion during the peak — 19,595 employees by 2022, distribution centres on multiple continents — committed fixed costs to a revenue base that was already reversing

The Japan withdrawal after eight months and the Italy/Spain exit showed the model could not adapt to local food cultures; a German meal kit does not translate to Tokyo or Naples

The 46% single-day stock drop was the market repricing the business from 'pandemic winner' to 'cyclical retailer' — the multiple that had been applied to growth was applied to decline

A pandemic spike builds capacity for demand that will recede. Distribution centres, headcount and market entries become fixed costs against shrinking revenue. The meal kit was a lockdown product.