HelloFresh SE
The HelloFresh Group is a global food solutions group and the world's leading meal kit provider.
ID: 849272045195-24
Lobbying Activity
Meeting with Isabelle Perignon (Director Justice and Consumers)
16 Dec 2025 · Exchange of views on the Digital Fairness Act (DFA)
Meeting with Christine Schneider (Member of the European Parliament)
10 May 2023 · Haltbarkeitsdaten
Meeting with Malte Gallée (Member of the European Parliament) and Delivery Hero SE
29 Mar 2023 · Green Claims
Response to Fitness Check of EU consumer law on digital fairness
13 Jun 2022
HelloFresh SE welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback on the Fitness Check of EU consumer law on digital fairness.
As a global food solutions group and the world’s leading meal kit company, HelloFresh consists of six brands that provide customers with high quality food and recipes for different meal occasions that are offered as part of a recurring service. The company was founded in Berlin, Germany, in November 2011 and operates in 17 markets globally, of which 10 are members of the European Union.
HelloFresh believes that the current rules in the European Union already provide a high level of protection for consumers, also in the digital environment. Additionally, new regulations such as the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act as well as the planned Data Act and Artificial Intelligence Act are further key milestones that will significantly raise the level of consumer protection and create a harmonized regulatory framework for the European Single Market. As a company that puts consumers first, we strongly welcome the introduction of these new legislative proposals. At the same time, we believe that it is important to await and thoroughly examine the effects of these new regulations before proposing further new legislative proposals that target similar areas.
If a revision of consumer law is considered by the Commission in the future, we believe that a differentiated regulatory approach is necessary to acknowledge the increasing complexity of digital business models. Among the variety of subscription and recurring business models, there are significant differences concerning key operational functionalities such as, but not limited to, tangible and intangible goods, perishable and nonperishable goods, and most importantly the distinction between flexible contracts (“cancellation at any time”) and fixed long-term contracts with fixed long-term auto-renewal contract periods. We believe that it is important for any new regulation to differentiate between rolling flexible subscription contracts for consumer goods, where customers receive a regular order and have the ability to amend, cancel or pause at any time, and other subscription contracts, primarily for digital assets or services, where customers are tied into lengthy contracts without the ability to pause or cancel.
HelloFresh provides its customers with the option to amend, cancel or pause their recurring weekly deliveries at any time. By providing perishable products to our customers, we face significantly different challenges as a member of the food market than, for example, providers of digital assets and services. Today, the majority of our sustainability and corporate social responsibility goals and initiatives, from food waste reduction and regional sourcing to fair contracts for farmers, are directly linked to our ability to have long-term planning security with our recurring business model.
We thus highly encourage the Commission to consult with a large variety of companies with recurring and subscription models to understand the specifics of how different types of models function and what regulation would be suitable for what type of model. We believe that a one-size-fits-all approach is not suitable to capture the complexity and differentiation of different models and markets, in particular if the food and meal kit market is to be included. HelloFresh would be very happy to provide the Commission with relevant information and experiences from our business perspective.
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