Berlin-based HelloFresh is now leading the $5 billion American meal-kit market.
HelloFresh is now bigger than Blue Apron in the U.S.
The Berlin-based company’s acquisition of organic meal-kit startup Green Chef pushed it past the homegrown Blue Apron.
Rani Molla was a senior correspondent at Vox and has been focusing her reporting on the future of work. She has covered business and technology for more than a decade — often in charts — including at Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal.
Combined with Green Chef — which HelloFresh purchased last week — it controls 36 percent of the market. Meanwhile, U.S.-based Blue Apron saw its market share decline to 35 percent last month, compared to 48 percent in February 2017.
As of February, HelloFresh took home about 33 percent of U.S. meal-kit sales, up from 24 percent last year, according to Earnest Research, a company that analyzes anonymized credit and debit card data from millions of people.
Even without its Green Chef acquisition, HelloChef would have soon overtaken Blue Apron, which has been struggling with warehousing issues and customer retention.
Overall, U.S. meal-kit sales grew 40.7 percent in 2017, according to Earnest Research.
HelloFresh went public in November 2017, four months after Blue Apron. In its latest earnings report, we learned that its sales grew five times faster than Blue Apron last year, and HelloFresh is gaining customers at a quicker clip.
HelloFresh grew its U.S. revenue 90 percent last year to $678 million. Meanwhile, Blue Apron, which only operates in the U.S., saw its revenue rise 11 percent to $881 million. Neither company is profitable, but HelloFresh is much closer to profitability, especially in its U.S. segment.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
