Using Technology to Take
a Bite Out of a Multitrillion
Dollar Industry
From vegetable fields to cutting boards, HelloFresh’s culinary and sourcing teams work tirelessly to ensure the entire recipe-
development process is as environmentally friendly, sustainable and delicious as possible.
The company focuses on every step of the farm-to-door journey, shipping meal kits to millions of Americans, each filled with all
of the ingredients necessary to prepare three to five different meals. When families are counting on you for dinner, an unreliable
supply chain is not an option.
HelloFresh, the leading global provider of fresh food at home, turned to Intelex, the global leader in environmental, health,
safety and quality (EHSQ) management software, as part of the company’s journey to optimize customer experience and
improve supplier relationships. The Supplier Quality Management Team at HelloFresh is using Intelex to follow documentation
requirements, conduct audits and follow up on supplier corrective actions to ensure families across North America can whip up
delicious dinners.
“The partnership between HelloFresh and Intelex has given us the opportunity to take an out-of-the-box tool and mold it to our
needs,” said Tim DeWolfe, Associate Director, Quality Systems at HelloFresh. “Through the last two years with Intelex, we’ve
set up a document management system that supports Safe Quality Food (SQF) requirements. We’ve transitioned from a costly
supplier management tool that lacks internal oversight to true internal Supplier Quality Management with audit functionality with
Intelex, allowing us to focus time and effort to implement real corrective actions for some of our recurring problems.”
HelloFresh Strives for Industry Leadership
It’s estimated that 40 percent of the food supply in the United States
goes to waste because of over-portioning and wasteful distribution.
Because of the attention to correct portioning, HelloFresh reduces
your dinner food waste by at least 21 percent, resulting in a staggering
reduction of food waste each week. (HelloFresh Global Food
Waste Study) “We want
HelloFresh has over 2,500 employees in the United States who Intelex to be
provide millions of meals that are carefully planned, carefully sourced their go-to,
and delivered to the front door of each subscriber at the time most
every day.”
convenient for them. Behind the scenes, a huge, data-driven technology
platform acts as the engine that drives the business. This allows them
to consistently manage supply chains and demand, and to optimize the
customer experience as well as their business.
In 2017, HelloFresh became the first meal kit company to be SQF
(Safe Quality Food) certified at all locations. This initiative required
the backing of the director of quality, VP of operations, COO, CEO
and president. When it was completed, it was celebrated throughout
the company, since multiple functions beyond food safety were
involved. The SQF certification was important to the company because
it provides a competitive advantage, provides a framework for
food quality efforts and helps DeWolfe and the Quality team
organize priorities.
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By reaching SQF certification, the company is going above and beyond industry standards, anticipating future needs and requirements.
Since “meal kit” is not a defined food area included in SQF requirements, DeWolfe said the company not only is doing what it
needs to do to maintain food safety, but is anticipating what will be the regulatory process for safe quality food for meal kits in
the future. By engaging early in the regulatory process, the company is positioning itself ahead of its competitors and building a
strong foundation that will set it up for years to come.
Keeping the Supply Chain Fresh
HelloFresh has a unique business model in that the company works with hundreds of suppliers and its product—meal kits—
is perishable.
“The most essential part of this process is that procurement, quality, culinary and menu planning are constantly working together
to ensure menus are designed to optimize seasonality. Then, on the back end of that, procurement is working with suppliers to
get the highest quality product, followed by receiving inspection verifying incoming product to standards above and beyond
regulatory requirements,” said DeWolfe.
HelloFresh customers can choose from over 20 weekly recipes
with the option to add “extras” like garlic bread, quick lunches
or desserts. When customers sign up for HelloFresh, they
choose the number of meals they’d like, how many people the
meals should serve (2 or 4) and if there are any diet/cooking
preferences (calorie smart, 20-minute meals, vegetarian and
more). After customers choose their meals for the next week,
they have up to 5 days before receiving their box to make
changes to the order.
“Once that timeline is up, your box hits our queue,” said
DeWolfe. At that point, employees know the quantities of
the various ingredients to procure for the following week. All
of the ingredients for the meats and produce are received
fresh to HelloFresh distribution centers. Through the magic of
technology, the number of total recipes is calculated and the
meal kits are assembled. “In less than 24 hours, your box goes
out with our major logistics partners,” he added.
Several years in, HelloFresh is a leading meal provider and
continues to grow its customer base and expand its supply
chain, but the process has not been without some pain points.
“The personalization
in Intelex allows
for ease of use,
without deleting
functionality.”
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Pain Points: Start-Up to Industry
Leader
According to DeWolfe, the biggest pain point experienced by
HelloFresh was embracing its growth and getting past the idea
that it is a small startup. This meant enhancing its approach
to processes, standard operating procedures (SOPs) and
corrective actions for nonconformances.
He said HelloFresh was attracted to Intelex because the
system provides a framework but also allows a lot of
personalization. He noted an abundance of great functionality
is available within the Intelex solution, but as with any new tool,
the key to success and optimizing value is getting buy-in from
cross-functional teams, which depends heavily on ease of use.
“The personalization in Intelex allows for ease of use, without
deleting functionality,” DeWolfe added.
HelloFresh uses a number of Intelex applications, including
Document Control, Supplier Relationship Management,
Inspection Management, Nonconformance Reporting,
Corrective Action Reporting and modules related to health and
safety management. The next wave of modules the company
plans to onboard includes Training Management and Customer
Complaints.
Intelex Document Control delivered significant value to
HelloFresh from the early onset. The Document Control module
is used by all production employees and is the hub for the
company’s SOPs. It’s the place where employees go to receive
training on the processes that influence their jobs.
According to DeWolfe, it was easy to implement, provides
structure for sign off and review and was “instantly” seen as a
success during the pursuit of the company’s SQF certification.
Teams were able to find documents quickly during the SQF audit.
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DeWolfe calls the Inspection Management module “very, very easy” to implement,
assign and use. It is used by food safety, warehouse, quality and production
employees. As a requirement of SQF, the company has daily, weekly, monthly and
quarterly checks that must be completed, and Intelex allows HelloFresh to easily
satisfy this requirement. The company also uses the Inspection Management
application to conduct supplier quality and food safety audits.
“We have been using this for required food safety audits, and since the inspections all
stay archived within the system, they are easy to find for audit purposes,” he added.
The most recent push was to improve supplier quality processes. The main users of
the Supplier Relationship Management module are quality and food safety teams,
who use it to ensure all documentation and any supplier corrective action requests
(SCARs) are completed. Suppliers are given direct access to the module, where
they can upload documentation and answer any corrective actions. The results have
been impressive, said DeWolfe, “We’ve reduced supplier costs from $1,000 per year
per supplier to $300 per year.” When you have over 600 suppliers, this results in
significant cost savings in a year.
Although use is predominantly procurement- and price-driven, DeWolfe feels that
with a tool like Intelex, the Quality Management System (QMS) has matured enough
that HelloFresh now can focus on the food quality/food safety side.
The next step for the quality team, says DeWolfe, is to foster employee engagement
with the Intelex tools.
“Suppliers are
given direct access
to the module, where they
can upload documentation
and answer any corrective
actions. The results
have been
impressive.”
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Engaging Employees in the Quality Process
While the process has been driven from the top down and usage has been process-driven, DeWolfe said it is becoming a daily
practice for employees. The executive vice president for fulfillment is driving the usage of systems, and by transitioning SOPs and
weekly documents into Intelex, it encourages user adoption by employees.
The company’s next big implementation focuses on getting employees more familiar with the task manager. “Since multiple
functions are starting to use a broader range of applications available in the solution, with a high focus on action resolution, we
need to transition the mindset from opening Intelex every other day to checking Intelex multiple times per day,” said DeWolfe.
DeWolfe said the company continues to educate employees as new functions and applications are added. DeWolfe’s goal is to
ensure that employees understand the potential value the solution can bring to their jobs. “We plan to do tours where we will
hold lunch-and-learns followed by weekly follow-ups on tasks,” said DeWolfe. The more employees understand the value of the
system, the more likely they are to use it and the more benefit the company as a whole will experience, he added.
DeWolfe believes that by using the Intelex Task Manager every day, employees will get into the mindset of assigning and
completing tasks.
“The first thing that every person should be doing is checking the Task Manager,” he added. “To me, this brings the one-off
mindset of ‘we have a quality system’ to the sustainable mindset of ‘we use a quality system.’ We are currently very application-
specific, and certain people learn modules but never dig into others. We want Intelex to be their go-to, every day.”
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Business Is Booming DeWolfe says that “leadership and opportunity” drew him
to HelloFresh, while the opportunity to really drive quality
The future looks green at HelloFresh, in more ways than one. improvement and build culture keeps him there.
Habits formed during the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine, Great leadership has resulted in an “incredible” culture at
including more at-home cooking and ordering groceries online, HelloFresh, said DeWolfe, adding: “Everyone at this company
have contributed to a huge uptick in business for HelloFresh has a drive to provide customers with the best experience
both in the United States and worldwide. possible and you can feel it every day (in the office or not). The
last and final driver for me is that I feel that we are trying to
As reported by HelloFresh in its Q2 earnings report and other
change the model of the food industry. Grocery stores waste
sources, the number of orders and revenue more than doubled
more than 40 percent of food; we greatly reduce that.”
year-over-year (YOY) for the company. Its quarterly revenue
grew 123 percent YOY and customers around the globe
placed 18.1 million orders in Q2 2020, which corresponds to
an increase of 103 percent YOY. Despite temporary capacity
constraints, HelloFresh was able to grow its active customer
base by 74 percent YOY to 4.18 million.
“The growth we’ve been seeing in the last months has been
exceptional, as both new and existing customers have made
HelloFresh their go-to choice for cooking at home. I am proud
that we could validate our customers’ trust as reflected in high
recurring order rates and larger baskets than ever. We see clear
indicators how customers have started to form new habits
and expanded their share of weekly HelloFresh meals as they
are spending more time at home”, says Dominik Richter, co-
founder and CEO of HelloFresh.
The company’s efforts to sustain business continuity have been
rewarded, and tools like Intelex have helped the business thrive
even in uncertain times. HelloFresh has been able to mitigate the
impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its supply chain because of its
diverse number of suppliers and its management of its supply chain.
The supply chain is not the only focus of the company’s
sustainability efforts. Sustainability in general is an important
aspect of business at HelloFresh. The company has instituted
several initiatives that target waste reduction, including using
only lightweight packaging, avoiding heavy or excessively
large packaging and using recyclable packaging and materials
whenever possible. The company uses data analytics to predict
customer orders to minimize food waste throughout the supply
chain. And in August 2020, HelloFresh announced a new
initiative to offset 100 percent of its carbon emissions globally,
making it the first global carbon-neutral meal kit company.
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“Grocery stores
waste more than
40 percent of
food; we greatly
reduce that.”
Since 1992, Intelex Technologies Toronto, Denver, US Office UK Office
Inc. has
ULC has been
been recognized
recognized as
as aa Headquarters 2000 S. Colorado Blvd, Tower 1, Fora - Thames Tower
global leader in environment,
70 University Avenue, Suite 800 Suite 2000, Denver, CO, 80222 Station Rd., Reading, RG1 1LX
health & safety and quality (EHSQ)
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management solutions. Its innovative
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