Philip Doran, CEO of HelloFresh UK & Ireland, spoke to InternetRetailing about his expanding role and growing the meal-kit subscription further.
What are the main lessons you learnt from your role in Ireland?
I had the exciting opportunity to introduce the HelloFresh concept to Ireland as the first employee in the country. The business was already successful in other markets, and this was a chance to build something from the ground up, with the guidance and support of the established global team.
My experience with launching HelloFresh Ireland has made me laser-focused on quality and customer experience. I packed boxes myself when we first started, as I want customers to open their box and feel like everything has been chosen and packaged with the same care as it would be if they had selected the items themselves in a store.
At the beginning, I also read all customer feedback to figure out how to keep improving the offer. That’s taught me what our consumers value most about HelloFresh, and I want to stay close to their feedback and experience with our product.
In my expanded role as CEO of UK and Ireland, I’m hoping to maintain that focus and help the team continue their trajectory.
And looking ahead, what are your ambitions as the UK CEO of HelloFresh?
The UK team has done incredibly well, and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to help them build on their success to date. My experience in Ireland has taught me what makes customers love HelloFresh and I’ll be doubling down on what feedback tells us works. We want to make home-cooked dinners an enjoyable experience for more and more UK households.
In the first instance, we’ve been looking at further expanding choice and boosting quality. We’ve already upgraded our core menu and introduced more premium ingredients, like salmon, at no additional cost. Also, every meal now includes at least two fruit or veg, and we’re incorporating more exciting and exotic produce like asparagus, pomegranate, pak choi and samphire. We’ll continue to focus on improving midweek dinners, taking out the stress and adding variety, taste and excitement.
The recipe box subscription market is a competitive one, how does HelloFresh acquire new customers?
The meal-kit sector is relatively young but incredibly dynamic and ambitious, which makes it an exciting space to be in. There is a huge market to explore across the dining space and there is still plenty of room to disrupt. I hope to see the whole sector grow as people continue to change the way they eat.
We know from feedback that customers come to us for inspiration, variety and convenience so we’ll keep focusing on what we know works to keep our customers happy and encourage more people to try our offer.
We want to continue to earn a place at dining tables across the UK with further improvements like increased menu choices, more personalised swapping options and making sure we continue to provide fresh ingredients.
What motivates me most is listening carefully to our consumers to ensure we meet their needs with great choice, variety and quality.
For customer retention, are there any particular strategies that you use to limit churn?
Retention is a key focus area for me, and I’m proud of the level of loyalty we enjoy among our customers. We’re continuing to look at feedback and we’ll keep evolving the product to exceed their expectations.
For example, customers tell us they love the inspiration and variety HelloFresh offers, so we’ve tested machine learning-based menu recommendations with great results. I’m excited to roll this out for more customers.
We’re also rolling out a loyalty scheme which will offer our most loyal customers exciting rewards. There will be a level of recognition for those who have been long-standing customers with rewards from the get-go – and many more incentives to keep cooking with us.
Our goal is to win dinnertime – retaining customers by continuing to offer them a product they love.
In March, a HelloFresh survey found that more than a third of parents see high costs as limiting the variety of meals their families try. Is a food subscription more than just convenient dinners — does it boost choice?
Absolutely. In addition to taking the stress out of dinner, HelloFresh adds variety, taste and excitement. It’s a chance for customers to browse over 50+ recipes every week and find inspiration, try new cuisines, and use ingredients which may be less familiar to them.
Expanding choice is a priority area for us – with customisation a key focus. For instance, being able to change your protein.
Meal kits can also help with food waste. To try something new, customers would usually need to go out and source full-size ingredients but with HelloFresh the components arrive pre-portioned and in the correct amount, making it easier to introduce new flavours and ingredients with less waste.
We provide both variety and flexibility through a personal, worry-free solution for delicious home-cooked food.
While the pandemic drove rapid growth and scaling, we now have the opportunity to double-down on customer experience and product quality. Expanding choice is central to this, and we continuously review consumer feedback to exceed expectations.
This year, we’ve made meaningful product improvements, including increasing the amount of fruit and vegetables in every dish and adding salmon to our core menu. These changes help families explore new meals affordably, making mealtime both exciting and sustainable.
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