HelloFresh also wants to deliver itself in Germany

The end of the delivery company Liefery has been known since the end of last year, and customers like HelloFresh have been looking for alternatives ever since. The cooking box provider is now probably relying on its own fleet.

It has been known since November 2020 that the delivery company Liefery will be discontinued. This also has an impact on customers such as Asos, Zalando or HelloFresh. The latter now announced that it will compensate for the loss with its own delivery service. In the Benelux countries, HelloFresh's cooking boxes are already brought to customers by its own fleet of over 600 vehicles, while in Germany this has so far been done by Liefery.

Jan Onneberg and Nils Fischer founded the start-up Liefery in 2014. Since 2017, the majority of Liefery, under the management of Fischer, belonged to the Otto Group, which also includes the logistics company Hermes. So there is in-house competition. In 2020, the investor Advent bought 25 percent of Hermes, which apparently wanted to whip the company into shape. Liefery was not profitable until recently, although demand from Corona led to a 40 to 50 percent increase in sales.

Speaking to Handelsblatt, a Hermes spokeswoman stressed that the decisions should be seen separately, but that both serve the goal of "further developing Hermes' core business within a highly dynamic and competitive market environment."