How Hello Fresh Conquered America

HelloFresh blew past 100 competitors to become the No. 1 meal-kit company on the planet. The German startup is winning—but at what cost?

- Burt Helm

Dominik Richter is not a chef, a gourmand, or a food snob. It’s a Tuesday in March, and the 32-year-old in a hoodie has chosen to lunch at a kale-and-juice joint that could easily make you think you’re in Los Angeles, except it’s in Berlin. But rather than opine over the lactose-free yogurt dressing on the Super Green Detox salad, Richter is stabbing his pumpkin seeds and lettuce as if to establish dominance over the leafy prey.

It’s tough to discern whether Richter, the co-founder and CEO of HelloFresh—known for delivering the ingredients for Instagram-perfect home-cooked meals like Argentinian-Style Cod With Almond Herb Chimichurri and Chicken Thighs in Kimchi Sauce With Asian Pear Slaw, and now the No. 1 meal-kit company on the planet—actually derives any gustatory pleasure from food. “We’re in the business of creating meal solutions for different meal occasions,” he explains, perhaps thinking I’d never before heard of the concept called dinner.

Richter doesn’t seem to much care for the social aspect of food, either. He’s not a fan of work coffees or breakfast meetings or this lunch, for instance. He prefers to put his head down and work. “Leading by example,” he says with a German-accented lilt, explaining how he’s managed to become the king of a brutally competitive industry that at its peak had more than 100 contenders. “Being the one that is very structured, very motivated, very hands-on, doing everything that needs to get done.”