Meal-kit company HelloFresh has announced that it will spend €50 million ($58.91 million) to recruit 1,000 new tech employees across Germany, the United States, Canada and Australia over the next 12 months.
The company and its US rival Blue Apron, along with food delivery companies Delivery Hero and Just Eat Takeaway, have been among lockdown winners, as pandemic curbs that shut restaurants led to more people ordering food online.
The planned expansion, which the blue-chip company said would double its tech team, comes at a time when firms across the world are facing a shortage in labour as economies come out of months-long restrictions.
Competitive Job Market
Dominik Richter, who co-founded HelloFresh with Thomas Griesel and Jessica Nilsson a decade back, acknowledged in an e-mail to Reuters that the job market, especially for technology roles, was very competitive now.
"We're constantly reviewing pay and benchmarking ourselves globally to ensure we offer very competitive total compensation packages," he said without disclosing how much the company was planning to pay the new hires compared to pre-COVID levels.
The expansion comes after the group posted a revenue growth of €1.56 billion and more than 30 million orders in the second quarter of 2021, proving that demand for meal-kits shows little sign of waning, despite lockdowns lifting across many territories.
'Diversity And Inclusion'
The company added that the investment will accompany a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion, focusing on creating opportunities for the diverse workforce. It aims to build on internal talent, as well as hire and retain more diverse talent that reflects HelloFresh’s broad customer base.
Richter added, “These new roles will help us strengthen our reputation as a digital-native food business with technology at its core. It will help us enhance our product offering even further, create a more personalised experience for our customers, and expand into more markets. I look forward to welcoming the new recruits on board.”
News by Reuters, additional reporting by ESM. For more Technology stories, click here. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
