At HelloFresh, every recipe still starts the same way it always has: with real people, real ingredients, and real opinions around the tasting table. What has changed recently is how quickly those chef-created recipes can move from the test kitchen to your dinner table.
Behind the scenes, HelloFresh has begun using new AI-supported tools to help speed up the production of recipe cards, handling elements like layout and formatting that once took weeks or even months to complete. What used to be a long, manual process can now happen in hours, allowing our culinary teams to spend more time where it matters most: cooking, tasting, and refining recipes.
From the test kitchen to the dinner table.
“After years of serving millions of customers around the world, HelloFresh has built the world’s largest recipe database, paired with a wealth of proprietary insights into what people love to cook and eat,” said Assaf Ronen, Group President and CEO for HelloFresh US. “This depth of culinary data is a key differentiator that allows our technology to bring together creativity, personalization, and speed in a way that elevates the home-experience for every customer.”
While technology helps connect insights with speed, the creative spark behind every recipe remains deeply human.
“Every dish we create starts with trained chefs who live and breathe food,” writes Kristin Bryan, Senior Director, Culinary Innovation at HelloFresh. “Culinary professionals who buy too many vegetables at the farmers market because the colors were too beautiful to resist. They are also parents who share meals with their kids, people who argue about the right level of heat in a chili crisp, or those who chase nostalgia or curiosity or comfort. Chefs who bring their culture, their memories, their guilty pleasures, and their hard-won technique into the test kitchen every single day.”
What This Actually Looks Like in the Test Kitchen
In practice, that support looks less like automation and more like collaboration. Once a recipe is developed by chefs, AI-assisted tools help translate that work into a polished recipe card, but every step still includes human review. Culinary teams, editors, and food stylists check instructions for clarity, accuracy, and realism, ensuring what’s printed reflects how the dish actually cooks at home.
That human oversight matters, especially because cooking isn’t exact. Ingredients behave differently, preferences vary, and no two home kitchens are the same. At HelloFresh, we know that even with better tools, mistakes can happen, and when they do, they’re addressed by people, not systems. Feedback from customers continues to play a role, helping teams adjust language, timing, and techniques.
Overall, the goal isn’t perfection at scale. It’s progress with intention.
By reducing the time spent on production and layout work, these tools help free up capacity for culinary teams to test ideas, explore new cuisines, and refine dishes before they ever reach a box. The result is not fewer humans in the process, but more time for the human parts that matter most, like taste, intuition, and care.
While technology helps connect insights with speed, the creative spark behind every recipe remains deeply human.
For customers, that means clearer recipe cards, more dynamic menus, and meals that continue to reflect the thoughtfulness behind every dish.
As Kristin Bryan puts it:
“Our recipes come from humans. From our senses. From our lived experiences. From long conversations around the tasting table. From trial and error, from “what if we…?” moments, from scribbles in notebooks, from the spark of something delicious we tasted on vacation or cooked with our grandmothers. They come from our hearts. They always will.”
The future of food isn’t about code replacing cooks. It’s about giving cooks better tools to do what they already do best and continuing to learn, listen, and cook right alongside the community we serve.
More Ways Technology Supports the HelloFresh Experience
Curious how technology shows up elsewhere at HelloFresh? Explore more behind-the-scenes stories on our blog at the links below.
How HelloFresh and Facilio Are Advancing Food Safety and Sustainability
Food safety and sustainability go hand in hand at HelloFresh. In this behind-the-scenes look, we share how our partnership with Facilio is modernizing refrigeration compliance across U.S. facilities, moving from manual tracking to real-time visibility that supports food safety standards, regulatory compliance, and emissions reduction, all while helping teams work more efficiently.
As customer demand for choice and customization grows, HelloFresh continues to evolve how meals move from fulfillment centers to front doors. This story takes readers inside our Irving, Texas distribution center, where increased automation is helping teams manage complex orders with greater speed, accuracy, and predictability, supporting growth while maintaining the high standards customers expect.
Celebrating Earth Month: How HelloFresh & Rivian Are Reducing Carbon Emissions
As part of its commitment to more sustainable delivery, HelloFresh has expanded its fleet to include 70 all-electric Rivian Commercial Vans across 14 U.S. markets. This Earth Month spotlight explores how the shift to electric vehicles is already saving fuel, reducing carbon emissions, and improving air quality while also supporting smarter routing and operational efficiency.
The future of food is shaped by people, supported by tools that help them cook, learn, and improve together.
