At HelloFresh, food safety and sustainability go hand in hand. That’s why we recently partnered with Facilio to bring our refrigeration compliance into the digital age, creating a smarter, more unified system across all of our U.S. facilities.
By moving away from manual spreadsheets to Facilio’s Connected Refrigeration platform, we now have real-time visibility into our cooling systems, helping us stay ahead of inspections, meet EPA requirements, and reduce emissions along the way. It’s all part of our ongoing commitment to efficiency, transparency, and protecting the planet through innovation.
To learn more about how the partnership came to life (and what it means for the future of sustainable operations), we sat down with the Facilio team for a behind-the-scenes look.
HF: How did the partnership between Facilio and HelloFresh come about, and what were the key goals at the start of this collaboration?
Facilio: The key goal was to provide a comprehensive solution for refrigerant tracking that was available across all locations. This would replace the internal spreadsheets that didn’t provide any type of follow-up tracking. The application would also supply Scope 1 carbon emission values for all the sites involved.
HF: From a technical standpoint, what makes your solution uniquely suited for large-scale food safety monitoring in fast-paced environments like HelloFresh distribution centers?
Facilio: Our application is a SaaS solution with availability at all times of day and allowing dedicated user personas the right level of access ensures data integrity and timeliness.
Can you walk us through how the system works and what kind of data HelloFresh teams now have access to in real time?
Facilio: The application provides a repository for tracking refrigerant leak events against refrigeration and HVAC assets. Through curated forms we capture the necessary data to be compliant with regulations from the Section 608 and AIM act initiatives that the US EPA enforces. The application automates notifications for non compliant actions, missed deadlines, and provides automation for required inspections based on complex regulatory rules.
HF: What challenges are common when digitizing compliance for refrigerated storage, and how did you help HelloFresh overcome them across multiple U.S. facilities?
Facilio: The biggest challenge is getting everyone to understand the different workflows that can exist in the field. Through an onsite session to work out the expectations of the application, weeks of UAT testing, drawing complex workflow diagrams, and providing specific training videos and documents, we were able to make the application a guided experience that the people involved knew how to play their role in the processes.
HF: How does digitizing refrigeration monitoring help reduce energy consumption or environmental impact across HelloFresh’s operations?
Facilio: Visibility into the performance of the assets involved will allow HelloFresh to curate proper actions to reduce leaking situations, which will reduce carbon equivalent emissions. Leaking systems will utilize more energy to provide the cooling that they normally would, so preventing more leaks will lower energy usage.
HF: Looking ahead, how do you see technology continuing to shape food safety, compliance, and operations in the meal kit or broader grocery sector?
Facilio: We see the rapid need for telemetry based slow leak detection to prevent leaks before they put food safety at risk. This kind of solution catches leaks before they are apparent to people handling food preparation or purchasing, which can be days before the food is out of the proper cooling temperature ranges it should be. This type of solution is also beneficial for compliance as it negates the need to run manual inspections periodically, which reduces tracking chase activities and costs of technician labor and materials to perform the inspections.
Digitizing our refrigeration compliance isn’t just about meeting regulations but about doing what’s right for our teams, our customers, and the environment. With Facilio’s help, we’re streamlining our operations, cutting emissions, and setting a new standard for how technology can make food systems more resilient and responsible.
As we continue to grow, we’ll keep investing in solutions that strengthen both our sustainability goals and our everyday operations, because building a better food future starts with how we care for every part of the process.
Read more about our ongoing sustainability efforts here.
