In 2024, our culinary team prioritized creativity, strategic thinking, and operational efficiency to provide our customers with meals they loved.
At HelloFresh, one way that we measure meal performance is a recipe score system, where customers can rate recipes on a scale of 1-4. This provides our teams with hard data on the dishes that excite our customers most.
This year, three recipes in particular rose to the top of the customer rankings: Kids’ Make & Take Pepperoni Pita Pizzas (part of our Back-to-School push), Sweet Chili Pork Banh Mi Baguettes (from our Fast and Fresh meals lineup), and Loaded Mashed Potato Bar (a standout in our Build Your Own Plate series).
Sweet Chili Pork Banh Mi Baguettes from our Fast and Fresh meals lineup
Curious to learn more about the ins and outs of the recipe development process for these meals, we turned to Marina Schulze, Recipe Developer at HelloFresh. She shared insights about how she and her team created these standout recipes of 2024 and gave us a sneak peek into what she’s excited to cook up for 2025!
Meet Marina, Recipe Developer at HelloFresh!
Can you tell us about the top rated recipes of 2024? What was the team’s approach to developing those recipes? Did you start with a specific ingredient, idea, or trend?
MS: What’s most exciting about seeing the top-performing recipes is that none of them are “business as usual.” The top three ranked recipes came from initiatives that so many people had a hand in. The Kids’ Make & Take Pepperoni Pita Pizzas is part of our “Back to School” push, the Sweet Chili Pork Banh Mi Baguettes is a “Fast and Fresh” menu item, and the Loaded Mashed Potato Bar is part of our “Build Your Own Plate” series. This is very validating as it proves how effective and successful we’ve all worked cross-functionally to deliver unique meal options to our customers.
Can you take us through the process of recipe development for one of the items—from initial concept to inclusion in our HelloFresh meal kit?
MS: Development on my end starts with a “brief” from our Culinary Product Strategy team. We are provided with specific proteins, sometimes cuisines, and guardrails (monetary budget, ingredient quality budget, sometimes diet) and tasked with plugging in ingredients and proposing recipes for each “brief” to discuss as a team. Each of us is assigned four briefs a week that we then present two to three proto-recipes for. We decide as a group as to which proposed recipe is most viable and will work best. We then work on writing, testing, and tasting proposed recipes.
For the Loaded Mashed Potato Bar, we had the “Build Your Own Plate” initiative, and this idea seemed like a perfect fit. We know our customers love our standard mashed potato recipes and made sure to anchor in that. Building upon that base was easy because who doesn’t love bacon, especially when paired with cheese and scallions on fluffy potatoes?
Loaded Mashed Potato Bar from the “Build Your Own Plate” initiative
How do you balance practicality and the ability of our HelloFresh customers to recreate the recipe vs. your creativity as the recipe developer?
MS: It really is a constant balancing act! Our team is composed of amazingly talented chefs. We all have restaurant experience and sometimes have to refrain from getting too cheffy! We receive multiple briefs every week, some with strict guardrails, some looser where we’re asked to get creative and lean more into innovation. We know that the overall customer experience should be fairly simple, quick, tasty, and most of all fun. But we also know that our customers like to experiment and try new techniques to become better cooks, so in those cases, we make sure to use ingredients that are always a homerun.
We are all very supportive of each other and trust one another with constructive feedback. Tweaks are made throughout the process to ensure the best customer experience possible, but if there is ever a doubt in our minds, we ask our colleagues in other departments to take home a recipe and test it for us.
Kids’ Make & Take Pepperoni Pita Pizzas, part of our Back-to-School push
Is there anything surprising about the work that goes into developing a recipe?
MS: I think it might surprise people to learn just how much planning and testing goes into each recipe. Our whole product team is involved in creating a roadmap for the year and it all gets broken down into details that then get briefed to us as the creatives to piece together. Every piece of the puzzle is very intentional.
When it comes to recipe development, what are you looking forward to in 2025? Any food trends you can anticipate incorporating?
MS: I like this tinned fish trend happening… as someone who is Japanese and pregnant, tinned fish has satisfied some sushi cravings. We have a really nice canned tuna that I’d like to make a Salade Nicoise riff with. It also feeds into this other trend of getting enough protein. We are constantly talking about macros in the test kitchen, just for ourselves, not specifically for development. Protein seems like a big 2025 trend. Nutrient rich meals will be a fun challenge.
Marina and her team are always thinking ahead, finding creative ways to make our HelloFresh recipes stand out and taste delicious—and we can’t wait to see what they will be creating in 2025.
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