HelloFresh Buys Boulder-Based Green Chef

HelloFresh has made a play for scale with a new acquisition — organic and vegan food delivery company Green Chef. As of yet, it’s not known how much the meal kit company paid for the Boulder-based startup.

Green Chef has been in operation for about four years. It was founded by CEO Michael Joseph to delivery vegan and gluten-free food to the masses.

“We were the first certified, organic and gluten-free meal kit company in the U.S., an important distinction to consumers who are committed to eating organically or are sensitive to gluten. With HelloFresh, we will only further amplify our mission to give consumers across the country a simple way to eat and live healthier,” Joseph said in a statement.

For HelloFresh, the company focused on the big bump the acquisition would offer its logistics operations.

“The acquisition of Green Chef will drive synergies for operations, logistics and procurement. HelloFresh will gain its first office and production facility in the state of Colorado and integrate Green Chef into its operations and culinary teams,” the company said.

HelloFresh is a German-based operation founded in 2011 to bring healthy, fresh and organic food directly to consumers’ front doors . It’s most direct competitors in the rather crowded food delivery market are Blue Apron and Home Chef, among many others.

The acquisition news comes as HelloFresh’s business is on something of an upswing of late. According to reports from Recode, the food delivery firm is reporting increased revenue and decreases losses. And though the company — like Blue Apron — is not profitable as of yet, HelloFresh’s net loss is shrinking quarter by quarter, whereas Blue Apron’s is seeing its losses grow.

HelloFresh’s customer base also seems to be expanding. According to the firm’s reporting, users grew to 1.5 million globally, making it much bigger than Blue Apron, whose customer base shrank 15 percent to 746,000 due to lowered marketing spend.

But that figure is a little bit misleading: HelloFresh counts as users any customer that has received a box, free or not. Blue Apron only counts paying customers.