This makes it the first startup of its kind that can boast nationwide delivery. In case you weren’t aware, over the past couple years there’s been something of an arms race happening in the grocery delivery space. There are a handful of different startups that have emerged in the past decade or who aim to rid you of the hassle of physically traveling to a grocery store to do your shopping.
Related: On-demand grocery delivery startup Instacart raises $44 million in VC funding
In one corner, there are on-demand grocery services like Instacart, FreshDirect, and a myriad of others that let you shop online and have items delivered to your door. In the other corner, there are these sort of curated meal kit services like Blue Apron, Plated, and others that send you specific ingredients for meals you cook yourself at home. HelloFresh is one of the latter, and thanks to the recent infusion of cash, its now available to the entire lower 48 — including previously-excluded states like Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and California.
Here’s how it works: HelloFresh subscribers start by choosing a box that contains anywhere from three to five recipes. From that point on, fresh, seasonal ingredients are delivered once per week directly to the customer’s door. In addition to the ingredients, each box comes with a number of easy-to-follow recipe cards to guide you through the cooking process, and since the ingredients are portioned out into exact quantities, both cooking time and food waste are kept to a minimum. The idea is that, unlike on-demand services like Instacart, HelloFresh saves you the trouble of actually shopping for items in any way, be it physically or virtually.
