By India Lopez
Editorial & Production Manager
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HelloFresh customers have been hit with a steep increase in the cost of their subscription meal kits, with some households set to pay $24 more every week.
The price increase took effect on 3 August but was communicated to customers two weeks earlier, on 19 July, in an email with the subject line “A fresh update on your subscription”. Customers we spoke to said they had scrolled past the email, not realising it signalled a major price increase.
HelloFresh’s August 2026 price increases
HelloFresh cited the rising cost of “fresh ingredients, transport & packaging” and told customers the price increase would help “support our local Kiwi farmers & growers”.
It listed several improvements being made to its service alongside the price increase, including more menu customisation options and “premium” ingredients. Whether customers are willing to pay over $1,200 more a year for those improvements remains to be seen.
This isn’t the first time Consumer NZ has heard from unhappy HelloFresh customers. In 2025, we awarded the company the “Unsubscribe Impossible” gong in our annual Yeah, Nah Awards for making customers jump through hoops in order to cancel their subscriptions.
That same year, the company was fined $845,000 for breaching the Fair Trading Act by misleading customers in cold calls.
HelloFresh was founded in Germany in 2011 and has since expanded to several European countries, the United States, Australia and Canada as well as New Zealand. It began operating here in 2018.
