HelloFresh to spend nearly $60 million for new hires in tight labour market

[September 16, 2021]  (Reuters) - Meal-kit company HelloFresh will spend 50 million euros ($58.91 million) to recruit 1,000 new tech employees across Germany, the United States, Canada and Australia over the next 12 months, the company said on Thursday.

The company and its U.S. rival Blue Apron, along with food delivery companies Delivery Hero and Just Eat Takeaway, have been among lockdown winners, as pandemic curbs that shut restaurants led to more people ordering food online.

The planned expansion, which the blue-chip company said would double its tech team, comes at a time when firms across the world are facing a shortage in labour as economies come out of months-long restrictions.

Dominik Richter, who co-founded HelloFresh with Thomas Griesel and Jessica Nilsson a decade back, acknowledged in an e-mail to Reuters that the job market, especially for technology roles, was very competitive now.

"We're constantly reviewing pay and benchmarking ourselves globally to ensure we offer very competitive total compensation packages," he said without disclosing how much the company was planning to pay the new hires compared to pre-COVID levels.

($1 = 0.8488 euros)

(Reporting by Muvija M in Bengaluru and Linda Pasquini in Gdansk; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

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