Meal kit provider HelloFresh plans to close a manufacturing and distribution facility in the Atlanta area and dismiss 727 workers at the location.
HelloFresh will cease operations at 510 International Park in Newnan, Georgia, starting in July, according to a notice the company filed with the state. The affected employees are maintenance and sanitation workers, forklift operators, warehousing associates, human resources staff and managers, according to the notice.
HelloFresh, based in Berlin, Germany, moved into the Newnan location in 2020 as consumers bought more of its subscription-based shipped meal kits during the first year of the pandemic. The facility marked HelloFresh's first distribution center in the U.S. southeast.
Sales have since faltered, however, and the company warned investors in March that it wouldn’t meet its revenue and cash-flow targets for 2025. Its shares have fallen 57% since the beginning of the year to $6.35 as of May 9.
HelloFresh will close the Atlanta operation to “leverage existing sites across the U.S. to serve our customer base,” spokeswoman Abigail Dreher said in an emailed statement.
“As the meal-kit segment has stabilized, we are now focused on diversifying our offerings and optimizing our operations network to best serve our customers and grow profitably,” she said.
In 2022, HelloFresh shut down operations at 2041 Factory St. in Richmond, California, at a more than 109,000-square-foot facility and laid off 611 workers. The company cited the property's age and inefficient layout for the decision to downsize its footprint in the region.
At the time of the California closure, HelloFresh said it would shift some of its production operations to other distribution centers that were newer and more efficient. HelloFresh operates distribution centers in the Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Minneapolis, New York and Phoenix markets, according to CoStar data.
Blue Apron, a rival meal-kit provider, was acquired in November by Wonder Group for $103 million.
Rooker Co. owns the 208,930-square-foot cold-storage facility in Georgia where HelloFresh is closing operations, according to CoStar data. The building previously was occupied by Sygma, a subsidiary of Sysco, the largest U.S. food distribution company.