Cheffelo

For those not yet familiar with Cheffelo – could you briefly describe the company, your business model, and which markets you address?

The problem we are solving is dinner – that is our ambition, and it is why we exist. We sell personalized meal kits on a subscription basis, with 150 different dishes to choose from every week, covering a broad range of tastes and household sizes, from two-person to six-person kits.

Today we operate across the Nordics. Norway is our largest market, generating a little over 50 % of revenue, followed by Sweden at close to 37–38 %, with Denmark accounting for the remainder. We have recently entered Finland as a pilot project and have so far completed two deliveries there.

You’re now entering the Finnish market under the Cheffelo brand, with deliveries from your facility in Mölnlycke, Sweden. What made Finland the next market, and where do you see the biggest differences compared to your established markets?

The biggest difference by far is the size of the market, it is significantly underdeveloped compared to Norway, Sweden and Denmark. That means our focus in Finland is not only on winning customers, but on building the category itself: giving people the option to have all the recipes and ingredients for two to five home-cooked meals a week delivered to their door.

Local taste preferences matter too, and every market is unique, so we need to respect how people eat in Finland as we grow. Since Finland already has established meal kit providers, we expect to win market share primarily by growing the category itself, rather than by taking share directly from competitors – we saw the same dynamic play out in Norway, where once you are the market leader in a small category, almost any growth changes the balance in your favor. I would rather be number one or two in a category that is ten times larger than it is today. That is the vision for Finland – grow the category and become the dominant player within it.

The launch in Finland is expected to be profitable from the start, provided customer acquisition costs hold up. What specifically makes profitability possible from day one in a completely new market?

It helps to be precise about what ”profitable” means here: on a contribution margin basis, the business in Finland is profitable from day one. That is because we are using our existing cost structure and production capacity rather than building a new one from scratch. With the overhead already covered by our existing operations, every box we ship into Finland makes a positive contribution – there is no ramp-up or scaling required, since we are already operating at volume.

Customer acquisition cost is a separate consideration, and it also shapes how we think about marketing going forward. During the pilot phase, the impact on the group is immaterial since it is neither generating meaningful revenue nor meaningful cost. Looking further ahead, the pace comes down to how fast we want to grow, and as long as we are acquiring profitable customers, we consider that profitability from day one as well.

Churn among newly acquired customers is high in this category, so I favor good, sustainable growth over a large surge in volume. A big surge creates operational complexity and distorts the numbers you see in the financials for a period, before growth slows again once you lap it. High growth is welcome when it comes, but sustainable growth is what matters most to us over the long term.

Growth in H1 2026 came in well above your long-term target of 7–9 %, and the EBIT margin has followed the same pattern. How do you think about your financial targets at this point – is the current level of profitability sustainable, or should we expect updated targets?

The current level, 7–9 % growth and a 7–9 % EBIT margin is definitely sustainable. What has surprised us positively is that we are reaching the top end of that range at a lower revenue level than we originally expected, which says something about how the model scales.

That said, we were clear already in the Q2 report that growth would not stay at the same pace in the second half, mainly because we are lapping a period with a surge in new customer acquisition. In that kind of environment, revising our financial targets after only a couple of data points does not make sense to us – we want to see more evidence before we change them.

In Q2 2026, your active customers grew by 9.6 % to 72,400, order frequency grew by 8.0 % to 4.91 times, and average order value grew by 6.9 % to SEK 931. Can you explain the background to this growth, and which of the three metrics do you think will be most important for driving growth going forward?

Working on the product and the service has been central to getting us where we are today. Our competitive edge comes from personalization that is so smart it feels simple, a product that fits each household’s needs without asking customers to think too hard about it, combined with operational excellence, meaning we consistently deliver on what customers expect, and preferably exceed it. That combination is what keeps people coming back, which is the most important thing.

You cannot run a business toward a single metric, these three moves together, and it is easy to make one or two look good while the third suffers. But if I had to prioritize one over the long term, it would be growing the active customer base. There will be periods where that fluctuates, when acquisition slows, the customer base grows more slowly, but order frequency tends to go up instead, thus there is a natural dynamic between the three. Over time, though, having more customers is what matters most.

Looking ahead, where do you see Cheffelo one year from now? And what does the strategy look like to get there?

Our strategy does not change. We are focused on solving dinner, and doing it better than anyone else, with meals that unite families. We are not really selling food, customers are paying for a service that removes the friction from having a great home-cooked meal. We will keep focusing on making that personal, easy, and reliable.

Looking a year ahead, I would like to see real materiality coming from Finland. But the core of our business remains Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and continuing to develop those markets and continue taking market share there is something we are very focused on across the whole of the Nordics.

Could you give three reasons as to why Cheffelo is an interesting investment?

We are solving a real problem: any business model worth its salt needs to add real value, and our customers are telling us, both directly and through the numbers, that we do.

We also have a steady, long-term approach. We do not make reactive or spontaneous decisions, which matters when markets go through periods of high inflation or other turbulence. This is a long-term business built around long-term changes in consumer behavior, and we need the model to keep working over time, not just in a short-term, reactive environment.

Finally, we create value for shareholders. That means growing the business profitably, and generating cash returns for our investors. We have paid dividends every year since 2022 and returned a total of 182.4 MSEK to shareholders over that period, with a significant step-up in the amount returned over the last two years.