HelloFresh’s Brownfield Leap: One App to Feed Them All!
Article Summary
HelloFresh was running 6 mobile apps on 2 completely different tech stacks. Their teams couldn't ship features fast enough, and customers were getting inconsistent experiences across brands.
The HelloFresh engineering team tackled this fragmentation head-on with Project PUMA (Unified Mobile App). Instead of a risky full rewrite, they chose a brownfield React Native approach to progressively unify their apps while keeping critical native functionality intact.
Key Takeaways
- Consolidated native Swift/Kotlin and React Native codebases into one brownfield architecture
- Launched new Factor app in Sept 2025 using hybrid native/React Native approach
- Expect 3x faster feature delivery across all 6 apps by end of 2025
- Built internal React Native training program with GenAI-assisted learning for rapid upskilling
- Reduced engineering duplication while maintaining brand-specific customization capabilities
Critical Insight
HelloFresh unified 6 mobile apps serving millions of users across multiple brands without a risky rewrite, positioning themselves to ship features 3x faster.
