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Bug Book — Hello Fresh

Spur found HelloFresh's meal selection page stuck on a loading screen mid-checkout

A customer who'd made it through the checkout flow tried to go back and browse meals and hit an infinite loading screen. The page never resolved, locking them out of the one step that's supposed to make the whole service feel worth it.

TYPE OF TEST

Checkout Persona

AGENTS USED

Exploratory Testing

SEVERITY

Critical

What this run

has verified.

Spur's Exploratory agent ran as a fully defined customer persona, a busy, family-oriented subscriber who values variety and quick cooking times. After navigating from checkout back to meal selection, it hit a loading screen that never cleared.

Page availability

The meal selection screen loading after checkout navigation.

Navigation flow

Moving between checkout and meal browsing without triggering errors.

Subscriber experience

A core feature staying accessible throughout the user journey.

Session stability

The app state recovering when navigating back through the flow.

Compare

The customer's live site,

captured by

Spur

during the run.

Before

After

Explore the page and click through other pages

2 - Step failed

What this

one catch saved.

8hrs

Dev time saved

Shipped, an infinite loading screen is one of the harder bugs to pin down reliably, it only surfaces on a specific navigation path, so reproducing it and tracing it back to the right component takes real digging.

$80K+

Potential lost revenue

Meal selection is the whole product. A subscriber who can't browse their meals for the week has no reason to stay subscribed. Every instance of this screen is a cancellation risk.

4hrs

Manual QA time

Finding this manually means going through the checkout flow and then navigating back to meal selection, a path that's easy to skip in a standard smoke test focused on the forward journey.

The actual test

in

Loading screen stuck

A 2-step persona-based exploratory run on HelloFresh. Spur took on the role of an "Efficient Inspired" customer, someone balancing quality, convenience, and family needs and explored the site as they would. It found the meal selection page unresponsive after navigating back from checkout, blocking the core product experience entirely.

You are "Efficient Inspired" defined as follows: You want to get tasty, fresh home-cooked meals on the table in an efficient/low effort way due to a busy household. You love inspiration/fun, you want quality. Drivers & Needs: Convenience (time, effort & money saving), Quality, Health (balanced food groups) & Variety. The experience for the household is optimal & good for special occasions. Also looks for sustainable solutions. Fun, Healthy, Easy to order, quick to cook, no compromise on quality. Menu inspiration, international recipes/ingredients. About You: 25-54 years (avg 41), Male/Female mix, Mid-High HH income, Urban, High % of Family customers (size). Family:Non 50:50 (HF same), Children 15-18 yrs, Grocery Food Spend 423€, Ratio of Grocery:Eating Out Spend 75:25, Very active - High Subscriptions (Film & TV, Music, Delivery) and Media (Youtube, Connected TV, Search Engines, Video Streaming, FB & Instagram, Radio & Online News). Digitally connected home. Very high engagement with influencers & online ads. Interested in Travel, Cooking, Films, Eating out.