I think most people are familiar with Hello Fresh and their competitors these days: meal kit boxes delivered to your house weekly with full menus and ingredients. Mac and I are back in the swing of cooking on a regular basis, and I was looking for a way to mix things up. I saw a Groupon deal for Hello Fresh and decided to give it a go. We used our deal and ordered boxes for about two months. Here’s what I like and don’t like about Hello Fresh. *All opinions are my own. This is not sponsored.*
Pros:
- It’s easy. The ingredients arrive measured, portioned, and ready to go with a visual, step-by-step recipe card. The meal kits require very little food prep to get the ingredients ready, and many of the meals come together quickly.
- The options. You create your own menu each week from a choice of about ten meals (you pick 2 – 3 meals depending on your plan), so you’re not eating the same thing every week.
- You get variety. I don’t know about y’all, but I get into cooking ruts. I own a bookshelf full of cookbooks but make the same 10 meals on rotation. This helped spice up our dinner options.
- You also learn new tricks and tips. The perk of having chefs create the menus is that they think of food like chefs and give you lots of new ideas. We had a burger recipe that was topped with an onion jam (made from reducing red onions in balsamic vinegar). This was so amazing that we are going to make it with our usual burgers.
- You have flexibility. You pick a delivery date (from the options available), and you pick how frequently you want deliveries (you can skip weeks).
Cons
- You can only make one food preference choice. I eat neither seafood nor pork. I could only pick one group to exclude, so I chose seafood. Our first week, I didn’t check the menu before our box shipped, and we wound up with a pork and kale entrée.
- The food is fresh-ish. We found that the produce was best if eaten in the days immediately following delivery and didn’t last very long. I’ve read a lot of other Hello Fresh reviews saying the same thing. Don’t plan on keeping these meals in the fridge for a week.
- The cost. Hello Fresh can probably save you a lot of money if you eat out frequently. It costs about $10 a person per meal. We cook at home 4 – 6 days a week, so this was not cost effective for us in the long run. This was the main reason why we chose to stop our service.
Interested in trying Hello Fresh? Enter here for a chance to win a free box!
We can’t get meal delivery boxes like this in Hawaii (for obvious reasons) but I am SO DANG INTRIGUED by them. Seriously – I will click on a review of them any day of the week…I love to see what people are eating. I love that you shared your honest thoughts on them, the meal preference thing is kind of weird since some people might have multiple preferences or allergies.
New business idea! You could make a Hawaii or Oahu specific meal delivery service. And you can charge way too much money for it because people are used to paying a lot for stuff in Hawaii.
I love trying out these meal delivery kits! They are pricey, but a fun splurge. I also love learning new techniques and trying new ingredients. I definitely want to pick out my menu items bc I don’t like seafood or lamb. What did you think of the portion size? Did you feel like you had to add in another side or more ingredients to be full? I think Home Chef is my favorite meal delivery service.
I like the portion size. I think we only ever had one or two meals where we felt hungry later. Though I don’t think we ever had leftovers.
Price is the one reason I can’t get on board with these. I’ve been wanting to try, but every time I visit the sites, the price just kills me! I’m not even a bargain shopper. I’m still interested in trying them out though, for the pro reasons you stated: getting out of my rut and picking up some new tricks.
Same! I’m so cheap that I wish these were a lot cheaper. They can be a fun way to mix it up especially if you do these instead of going out to eat.