HelloFresh

I tried Hello Fresh for over a month. The meals from the box are really good and taste great. The ingredients are fresh and the recipe cards are perfect for my beginner level of cooking.

 

I was worried about the waste of the packages the meal kits come in but Hello Fresh has made almost everything recyclable. With services like this you are always going to have more waste than buying food from the grocery store but I was pleasantly surprised how little there is.

 

The one thing I didn't like was being tied to a subscription. Our family has a pretty busy life and I don't always want or need the meal kits every week. In fact it would be good maybe twice a month. The problem is I have to remember to log into the website to cancel every week. I much rather specify what weeks I want the meal kits.

There are many things I like about Hello Fresh. The condiments and meat quality are good but I find issues with the quality of the greens. I find myself having to replace something every other week or so in the ingredients sent to us in the meal kit because it has gone bad.

I have gotten a discount when I complained to the Hello Fresh customer service for the next week which is good but I wish it didn't happen so often.

If they fixed this issue the service would be really good. I see that some other reviewers have experienced the same problem but not everyone seems to have the issue so I am not sure why it happens. Maybe it is the distributor where Hello Fressh is getting their veggies from???

The family meal box says it is for a family 4 which is 2 adults and 2 kids. The portions are fine for the adults but the portions for the kids are really small, especially the meat. Apparently each adult according to customer service should get 150g of meat, I am not sure what the kids get but from the 450g to 500g I get of meat, 300 is suppose to be for the adults so that leaves 150g to 200g for the kids. This is fine for really small kids but I have kids who are 9 and 12 and they are still hungry after dinner.

So if your kids are 8 or older you may need to skip the cheaper family plan and go fro the Classic Plan for 4 people. On the family plan they really should specify how old the kids should be if a family is considering going on the plan.

After seeing advertising all over the place I decided to give a meal delivery service a try. In the end I choose Hello Fresh over Blue Apron since Hello Fresh has been in the meal business for much longer, almost a decade. 

Overall I rate the experience as average. I used the service for over 4 months and have since canceled it. I may try it again but would probably choose another company to try out. I like the idea but I found Hello Fresh not as fresh (ironically) as I would like. I am a vegetarian so I am not sure about the meals with beef or chicken. 

The reason I used it for so long is that I did enjoy the recipes and the different vegetarian meals they came up with. My meal boxes always came on time I am just not sure why the vegetables were as fresh as a regular grocery store. Is it the product Hello Fresh has at their warehouses? Is it the shipping? Is it the packaging not keeping things as cold? I don't think it is the packaging as things came cold esipecially in the fall and winter months here in New York.

I hope my review helps someone out.

I was offered a  free trial for the first month of Hello Fresh so I decided to join. Glad I did because I have been using it ever since. I live alone and get the 2 person deal for 3 meals which ends up being 6 meals for me which means my entire dinner bill ends up only being $70 for the week which is much cheaper than before when I ate out all the time.

I really enjoy the different recipes and food options. Makes me try new things which I found out I really enjoy (I ate pretty much the same thing week in and out before). The odd time there is a recipe I am not super fond of but it's a learning experience and fun to cook. BTW who knew I could be a cook? I didn't and I am glad I found out because it is a great stress reliever after work.

Food has always been fresh for me and there has only been once when I had a missing ingredient in the box. I called Hello Fresh and they refunded me the week and since I knew about it before hand (as I always review the contents and recipes) I was able to go purchase the noodles at the store and still enjoy the meal.