Hello Fresh is very good in the US. At least in the Midwest, their distribution is solid and I rarely have problems with orders. It’s just too expensive, but that’s true for anything
I had a couple of free trials. It was okay, I still keep some of the recipe cards because I liked the dish but in the end it would be too expensive compared to just doing groceries. Which is expected, you pay for the service of the ingredients being delivered to your home. But I live in a city where there’s 5 grocery stores within a 10 minute walk so it just wasn’t worth it to me.
Tried ages ago. Meals were OK but quite basic.
Was not impressed with the quality and freshness of fruit and vegetables they supplied. Worse than supermarkets and not even comparable to farmers markets.
It was good to learn how to rationalize the food and prepare it. After two months with HelloFresh, cancel it and start groceries and preparing lunch and dinner boxes with your learning you will miles ahead of keeping paying for their service.
France. Recipes are sometimes not at all what is pictured, they always tell you to use way too much salt and I feel like some ingredients get updated and they never check the recipe. The portions are very uneven and most of the time very small. If you know how to cook it’s fine and you end up with edible food. If you blindly follow the recipe you’ll end up with junk half the time.
They pretend they cut food waste but I always end up with loads of seasonings in little bags because they give too much of everything. I’d rather have more of the base ingredients…
Their marketing is also toxic shit and they have the nasty trait of only giving vouchers when there’s an issue (pesto bag exploding for instance…).
I would not recommend.
This was a couple years ago so idk about now. The intro deals just about make it worth it but would never pay full price. I’d say take the best intro offer you can get, use it and find new things you like/learn how to cook more and when the intro is over you can cancel and keep making the recipes you like
HelloFresh in my country was very good actually. Easy to follow instructions, ingredients just enough for the recipes with no leftovers.
Only negative were small portions. You never felt really full after eating dinner, and it was pretty expensive.edit: oh and the food was often very tasty as well. Basic but good
The meals and ingredients weren’t as good as other services, but it was generally ok. Fresh Prep I found to be a bit more consistent, and the meals tastier.
UK - we preferred Gousto
I tried them for a few months and cancelled.
For me, the quality of the recipes was poor. It was the kind of stuff I’d make when i’d just moved out from home and was learning to cook for the first time. Boring. Simplistic.
There’s also way too much trash. There’s a big cardboard box, a few ice packs, and a mound of pre-portioned ingredients each in little plastic bags. They cheerfully say you can keep the ice packs and reuse them! How many fucking ice packs can one person use?? Anybody can use a couple of ice packs. No one alive needs 2 new ice packs a week.
If you aren’t a confident cook and/or you need some inspiration for new things to make, it’s totally worth it for a few weeks or months. After that, though, I think most people will outgrow it.
The meals are fine, but they tend to be fairly basic and safe. If you can already cook then you will probably find most of the food pretty boring. If you can’t cook then it’s a good way to learn some basics.
The 20 mins meals are all pretty salty and meh, going beyond that is decent. I do it occasionally to force me out of my cooking comfort zone. It’s good as it lets you try things with ingredients you would never normally have.
It has some plastic waste (was more than ‘normal’ cooking, but no where near others (Gusto is awful for waste). Some recipes are worse than others though.
Don’t use it if your not getting a deal on it. If you quit they will offer you another discount.
With r𝖾gards to plastic wast𝖾, m𝖾al kit d𝖾liv𝖾ri𝖾s ar𝖾 consid𝖾r𝖾d l𝖾ss wast𝖾ful ov𝖾rall. Groc𝖾ry stor𝖾s and r𝖾staurants r𝖾mov𝖾 th𝖾 packaging wast𝖾 b𝖾for𝖾 th𝖾 𝖾nd us𝖾r 𝖾v𝖾r s𝖾𝖾s it.
If you’r𝖾 worri𝖾d about pric𝖾, consid𝖾r Every Plate, which t𝖾nds to b𝖾 ch𝖾ap𝖾r and hav𝖾 fast𝖾r and 𝖾asi𝖾r to cook m𝖾als. EveryPlate and Hello Fresh ar𝖾 own𝖾d by the same company.
For us, it was worth the tim𝖾 sav𝖾d on groc𝖾ry shopping and m𝖾al planning to k𝖾𝖾p long t𝖾rm. And I agr𝖾𝖾 that you should 𝖾nsur𝖾 you hav𝖾 som𝖾 sort of d𝖾al running, if you us𝖾 a s𝖾rvic𝖾.
As a pescatarian, I ultimately moved on from them to Blue Apron. It was too expensive to get anything with protein from HelloFresh, and their vegetarian meals were basically all pastas. I got pretty sick of eating pasta non-stop.
It is easy but boring and expensive.
Good but expensive. I really appreciated them doing the organizing for me. Unfortunately, I had trouble keeping up with the stuff they sent me and a lot of it went bad in the fridge.
The best part was all the recipes for sauces. I never make sauces on my own and I still don’t, but it was great making them when they gave you all the ingredients and told you what to do.
