HelloFresh – an honest review

What is HelloFresh?

If you haven’t yet heard of HelloFresh, let me explain. HelloFresh is one of several meal kit delivery services in the market. You choose a service that works for you (ie. 2 people, vegetarian, 3 meals a week), and the company will deliver meal kits on your assigned day. Each meal kit comes with a recipe card, and your ingredients (with the exception of some staples like oil, salt & pepper etc). You have to do some preparation, ie. wash & chop produce, and then you cook your meal, as per the instructions.

When you get to know me, you’ll know that with food I’m my own worst enemy.    There’s not many recipes I like to cook twice.  I devour magazines – years ago tearing out pages to add to my stash, these days taking photos on my phone.    I LOVE to try new recipes, and do my best to work through these stashes of recipes I’ve stored.    If I cook something and love it, it goes back in the book, if it’s average or below, the recipe goes in the bin, or is deleted off my phone.

All of this, of course, takes time. And time is that special limited commodity. So the opportunity to try new recipes, but to have someone else source them for me, was actually quite appealing.

What’s for dinner?

That daily thought of ‘what’s for dinner’ is sorted for you. I don’t know about you, but any day that I can wake up, and know that ‘what’s for dinner?’ is already sorted, is a GREAT day.

Now I could spend quite a bit of your time going into the details of how Hello Fresh works, but really, if you’re interested, you can find all of that gen on their website. Instead, I’m going to keep this relatively short and sweet, and just share with you my thoughts on why you might give Hello Fresh a go, or not.

Why would you try HelloFresh?

• Your ‘what do I cook tonight’ thinking is minimised.  You’ll choose your meals a week or two out on their website, browsing a good (but not too large) range of meals.

• The food and recipes are all delivered to your door, on the day you specify.  Yep – that means no supermarket runs.   (If I had young kids, this would be an absolute winner for me.)

• If the cost works for your budget, it does mean this budget is easier to stick to.  Without those supermarket runs, there’s also no impulsive shopping.

• You’ll get to try a variety of foods you perhaps wouldn’t have tried before – it gets you out of your ‘food ruts’

• You’ll learn some new techniques, and ways of jazzing up everyday items.  Last night after cooking the couscous, it got put back into the pot with spring onions and garlic butter.  A yummy way of jazzing up a basic.

• You’ll possibly learn some new tricks – who knew peeling ginger with a teaspoon was the best way??!!  (my delivery this week totally paid for itself with this tip)

Why you may not continue with HelloFresh?

• There is a huge amount of packaging that allows Hello Fresh to segment your meals as they do.  Most of this was not recyclable.  (even though some of the plastics had recycling numbers on them, these numbers are not recyclable in my area.)  In today’s world, this type of packaging consumption is simply unnecessary and not good enough.

• The delivery packets that enable your food to stay cold are totally suspect.  What do I mean?  The cold pack is a plastic pack, filled with a gel.  The instructions for recycling say to empty the gel into your trash, then recycle the plastic.  OMG that gel is disgusting, and there is a HUGE amount of it.  What a mess it made (and who knows what it’s made of).  Once I cleaned all of that up, I did put the plastic in the recycling, but again, am not sure that that plastic is recyclable in most facilities.    (correct me if I’m wrong Hello Fresh.)

In New Zealand, a competing company (My Food Bag) delivers their food with ice packs.  You can pop these ice packs in your freezer for future use, or you can hand them back when they make your next delivery.  This is a MUCH better solution for all.

• Meal sizes were average.  Totally fine for my husband and I, but when I ordered meals for 4, my two young men were still hungry. 

• Price – you need to work out for you how the price fits your budget.  If you have the time to plan your meals and shop, you may find the service expensive.  However, if you’re crazy busy, or have young kids at home, the added convenience Hello Fresh offers, may easily outweigh any extra financial costs.

My recommendation;

Give it a go – if even just for a week or two.  The new recipes may just freshen up your repertoire and introduce you to some great new tastes.

After that, you need to weigh up the costs and benefits for your own situation.

Want to give it a go?

Hello Fresh provided me with a free week of meals for 3 people.   Congratulations to Lucia, Kristin and Heather who won the giveaway for these.

If you’d like to give it a try, HelloFresh often have special offers for those trying for the first time.