To think meal prep box costs are hard to justify

Me.
I don’t enjoy meal planning, I don’t enjoy cooking, and I don’t want to be creative. This allows me to eat a relatively healthy meal, that I haven’t had to spend more than 5 minutes thinking about.

I’d have once per week if they weren’t so expensive.

I found hello fresh really overrated. The meals weren't very nice, although I'm coeliac which restricts me a lot. Definitely not worth it even with a discount code.

You'd be surprised how many people have plenty of money and don't care about spending the extra for convenience.

Also less waste as you have just the right amount of ingredients generally. Sometimes I do find the portions, say of rice or pasta , too much for

I generally hate everything about cooking from meal planning, buying ingredients, prepping, cooking and clearing up. The whole thing is a chore to me.
So these boxes take away the first two aspects, and reduce the third and last (as the portions are already worked out, you may just need to do a bit of chopping and mixing).
The good thing is that the recipe cards have ingredients listed as well as the recipe so you can easily recreate the ones you enjoyed eating and didn’t mind cooking so much.

What do you mean "you're not really making anything"? It's not creative, no, but neither is following a recipe. The vast majority of day to day cooking isn't creative.

Personally I like a ready meal, but I can't get any that work for my family's dietary requirements, so Gousto is an alternative to my small repertoire of meals that work.

We've been using Gousto for a few years now.

I like that I don't have to think about meals and prepping. When the box arrives I sort in to containers for each meal and it's done.

I like the mental load being taken away.

Also I find I'm saving money by not popping to the shops. It makes cooking much easier

The target market is people who value convenience over price. I used to buy them all the time before I developed allergies. Haven’t yet found a service that can handle my allergies. I didn’t start cooking regularly myself though. I don’t have the time or energy for that. Instead, I have a shortlist of restaurants that do safe, healthy meals to-go and I order from them regularly. It would be far cheaper to go back to a food prep box if I could find one.

From my point of view the value didn’t just come from the cost of ingredients but also the convenience and having the recipe steps and very little prep to do… for people that have disabilities things like this and other prepared veg and fruit can be life savers. I remember a Twitter thread where some chap pontificated on how outrageous it was that Waitrose sold peeled garlic and he rightly got told to mind his own beeswax because sometimes people have a need for stuff like that and it’s not just a lazy luxury.

I never understand who pays for these. I love cooking but my favourite part is creating something! A recipe box would take all the fun out of it for me. You get the effort of cooking but you're not really making anything - what's the point? Might as well have a nice ready meal and enjoy 20 minutes on the sofa instead.

I am a useless cook and had got to the point of just not knowing what to buy in the supermarket and then what to cook. I was wasting a lot of food, buying a lot of microwave meals and getting quite a few takeaways.
I have over the past couple of years bought about 8 or 9 gousto boxes when I am sent offers. I now have a bundle of menus for food we really enjoy. I sit down once a week and decide what we are having each day. I write a shopping list and I use the food that I buy.
We now rarely have takeaways, I waste very little, my shopping is cheaper and we really enjoy the meals.

We’ve been having Hello Fresh, it started at 50% off for 4 weeks now it’s 20% off. It was definitely worth it at half price, just to get a bit more variety of meals and not have to think too much about what’s for dinner. We probably won’t have as often now it’s only 20% off and certainly won’t buy at full price. We have kept the recipe cards of the good meals so we can copy.

We get a box once a fortnight

I would agree it's not cheaper than the supermarket but we a) value the convenience, b) enjoy the variety and c) we I value the portion control

We use Gousto weekly and can’t imagine not using it. We eat much more healthily as a result and I love not having to meal plan and instead pick out a recipe card and have all the ingredients.

We've used Gousto for about 4 years now and it's well worth it for us. The convenience when we both work full time (and no wfh) and have small children means we eat much better than we would otherwise. I'm also not convinced it is that much of a premium per portion as long as you're not just ordering pasta and/or vegetarian options

We’ve used Gousto but only ever on a special offer. Otherwise it’s too expensive.

I should have added that I have used Simply Cook, which I found much better. The recipes I used were quite nice and because you only get the spices and sauces needed for each recipe, you can add a normal amount of meat or fish, and can use good quality ingredients.

I agree. I think the costs are exorbitant for what you get. I tried Gousto and Hello Fresh when I saw 60% offers a couple of years ago and was so disappointed with the quality and quantity of the ingredients. I thought they were both expensive even with the discount and swore I would never buy them again. But I succumbed to an offer for Mindful Chef a couple of weeks ago and was again very disappointed with what I received. I cancelled the subscription within five minutes of unpacking the box and had to check that I'd ordered two person meals rather than single portions. The amount of meat included for each meal was tiny and I had to supplement the meat for the two meals I cooked. The first meal was ok but no more, and the second was foul, to the extent that we gave most of it to the foxes, along with the tiny bit of meat for the third meal. I paid £39 for three meals for two with the discount and I could definitely have made much nicer meals using similar but better quality ingredients, with a normal amount of meat. I think I really have learnt my lesson this time!

They're made for convenience, they're not made to be cheap or cost effective really. Whether you can justify them ultimately depends on the value you put on your time.

I love Simply Cook! If you go through the cancellation process, they'll probably offer you a discount. Mine is £5.99 a month at the moment

They are very expensive. I use Gousto from time to time simply because the recipes are so good and it's an easy way to try new recipes. Loads of the meals I cook on a regular basis now we're originally Gousto recipes.

I find the portion sizes quite generous (and I'm not a mumsnetter who eats tiny portions)

I use Simply Cook, £9.99 for 4 strips (3 pots of spices/herbs/stock for the recipe) and buy the fresh ingredients. The pots last for ages so no pressure to use quickly.

We love them as we cook things that we’d never try such as Brazilian, Balinese, Japanese meals and lots of veggie too. Also I love them as it means I don’t have the brain melt of what are we going to eat. All my lot love the food, never had a bad meal, and they are a really fussy bunch.

I’ve used Hello Fresh and Gousto in the past, but only with a discounted offer, as other PP have mentioned.

I now have a monthly subscription with Simply Cook which costs £9.99/month for 4 recipe kits and recipe cards. Each kit contains 3 pots of mixed herbs, spices, sauces, etc for that meal. There are shopping lists included for each meal which is never usually more than 3 or 4 ingredients that you’ll need to buy (e.g, chicken breasts x 2, mushrooms, onion and potatoes)

There’s a lot of different choices too, especially if you’re vegetarian like me.

I’m not the greatest cook, but my family loves them and they’re always delicious!

PM me if you’d like me to send you a link for a free box or if you Google ‘Simply Cook’ I think you can get a good discount when you sign up.

I've used them in the past as it took away some of the mental load of meal planning/shopping & some of the meals were really nice. Also got to try some new flavours. The biggest issue I had was the quality of some of the ingredients, especially the meat and fish.