Hello fresh - why?

Convenience, mental load, variety, and less waste because things come in exact quantities, although a bit less plastic packaging would be good.

I live alone, have a busy job and a lot of evening commitments. I'd got into the habit of eating the same relatively small number of very quick things on rotation - beans on toast, scrambled egg on toast, omelette etc. I'm a decent cook and when I have the physical time and mental energy I actually quite enjoy it but most of the time I don't so Hello Fresh ensures me a regular supply of varied, balanced meals that require very little effort from me.

For one I also don't think it's any more expensive than my supermarket shopping would be.

They deliver exactly what’s needed for the meal to be cooked - no more, no less. Also, the recipes are very reliably good - not like following something random off the internet. I am not a skilled cook or meal planner so I use hello fresh to do the thinking, buying and delivering for me. I don’t have a pantry, I don’t have a stock of all sorts of different sauces etc - so I am happy with a sachet of the required amount from hello fresh.

They do have problems - sometimes things are missing/damaged, but you just go on the app and get credit for it.

I've never understood the mental load and planning that people talk about with cooking. I have a vague idea of what I might want to cook for the coming week when I do my Ocado order, and add a selection of ingredients that I don't normally keep in the cupboard, and then I decide what we're having on the day, depending on what we both fancy, and with a well stocked herb and spice cupboard, I can make most things that we might want. If I haven't got a particular ingredient, the. I improvise. If I've got meat thst I'm not going to cook before its expiry date then I put it in the freezer.

That chip on your shoulder heavy is it?

It's not that much more expensive for a start.

I think the cherrypick app does for Sainsburys

For small families it can be cheaper. Especially if trying a new recipe and buying random thinks like sesame seeds, ketchup manis or god knows what.

It’s also convenient and avoids a shopping trip. Which saves money in its own way as you don’t randomly pick this and that up.

We do it about once a year for a 3-4 month period and try some new recipes. Then go back to normal shopping until we get bored of that.

Planning meals and buying all the ingredients takes a lot of time and mental energy that I don’t have when looking after a young child. Maybe some people don’t find it difficult but I do. When left to my own devices I tend to buy ready made frozen food and don’t cook from scratch as much as I should. My diet has been a lot better since using services such as hello fresh.

Here you go!

I did it when I had the 60% off deal. As soon as it was full price, I ditched it. Now I have an extra 6 or so recipes in my regular rotation so no regrets!

Oh and also, I was a pretty good cook before hand. But it still taught me a trick or too!!

Effort: At 45 I was tired of coming up with new meals to try, bored of coming up with the shopping list and the whole shop.

Expense: It's actually not expensive, and in terms of trying new dishes you aren't forking out for spices, or sauces with an expiry date before you could ever use the whole thing.

For two of us it worked out not vastly more expensive than shopping, there was no waste, and it was easy to just pick 5 meals and have it delivered to your door.

I only stopped due to a dietary need that they can't yet accommodate, but I used them for over 3 years.

Does he enjoy cooking now? Does he see how much he has progressed?

My daughter got a Harry Potter cookbook for Christmas and has been making lunch once a week from it….so something from Hello Fresh would be amazing rather than a weird owl shaped peanut butter and banana toasty😂

And I feel you on the mess factor!!

But I will see what introductory offers they have once we have moved house- so thank you for the idea 👌

That would be awesome

just choose a recipe and buy the ingredients themselves

Because for some people it isn't just doing that

It's a really valid point.
None of the supermarkets offer an online option for "all the ingredients for this meal" option.

I don’t think you need to be a user researcher to understand asking a question like ‘why do you use HF’ allows you to understand HF user’s goals and motivations 😂

This is exactly my reasoning only my peanut butter on toast was scrambled egg.

Are you a Hello Fresh employee OP?
I'm a user researcher and designer and asking a question like yours is perfect to understand users' goals and motivations.

I’m a regular user of Hello Fresh / Gousto.

I get fed up of coming up with what we’re going to have the following week for meals. I enjoy cooking them, it’s just the admin bit I hate.

Husband incredibly ill, major surgery, none of life’s other commitments stopped… Hello Fresh removed one thing (and not insignificant thing) off my plate for a few weeks.

Have also heard from friends with various disabilities that it can enable cooking to be accessible to them.

We out-source things for convenience all the time; quite why these boxes make people so snobby is a mystery.

Well yes, but the question wasn't 'why DON'T you use Hellofresh?'. Incidentally, I'm not vegetarian but through Hellofresh I've really cut down my meat consumption because some of the veggie meals are lovely (IMO, as a meat eater). I've even got DH having some meat-free meals, which I never expected.

My parents never taught me how to cook, I was raised in a UPF household, so it's great for me. Initially we were going to do it as a temporary measure but we've been doing it for about 4 years now.

Would highly recommend them for that @Poppins21 .

When we first started, ds2 (13 at the time) was VERY slow and uncertain of himself, even though we selected the easiest recipes for him. Lots and lots of mess 🙈 and over 2 hours to cook a very basic tomato pasta where all the ingredients are right there and pre-weighed. I'd watch him for a bit and then go somewhere to scream into a pillow 😂😂

But you really see them progressing each week. A few months in and he's now able to confidently cook the 'only takes 30 minutes' recipes IN 30 minutes and he's started to level up and choose some more difficult recipies to cook 🙂

As everyone else has said, it'll be the convenience and lack of wastage.

Personally I've tried them and Gusto and didn't really rate either and didn't feel that they worked for us. But I'm a good cook with a well stocked pantry and a plethora of recipe collections, and we're a family of 4 which is the easiest number to cook for. So coming up with and cooking a wide variety of healthy meals isn't a difficult thing for me to do.

I tend to use the CherryPick App as a half way house when I want to do some speedy meal planning. It's a bit like HF/Gusto, but you do your shopping from the supermarket (online or in person). I find it far more cost effective and less wasteful and with less packaging.

I like the idea of using them to help my daughter with learning to cook.