Just tried first Hello Fresh...I don’t get it....

[GiraffeNecked]

So a potato some mince, a carrot, a glove of garlic and some mince arrives. All stuff I have in the house already ..... you still have to chop, cut, cook and it was nice, but no nicer than something I’d have come up with by myself.

I'm trying to work out if Julia is the Home Secretary or not since they clearly have the same levels of empathy.

@JuliaJohnston

You are really not recovered from your issues, thedaytoday Quite a hysterical over reaction from a mental health professional?

'Hysterical' 'not recovered'

Further evidence you're here for the mental health bashing.

What are you getting out of this behaviour?

@JuliaJohnston

You are really not recovered from your issues, thedaytoday Quite a hysterical over reaction from a mental health professional?

I thought you were bowing out? Close the door on your way out.

Bye Priti.

We did a trial, like others really not impressed with all the packaging.
It seems expensive to me, we wouldn't generally be able to afford it.
I think you have to order 3 or 4 meals each time, which is too many for me.
I do sometimes have a sick-of-meal-planning moment, but I'd find it cheaper to either get something semi-prepared from the butcher (kebabs, chicken Kiev, Chinese pork) or if I really couldn't face any decisions I'd buy one of those Scratch meal kits where everything is pre chopped for you.

To be honest, if I'm cooking and don't have a particular herb or spice, I either leave it out, or throw in something vaguely similar, so not having lots of jars cluttering the cupboard is not something I relate to anyway.

Love HelloFresh.

We've used them twice for a few months each time and then saved and used the recipe cards.

I can make the meals for just over half what I woukd pay HelloFresh.

The recipes are great and very healthy.

The best bit was choosing the meals each week, kids loved it!

We used HF for a few months, it was to help DS2 build confidence in cooking.

It worked out really well, we also had a good offer, 50% off the first week then 30% off the following 3 weeks.

Regarding depression JuliaJohnston you have no fucking clue, and quite frankly nasty in your comments.

Over 10 years ago when I was really suffering with depressionand anxiety. HF/Gusto would have been a god send, more for DH as he was the one trying to hold everything together whilst I was in my black hole.

We use gousto and love it, I’m a good cook, but it saves me so much time and energy as I don’t have to meal prep every week and do a huge shop, we both work in hospitals and I work ten hours a day, on top studying for professional exams and renovating a house, so we don’t have a lot of spare time and mental energy.

I find the meals taste amazing, the quality of the ingredients, especially the meat, is excellent and we have zero food waste now. I’ve tried cooking the recipes with ingredients from the supermarket and they taste no where near as good, so it’s well worth the money imo.

With both me and DH working full time with two young children and me having a long commute we loved it and had four meals a week to cover Mon-Thurs. the children ate in their wraparound care.

It saved meal planning, a lot of food shopping hassle and DH (who is an excellent cook anyway) enjoyed cooking them, just getting a bag out the fridge with everything in it. We used it for years and years.

Then Covid hit and they became really shit. Missing items, rotten produce, complete randomness... we complained several times and then cancelled. WFH the children are no longer in late wraparound care, we have a bit more time to plan and cook and still use a lot of their recipes.

I don’t know what happened to their customer service but it really deteriorated. We had 8 weeks where there was at least one issue.

We recently did try Mindful Chef but found the meals weren’t very good.

lsol that's exactly what happened to us the second time we used HF during lockdown.

Every week, out of the 4 meals we ordered something was either missing or incorrect.

To be fair, when I spoke to customer services they always gave me a free meal or 50% off a week's meals to compensate.

But it was always a hassle.

"So a potato some mince, a carrot, a glove of garlic and some mince arrives."

Mince, mince, mince, mince...

www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hwqlw

The people that I know who get it are all great cooks but with limited time due to work and DC’s extra curricular commitments and this takes the thought process out of constantly meal planning and shopping it can be such a relief on hectic days to have the ingredients and recipe ready and waiting. Obviously most people choose recipes that don’t involve stuff they already have in the fridge! Personally I use simply cook which is recipe cards and spice blends,as we often end up deviating from any meal plan so I just buy the fresh ingredients when we definitely actually want to do it to save any waste.

I think they’re good for people who want to learn to cook from scratch but don’t know where to start. You get a recipe card with gusto so you could keep it and try sourcing your own ingredients. The more you do the more confident you become

Had it once, never again. Poor quality

I can cook but I use both Gousto & Hello Fresh. I pefer Gousto. With coronavirus about it means I don't have to go to the supermarket as much. It saves time & having to think about what to have for dinner. You can quite often get a discount for Hello Fresh, even as a long term customer, which makes it reasonable to use.

We use hello fresh in our house but mainly because we occasionally get discount codes. I probably wouldn't bother if I had to pay full price. I've had 5 nights of meals for 2 people for £26 for the past 2 weeks and the first week was about £16! Definitely cheaper than a supermarket shop!
If we were to carry on once the discount codes end then it would be £38 a week for 2 of us and tbh that wouldn't be viable for us.
I do like that it takes me out of my comfort zone, I try new things and get new ideas and then keep the recipe cards for afterwards.
Also their customer service is good I've found, we were missing a salad bag this week from one meal and we've been given a £10 credit so not bad!

@nearlynermal

I got a couple of deliveries some years back. A bit off topic, but one thing that turned me off was SO much packaging. A little plastic pot for everything. Maybe they're greener now.

I thought the same with Gousto.

They really made a total car crash of my first order. Sounded reasonable. New ideas. And my first box free. But ticked ‘veggie’ option as since I had surgery last year we eat meat only 2/3 times a week. First recipe out of the box for a vegetarian was pork sausages. Ordered 5 meals, received 6. Only 2 of the recipe cards bore any resemblance to ingredients delivered. And no correlation between the identifying numbers on the recipe cards and the numbered bags delivered. It was a bit of a disaster all round, more like ‘ready steady cook’ with an unusual assortment of stuff I don’t usually buy chucked together with a ‘make of that what you will’ attitude.
And I can’t understand the billing. You pay for food 10 days in advance of receiving it. I don’t know what I want to eat in 2 weeks time.
All in all a waste of money, incomprehensible customer services (although finally an acceptable recompense) and very expensive way to get a few new ideas for meals which weren’t that different from meals I usually cook.

God I hated it. All seemed pointless. But I love cooking and hate to follow a recipe word for word. It was a waste of time for me some ingredients didn’t look very nice especially the meat.

Also the thought of my food travelling around in a van for day when it need to be in a fridge made me feel a bit ick.

Just had the Thai pork stir fry, which, if I’d remembered to choose, I probably would have chosen. It’s good. I’d cook it again.

But I’m not going to bother with hello fresh again. Too much packaging. I’d rather get a good ready meal in if I can’t be arsed or do an omelette.

We’re having Hello Fresh this evening. DH is cooking it now. No idea what we’re having but it smells gorgeous.

We have used HF in the past, but now use Gousto every week. We both work full time, so are time poor. We arent rich and we are careful with money, but find the time saved shopping and always having all the ingredients we need such a time-saver. The thing I like about gpusto, is they make it easy to choose your weeks, if there is a week you don't want, just don't order, there is no ongoing subscription. We wouldn't change the way we cook now as we always have a balanced meal 4 days a week, and our children (7 and 9 also enjoy the meals). Other nights we have more simple food, homemade soup and rolls, or salads or jacket potatoes etc, but we know we are going to have good (and different food) even when we step through the door having done an 11 hour day and still having several hours work ahead if us each evening.

Definitely designed for those that lack know how.

Had a few boxes. Alright recipes, but some were problematic. Got me doing stuff I might otherwise not have. But they're more complex than I typically like to do on a weeknight, and at full price it's expensive.

Cheaper alternative: The Tesco magazine usually has a meal plan in it, four people for five days for £30 kind of thing. I've done a fair few from that and they were liked.

We have been doing Hello Fresh for over 4 years and have had over 200 boxes! Started getting Gousto as well during lockdown and now alternate so have 3 meals per week and just cook our own stuff (or takeaways etc!) the other nights.

I love it! We get a 2 person box but it fed DD as well when she was at home and now there's usually enough for DH to take leftovers to work unless it's something in portions like pieces of fish etc. It stops us having huge portions! It has made us way more adventurous in our cooking and we have used some of recipes again and again ourselves. Like others we work full time and it's great not having to meal plan for half the week.

DD is away at uni now and quite a adventurous cook and I think HF definitely helped as it made her try new things.