Hello Fresh - target market?

[WhyOhWine]

Our kitchen is being done so we have a temp kitchen set up in our utility room. we have a 2 ring hob, the combi oven/microwave from the old oven set up in there (as a "free-standing" oven), plus a fridge freezer in the garage. We also have enough storage in there for enough crockery and cutlery for the 4 of us plus a couple of pots and pans. So no entertaining others, but manageable

The main issue being that it is obviously very cramped and there is limited prep space, so have been trying to stick with very simple meals that only require 2 rings and not too much prep (with cheats such as chopped frozen onion, garlic and herbs in the freezer).

We have a little longer to get through so thought I would give hello fresh a go thinking that would make life easier. However, it requires more prep than i was expecting and I am not sure that it is any easier than what i would otherwise cook. Also, cant see (even ignoring the temp kitchen situation) that it makes life any easier than a weekly supermarket delivery plus a couple of fairly straightforward cookery books (e.g. Jamie's 30 minute meals ) and/or BBC good food website.

Overall, I don't think it is any more convenient and is more expensive. I can see that there is potentially less wastage in that you only get the amount of everything you need. However, i suspect most people who could afford to use it and are happy to spend 30 minutes cooking would have room to build up a decent supply of things like soy sauce, spices etc. and would reuse them over time, and have freezers.

We have enjoyed the recipes and it probably pushes the DC out of their comfort zone a little as we tend to rotate the same recipes otherwise, so can see it is a good product potentially but not sure that it is worth the extra cost, and i am not entirely clear what the target market is .

So what am I missing??
Also is there another option that does deliver the food pre-prepared (i.e veg chopped etc). I am going to look at Gousto which someone mentioned.

I think the target market is young professionals who don't really cook. It's a way to cook a meal at home (though expensive!) without having to meal plan. I definitely don't think it's less work (other than meal planning) than just cooking from scratch from simple recipes. And there is an awful lot of plastic waste.

Dh did it when I was working long hours so he didn't have to think too much about what was for dinner those nights. We also used a similar one over lockdown last year as getting food delivery slots was hard. Both got really repetitive after a few weeks, you can only do burgers, stir fry, wraps in various iterations so many times before you get sick of them.

It's for people who don't want to look in recipe books and turn lists of ingredients into shopping lists then have to think about what to do with the other two peppers in the pack of peppers they bought and keep a few basic spices in a store cupboard.

They want to see a picture of a chilli and have exactly the right ingredients including one pepper and one onion turn up on their doorstep.

You can have just about the same experience by looking at the recipes on any supermarket website for probably much less, along with more control over brands, type of meat etc. They all have recipes with a 'buy ingredients' button. But it gives the flexibility to remove the items you already have, or swap to organic chicken or whatever.

Hello Fresh pack the ingredients for different meals into different packages. Gusto send all the ingredients together so you have to sort them out. Neither send ingredients ready prepared. I wish they did but then this would probably affect how long the products last. My main complaint about Hello Fresh would be the selection process. For example, I’d like to type in say ‘600 calorie meals’ and see them all together rather than pick them out of the different categories HF divide them into. It’s having the correct ingredients with no waste that appeals to me. I don’t think the recipes are any better than you might find elsewhere. Initially the instructions looked terrifyingly long and complicated however you soon realise it’s just that they’re terribly detailed to help non cooks.

Going to look at the supermarket recipes now. Thanks BarbaraofSeville.

I do both HF and Gousto. I was taught to cook from a very young age and can cook pretty much anything, however...

I hate buying an ingredient to use few teaspoons of it
I have a tiny kitchen with limited space
I have a DD who lives of steamed veg, whereas I want to eat different food
I like trying new recipes
I am time limited to deal with recipes and online shopping or going to the shops

Yes it's more pricey but gets me out of the rut of cooking the same things. Also as I'm not into clothes/handbags/makeup it is my treat to myself!

Gousto is just as much prep by the sounds of it, we used it for 3 months. A curry for example will consist of you blitzing the ingredients to a paste in a blender. Doesn't sound like much hassle but with limited space I'd much rather buy a jar of ready made paste, add some meat and onion, and then add yoghurt or a tin of chopped tomatoes.

Gousto will often have a variety of elements to one dish too, so a curry with fancy rice (maybe you have to add hot water to raisins and then drain) and a side of salad (more dicing/chopping involved).

You can look at the recipes here www.gousto.co.uk/cookbook/

'It's for people who don't want to look in recipe books and turn lists of ingredients into shopping lists then have to think about what to do with the other two peppers in the pack of peppers they bought and keep a few basic spices in a store cupboard.'

I think it's this

It's the lack of thinking needed that is the appeal, not the lack of cooking needed.

There isn't too much choice that it's overwhelming like trying to find recipes in books/online can be.

You don't need to do a shop online or otherwise. You don't plan dinner only for Sainsbury's to tell you that onions are out of stock so they've subbed in an apple etc.

You don't have waste/leftovers.

It's just very easy in terms of level of thinking needed and if you're busy/tired/just hate meal planning it's ideal.

Not sure exactly who their target market is... In my experience, maybe its those who don't mind DPD dumping a box of half rotten food on the street outside their house, and saying it's left in their nonexistent "front porch".

I found them the absolute opposite of Fresh. Had gone off chicken (went to cook it on day of delivery). Also 2 out of 4 weeks their were ingredients missing.

I love it.

We are a family of 4 with two very young children, 2 full time jobs and very limited time in the evenings to prep and cook different types of meals.

We always ended up eating the same things over and over again. Very uninspiring.
HF means either one of us can jump in the kitchen whilst other one sorts kids and we can have fresh, made from scratch dinner on the table with no waste, very little cleaning up, within 30/40 mins.

Yes I completely understand that other families manage this fine without HF and in the future we probably will too but right now our limited bandwidth doesn’t stretch to exciting or homemade dinners so this at least takes the pressure off of the eternal question of “what’s for dinner”

HF is no different to sending your ironing to someone or having a cleaner or someone to mow your lawn - it makes perfect sense to outsource or delegate tasks which you can’t fully manage yourself without stress and anxiety. For my family that’s healthy home cooked dinners.

We’re not lazy or rich but it’s one less thing to worry about and takes away quite a bit of stress.

So id say their target market is anyone who likes or needs these things to be a little easier, with minimal fuss or planning.

I love it. I only use it about once a month at the minute but I’m guessing when baby number 3 arrives I’ll go back to six months or so of having it most weeks.

My main reason for loving it so much is that I hate having to think about what we’re having for dinner every night. I get really stuck in a rut. Hello Fresh gives the opportunity to pick what we like while also trying new things.

It also means I can do a bit of experimentation with flavours without buying huge bottles of things I’ll never use again.

If you have a slow cooker I can highly recommend Slow Good - all freshly prepared ingredients, exactly as if you were making it yourself, and it comes in a pouch that you just tip into the slow cooker. They're really convenient and there's a nice range of options. Not super cheap but I have found them very very high quality.

What others said. I’m a big Gousto fan (tried both but preferred G’s recipe choices to HF’s). I like being able to try out a new recipe without buying, say, a litre of Thai fish sauce or chermoula or whatever else, and I like receiving the exact quantities.

Fwiw Gousto has a (small) pre-chopped selection each week, if that helps you at all.

I use HF and Gousto (more the latter) regularly, but if you’ve got limited cooking space it might be worth choosing the simpler recipes (or they sell ready meals on Gousto too, though that rather defeats the purpose ).

A Gousto code for 60% off a box if anyone wants to try it - Gousto discount

It's basically aimed at the cash rich / time poor / don't want to think too much about what's for dinner / don't want to exist on ready meals

I like it because I was in such a rut with meals; having the same things over and over again.

I wanted to learn new recipes without having to buy whole jars etc of the ingredients and have them sit around going to waste if I didn’t like them.

I wouldn’t do it forever, but for a few months it was a fairly hassle free way to try new things.

Since nobody has mentioned Simply Cook i will mention them too - it's a box of pastes and dry spices with recipe cards, then you buy between 4 and 6 fresh ingredients to complete the recipe. They are pretty good and have encouraged us to try new things, but they keep in the cupboard so less commitment to use them within a set time frame.

I also found Simply Cook really good at getting me out of a rut with cooking. I like that I can choose to change the fresh ingredients, e.g. swap chicken for prawns or make a dish veggie, and don't have to buy large packs of unusual ingredients. All the dishes I've tried have turned out very well.

We use Mindful Chef and love it. We cook from scratch every night but now with teens I just am done thinking about how to get more variety in our recipe selection and both us parents are busy with work etc
The ingredients are really high quality and my teens and 11 year olds enjoy following the recipes. We order 3 meals every other week for a bit of variety. Their packaging is improving and they source as much as they can from UK. I realise we are privileged to be able to get it but cost of three nights fresh, healthy meals for 5 is equivalent to a decent takeaway for one night for us price wise.

We didn’t think it was that great. It got quite repetitive and some of the stuff that came was mouldy.

so basically your are outsourcing selecting recipes and putting together an online shopping list for the ingredients? Plus avoiding a bit of waste (which we dont tend to have much of anyway as we cook sufficiently frequently and have room to store stuff)
I guess you are not even fully outsourcing recipe selection as you still have to choose between the available options, unless you are happy with pre-selections, in which case why not work through something like Jamie 30 minute meals in order, or something, which does not require thought,

Sounds like i am not the target market then, although i am definitely time poor I just dont see that it would save very much time for me so there are probably better things to outsource for the money.
I guess outsourcing the food prep (which is what would be useful to me currently) means ready meals which i was trying to avoid apart from the odd one or too. Since we have freezer space and an oven, maybe i will have a look at COok. Will also have a look at Simply Cook once we have our proper kitchen back.

I realised I am not their target market when I didn’t even have time to use up the last batch of hello fresh (or mindful chef I can’t remember which one) meals that I ordered. The ingredients went off and had to be thrown away. It was a particularly busy couple of weeks and I just didn’t have the time/energy/headspace to devote to the process. With all the chopping and fiddly garnishes etc I doubt many of the meals really take only 30mins prep. The ones I did do were more like 45-60minutes. It’s not a bad concept, but the vast amount of packaging really pissed me off. Especially the ice packs which didn’t contain ice/water but some weird gloopy stuff. Anyway I like the idea of Simply Food mentioned above so I will take a look.

I think it's aimed at people who are well off but don't have the time and/or the confidence to meal plan, shop and try new recipes.

My friends uses them. She says it's helped to broaden her repertoire of meals (she didn't have the confidence or patience to hunt out recipes). She also likes that she can give the recipes for her teens to do and they can just get on with it without bothering her.

We use it and I love it. It means I can scroll through a list of lovely looking dishes and with a few clicks have all the ingredients turn up at my door. When it comes to cooking them, the recipes are really easy to follow and I find I can 'switch off' a bit while preparing - it's actually quite a mindful experience! Sorry that sounds wanky.

For me I love the fact we have amazing meals nearly every night, and I have a lot less of a mental load not having to plan meals every night. It also pushes me to experiment with food I don't feel confident cooking such as fish (and I'd say I'm otherwise a very competent cook!)

I’ve tried lots of different ways and I really do like HF or Gousto for many reasons. Meal planning is such a chore, I find that having these delivered just cuts down the time I would spend choosing recipes, then buying food, then fiddling around with it (and forgetting something) and things going out of date.

The 30 min ones are perfect for me and take out a lot of after work stress - I don’t pick things too complicated! Kids can help me or make it themselves and when it came to cost, I was buying (and wasting) a lot more now there is no waste

OP, do look at Slow Good - I posted about it above. It is zero prep, literally just tip it into the slow cooker. www.slowgoodfood.com