Hello fresh.... is it worth it?

[howdyougetin]

I'm toying with the idea of hello fresh but I'm unsure if it's one of those things that isn't as good as what you hope it is. If you use it, is it worth it and is it easy to use?

We prefer SimplyCook as a family.Granted,you don't get all the ingredients for meals,but I prefer having the spice kits and recipe cards to make meals when I want/adapt and change recipes depending on how we feel/what food we have in etc.I am not keen on having fresh foods delivered and feeling under a time pressure to use things up.
I'd be willing to try any meal box company for a free trial though,and here is my SimplyCook link if anyone fancies giving it a try for free.
https://www.simplycook.com/invite/N6FYNV?t=cp&pg=ref&via=mb

It's ok when they have an offer on, and works out quite good value. It can get you out of a cooking rut.

You also have to make sure you remember to login and choose your meals or they send you random ones.

I don't know anyone who carries on with it once the offer runs out - people tend to cancel and wait until they send another good discount code.

We used the USA version and ended up thoroughly fed up of eating chickpeas and black beans.
I need to cancel it but the app won't let you do this so I end up canceling months at a time instead.

Yes, I've been using hello fresh for a few years now. Never cooked before, now I actually enjoy it. I pick my meals out for the month so I never 'forget' and get their selection. Sometimes I'll add additional sides to the meals from what I have in the house. Portion size is spot on, in my opinion. They are well balanced meals and great when you've just finished work.

It's ok but not much choice if you don't want to spend more. Lots of curry and risotto and pasta. Or potatoes potatoes potatoes.

I ordered meals for more people than we have in the hours and then freeze/have leftovers for lunch. Also I frequently add extra ingredients to make it go further.

I cancelled because the amount of non recycling package img was not ok with me.

It's not life changing. You can either follow a recipe or not. It does safe alot if time on shopping

For me it’s worth it. Objectively in terms of cost of boxes vs value of ingredients they’re probably not unless you are getting the box heavily discounted. The meals also get a bit samey after a while, however I have adhd and really struggle with meal planning, shopping, cooking etc. For me having the food delivered in exact portions, bagged up by recipe and with easy to follow step-by-step ingredients is totally worth it as it means I actually cook and don’t just eat toast/ takeaway and don’t have whole fridges worth of food rotting away and going out of date.

We use both Gousto and Hello Fresh. It takes away that absolute ballache of meal planning which drives me mental

It depends how good you are at planning meals. I’m absolutely hopeless at meal prep on my own so if I didn’t use hello fresh or gousto or similar my family would eat rubbish unhealthy food a lot more often. If you are able to plan meals without it it’s probably not worth it because I can imagine most of the meals can be done for cheaper.

I tried it once with an offer and couldn’t believe the amount of packaging - all the little packets plus a huge piece of wool insulation and massive box. The food was ok but didn’t seem worth the (full) price.

So not worth it to me but to be fair I’m a fairly organised, confident cook and am lucky to live very close to a high street with three supermarkets including a late-opening one, so I literally can shop every day or for every meal if I want. I can see the attraction if you don’t find it easy to either plan or wing it with cooking, or if shopping is a hassle.

I cba with all the packaging.
Too much potato and white pasta and rice. I put on weight with it.

Also it's impossible to get off their mailing lists once you're on. Post, email and phone!! You also need to phone a useless foreign call centre as well if u ever have a problem with an order.

I found overall it did not improve my stress levels.

I tried it and it wasn't for us. The whole thing felt a bit like building Lego, and there was a lot of storage and getting rid of packaging to deal with.

Another vote for simply cook, Louisiana linguine is a favourite of ours.

if you use the below link then you will get a free box with 4 meals. Just remember to cancel so no subscription (easy to do on your account).

https://www.simplycook.com/invite/HF8364?t=cp&pg=ref&via=mb

I've used Hello Fresh for over a year. I love it, it's made my life easier and i find it has lots of choice - we're not fussy. It's great for trying things you wouldn't normally and we love the vegetarian option.

@TheQuiveringMole

Thanks very much just signed up.

The time it says is actually the total cooking time. It doesn’t include any prep time.

We were the same in that we found it always took longer but then once I used the app to follow the recipe and it showed both a cooking time and an additional prep time.

Thanks very much@Aplaceinthecold,I suppose the next few weeks will be the perfect time to give meal boxes a go as there will be lots of codes for freebies flying around for the New Year.

We're on our third box have skipped a few weeks over Christmas as we've had a house full.
For me the pros are,
any of us can cook the meals. DH is a very reluctant cook and younger DC are still a bit inexperienced but they can all follow the recipes without my input.
Several nights a week we need quick meals which I struggle with, Hello Fresh takes the thought out if it.
We have exactly what we need which has cut down on top up shops,

The cons, many things seem to take longer to cook than stated,
I'd like more vegetables,
The add ons and upgrades are always tempting but really bump up the cost,
Excessive packaging,
When I had an issue I found the chat function annoying and the real person I chatted with lied to me.

i used gousto a lot during the first lockdown as it cut down the number of times queuing at the supermarket and brought a bit of novelty to an otherwise difficult time. but i found the heavy items packed in a way that bruised or squashed the more delicate items. also had a cucumber next to the frozen pack and was unusable. veg was varying quality eg very tired potato or a carrot that old Ned would turn his nose up to. so just lost the will even though i liked a lot of the recipes (have the cards and still make our favourites now).
tried hello fresh and thought it was dire! one memorable failure was a packet of ainsley harriet ready made cous cous in a packet. not what i want from something called hello fresh.
now i subscribe to simply cook and love the versatility to change the base protein to veggie or chicken or whatever. i can chuck in extra veg that i have or substitute something quite easily if it isn't integral to the sauce for example. the bought ingredients side is easy enough. they do rely on cream quite a bit but my family love so many of the meals and the flavours are fantastic. i can also portion up a little if need be without losing the taste. i get two boxes a month which is enough to help on those busy days and ensure a guaranteed hit for everyone. i have a back up box set of our favourites so if i forget to order we don't get a load of shite we won't eat.

We prefer Gousto as I find the portion sizes are bigger (we stretch the two person meals to two adults and a toddler) and the quality of the meat better.

The positives: saves you having to think up your own meals. The recipes are simple to follow and I don't find them time consuming. It's rare to get a meal that's terrible, I'd say 50% are nice and 30% are great. The recipes are easy to replicate without the box in future if you unsubscribe. We've never had missing ingredients (with Gousto, it was a problem with Hello Fresh). And the chicken breasts provided for recipes that need a whole breast (eg kievs) are often unequal sizes or seem stingy portion wise.

Negatives: few of the meals are good enough that I want to have them often, so the menus can end up being disappointing when you've been getting boxes for a few months. A lot of them are pasta, which I don't really want to pay the "Gousto premium" for.

There are lots of 65% off Gousto/free SimplyCook boxes on promo codes and bargains at the minute.

Anybody else think this whole thread feels like a marketing analytics exercise?

IMO, as a real person, they're all shit: basic, samey recipes, poor produce and waaaay too much packaging.

If you want fast, just pay over the odds and get the Cook ready meals. And yes, I am totally aware that I now sound like a bot, too. 😄

I didn’t like Hello Fresh. Too carby and I always had to add vegetables.

2/3 days a week we use Mindful Chef. Recipes are healthier and it encourages us to eat more of and a wider variety of vegetables. I just get stuck in a rut otherwise.

I agree on the points that - it’s expensive (but less food waste for me) - and the packaging is excessive. Though they do use paper bags for some things. Meat is good quality and the portions are good. We always have left over veg.

I found it super annoying that they advertise it as being £60 a box, but by the time you’ve chosen the recipes you want it comes to more like £90!! 😱 they craftily charge extra for most of the meat choices. I cancelled pretty quickly.