To have massive alarm bells about the value of HelloFresh

[Trilllllian]

FB keeps showing me articles and adverts. Looks like a total Swizz to me... am I judging without any detailed knowledge? I have watched one video and thought ‘wow’ the price per gram of food must be massive and the packaging ! Is the ‘lack of waste food’ any counter to this?

Ainu to buy a Booths or Waitrose ready meal instead if I don’t feel like cooking?

Well I’ve not used hellfresh, but I do use Gousto for myself and DH (DC usually eat at my parents house after school while we’re still at work) I buy 4 meals for 2 And it’s £32. I love it. I used to stand gaumlessly in the super market, buying the same thing all the time. Now I log in once a week, have a large selection of yummy food to pick from. It’s sort of reignited my love of cooking again. And if I pop into the super market after work to buy stuff for one dinner, that’s generally £20/£30 gone.

It’s the type of food we like to eat and it does work out much more economically for us.

We've been using Gousto for a year now. DH loves it and he does the 4 Gousto nights, I cook the other three. It's great having four meals you don't have to think about it and almost without exception, every meal has been good. Ingredients are always fresh and meats are good quality (although not so keen on fish - find it a bit tasteless and prefer to buy my own from a mobile fishmonger).

As someone said, it looks expensive but overall our food bill has reduced significantly because I rarely do a big shop now - other meals come from local butchers/greengrocers or the fish van. And hardly any waste.

I use the recipes off their website (I prefer the recipes on the Australian site). A lot of them are now used regularly. Very easy and usually tasty although I often need something extra on the side - harissa , yoghurt, squeeze of lemon/lime juice, extra veg etc but I just buy the ingredients in my usual shop. They are like Jamie Oliver's 15/30 minute meals but simpler and fewer ingredients.

I think they do skimp on the veg - seems to always be leeks and courgettes and they will describe the recipe as being "packed full of veg".

I think it looks okay if you want to know the exact price of your meal without having to buy lots of stuff you might not use again or finish off before the use by date.

Yes YABU to have "massive alarm bells".

However if you wished to have a sensible discussion about it, I do use Gousto and find that the time saving/new ideas/lack of food waste/less takeaways means that the price is reasonable value to me. Whether it is to others is up to them.

We’ve used HF on and off for a few years. We love the diversity of recipes, their fool-proof nature, and the fact that they’re reasonably healthy. It makes dinner time a lot more interesting.

They do take a while to cook though, longer than they claim ime. Unless you’re a master chopper maybe.

Would love it if it was a bit easier to recycle the boxes and woolly insulator stuff. We have to dedicate half a cupboard to storing that stuff until we have enough to send back to them.

Saying it's for lazy people is a bit shitty and judgemental.

I work a six figure job in the City and volunteer for charity with bipolar disorder. I get home at 7.30pm and HF is the best way of me eating fresh food while maintaining enough free time to stop myself going (literally) insane.

Anyway...back to the point. Why on earth would it ring 'massive alarm bells'?

If it's not for you, you're probably not the target market.

I do £35 a week for three meals, but since they're for two people that £35 is basically my dinners for the whole week.

If you don't cancel your subscription then of course they carry on sending you boxes and charging for them. That's how subscriptions work, it's not a bloody conspiracy

Spices would take many years to "rot"

I thought the same before I had DC! Now, juggling work/long commute/childcare, I think hello fresh and gousto are brilliant.

The packaging waste does bother me, I must admit. But financially I think it's pretty good value and stops us wasting food/buying takeaways.

There's nothing lazy about them - those recipes can be a fair faff! I really enjoyed boxes from both HF and Gousto, but like many others only bought them when I could get them on offer. They are incredibly convenient and stop a lot of food waste. The meals got us out of a cooking rut, for sure. Online shopping is often naff for recipes anyway, substitutes and/or not available ingredients are in my experience inevitable for a start and definitely take more than 5 mins to do once I start adding all the wine and sweets on offer in to my basket

I’ve been using them and equivalent for 11mths now. A mix of 5-6 times a week and now on 4 meals for 2 per week.

DH is abroad working, I’m here with 3 kids incl a baby, some ill health, studying and running them around to their activities and keeping on top of the house etc. Plus we don’t have the simplicity of an online shop here, they are starting but charge a fortune for it. Perfect for me. When he’s back on his r&r increase it to meals for 4, but have to order from 2 Different companies for that.

Fast to cook, and nutritious with no waste. I keep meaning to cancel it and rotate through the recipes myself but the supermarket shop is a pain I don’t need.

I tried it a while back and really liked it, but couldn’t afford to continue at full price. If I could afford it I would do it more often.

Whatshallidonowpeople
It’s not that they’ll rot, it’s just that you may never have uses that before and see it’s not to your taste

Or can’t remember if there is any which is why we have 3 packs of Rosemary

Or just never get round to making that posh whatever again.

If you're not after anything particularly exotic, you might do better with Cook. Ready meals, but very good ingredients and they use sheep wool for their packing material.

I usd for 5 or 6 weeks, my problem was that my DH is quite daddy and frequently just didn't fancy on that particular day what the 'offering was' and fancied something else, so I ended up shopping anyway. For me though I have an M&s and a waitrose both within 5 minutes walk of office and only live 10 minutes walk from work, so shopping for fresh every day is easy for me anyway. I guess it will work for some and particularly if you have a family that are fine with having 'what they are given' The food is nice.

I work a six figure job in the City

Dropping in the 'six figure' to show how Busy and Important you must be makes you sound a monumental twat. Sorry but it does.

My boyfriend and I bloody LOVE our Gousto boxes. We both really enjoy cooking and love trying out new recipes. We also use the recipes on their website and just buy our own ingredients for them - they're pretty foolproof to make and always really nice. I'm making a curry from last week's box tonight in fact! :)

The only down side is the excessive packaging.

I really like HelloFresh and will give Gousto a try too. It's pricey so we do it once a fortnight but love the recipes as we got stuck in a rut. It does take time to meal plan and shop for ingredients, especially when you have young children and both work ft. I don't think it makes me lazy. It does stop me ordering takeaways, because we get the rapid boxes, and also helps with portion control (which I'm hopeless with) as well as being healthy and bloody tasty. Honestly, I'm a big fan.

After trialing a lot of different ones I now get Riverford.
Lovely recipes, all organic and best of all they take all the packaging away the next week and reuse it.

I love to cook but I hate thinking about what to cook, making sure I’ve got everything in stock etc. This lead to us going out at the weekend.
£26 for two dinners for both of us is cheaper than going out of getting a takeaway.
A few of the recipes have become staple recipes now.

I think the concept is good in a lot of ways, I got a free box and really enjoyed it. It didn't work for me because 1) because my DS is super-fussy and 2) the packaging. I just couldn't get over the packaging. Teaspoons of spices in their own plastic pot, made me feel physically sick.

Ainu to buy a Booths or Waitrose ready meal instead if I don’t feel like cooking?

Do whatever you like!

I did a few HF and Gusto boxes - I liked them as I cooked lots of things I never would have thought about cooking and I liked not having to go to waitrose on my way home from work or plan.

I disliked the time it took to cook (lots of HF ones were an hour or more which for me in the week is too long) and the price per calorie.

I thought Hello Fresh was great, I don’t like the new rapid box, I prefer the flavours from the larger range of flavours in the Classic.
They aren’t at all like ready meals ? You actually have to cook, and there isnt lots of garbage added to the ingredients.
You choose what you want, and can have them how often you want, and cancel at any time.
The packaging can be accumulated, and then returned for recycling ( boxes, wool insulation )
They are really good quality too.

I really like Hello Fresh! I am in Australia so not sure if the format varies between here and the UK. I have never received a toasted sandwich recipe

We subscribe to the three meals (for x2 people) per week which is just under 70 AUD. Yes I could probably do this cheaper via regular shopping, but I like that the ingredients and recipes are provided for me, so I get home, pick a recipe card and off I go. Same with my DP, but he makes more noise about it and usually accidentally misses a step in the recipe

I keep the recipe cards we've enjoyed the most, to remake using non-Hello Fresh ingredients.

Does any of these boxes cater for more than 2 adults and 2 children?

Just signed up with the 50% thingy so will see how they go.

I see that if you recommend someone you both get money off. Wonder if I could "recommend" myself?