Hello fresh - why?

[Montymorency]

Just wanting to understand why people go to the expense of these food boxes when they could just choose a recipe and buy the ingredients themselves

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.

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.

I think the cherrypick app does for Sainsburys

That chip on your shoulder heavy is it?

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

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.

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.

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.

We stopped using Hello Fresh. It was more like Hello Rotten. Soggy spinach and the meat always smelled off.

Mindful Chef however 👌

Totally delicious, healthy, no processed crap, perfectly portioned. No meal planning, no mental load, no supermarket shopping. It's like having good quality restaurant food every night. No thinking required for the cooking, can all be done while listening to a podcast.

It usually costs about £60 for 4 meals as we generally go for the cheaper vegan options. As don't drink and don't have a social life (young kids) then I think we deserve it.

Some of us don’t want to spend time on meal planning or shopping when it can be done for us

So it does! Add ingredients to the basket button is there!

Awww. Wibble wibble.

All you have to do is decide what you want to eat. And then they send it to you with instructions. Makes it really easy to eat home-cooked food, and there's no waste.

Am neither lazy or stupid and can afford these food services. Time is precious.

Vague idea of what I might want to cook... add a selection of ingredients... decide what we're having... what we fancy... improvise

That is all mental load. It may not bother you but it does some people.

Well each to their own eh, after a full day at work if I was to come and stand in front of the fridge trying to decide what we were having, 50% of the time we'd probably end up ordering in. So it might be slightly more expensive than supermarket shopping, but it saves us money in real terms. It also forces us to cook the stuff before it goes off. It's basically a life hack for busy people with a tendency to laziness/ADHD.

Teens. Deciding what to cook them every night. All of the pettifogging moaning about what they do and they don’t like. Give them the app. Tell them to pick meals that they all agree on. Job done. They cannot complain.

I'm aware they aren't the most cost effective but we enjoy them 3 nights a week because they offer us new ideas, new recipes and the ingredients we need in the exact quantities. If I went out and bought a full jar or spices or whatever for one dish I probably wouldn't use them again for ages.

You might not need them, like them or see the point in them but others clearly do so why not just leave them to it?

Convenience and forced me to cook some new things.

Not worth it though. Quality hit and miss, items left out. Can by organic for the same amount and batch cook some dishes.

I’ve had HF and Gousto. I don’t anymore because I’ve pretty much exhausted their recipes but still use their recipe cards with my own ingredients.

I found them really useful. They made cooking a lot easier and only gave you the amount of spice or condiment you needed so no half jars going to waste.

They get repetitive after a while so I think a lot of people, like myself, use them for a bit and then stop. They opened my eyes to a variety of recipes I probably would never have cooked. I used them, stopped, went back to them, stopped, on numerous occasions.

Never underestimate how much of the mental load hello fresh type meals take out of some peoples lives.

Yes its expensive, but thats for the convenience and ease of planning.

@Parker231 but it's not exactly meal planning to order the food you might want from the supermarket, is it? Or onerous. I've just done my weekly Ocado order and it's taken me six minutes. It will take me a couple of minutes to think what I might want to cook each night, and to decide if I've got the right ingredients in the cupboard / fridge, or choose something else if I haven't.

I'm all in favour of saving time and have tried three of the recipe boxes, but I like to be able to choose good quality ingredients and sensible portion sizes, and I honestly didn't find there was any time saving with the meals I bought.

I have Hello Fresh meals 4 xweek.Been having them for months,never had anything missing and always had fresh vegetables.You can unsubscribe any time.

They have saved me loads of money,as I was shopping in M and S and always buying “treats”.The portions are perfect for 2 adults,one a 6 foot man.

I love the convenience of them,I usually choose the quick recipes.Also I am a very good cook! During lockdown I had Mindful Chef meals,they took ages to cook and they were not nice,I only kept having them because it occupied my time!

I did it during Covid when I couldn’t get food at the supermarket. I got sick of doing my meal plan, only to arrive at the supermarket to find that none of my ingredients were in stock. Hello Fresh was how I was able to put a dinner on the table every night. I kept the recipe cards and still use them regularly.

Utter crap.