If you use Hello Fresh, what do you think?

[listsandbudgets]

I have a Guosto box once a month but am wondering about also having one Hello Fresh box each month as well so I'm getting boxes fortnightly.

If you use them, what do you think of them? I need simple recipes with a variety of vegetarian, fish and meat in each box so I can try to please everyone at least once or twice a week Its not clear from their site though if I can mix vegeterian and meat

Also is their customer service any good? Guosto have once missed an ingredient from my box but they were very good about partial refund and apologising

Thanks

I thinking the quality of Hello Fresh has really declined tbh. Shame was really good at the start but Gousto has maintained good quality ingredients and recipes so I would stick with them

We flick between the two, I'm loving making 20 min meals that are so tasty. The meals are pretty much the same as Gousto....only thing I prefer on hello fresh is that the meals are in individual bags (apart from the meats) so it's just grab and cook

We've had them and like them... but can't afford it more regularly.

I have a discount code if you'd like it ;)

You can mix veggie and meat as you can choose what you like from a long list for the week. I think its just cheaper if you have just veggie.

Customer service is ace. The meals have been lovely and easy to follow. The months we've had them I've loved it. Really tasty and good flavours. Easy to make. My girl's have loved getting the boxes and help with the cooking.

I got a box once but there was an absolutely horrendous amount of packaging. So, so wasteful.

I prefer Gousto for (to my mind) more sophisticated meals for the same amount of prep and ingredients.

Gousto is better - tastier more memorable meals, easier to follow and I still regularly make about ten of their recipes now even though I stopped the subscription (switched to mindful chef and then hellofresh but just cook from gousto recipes now.. will possibly go back to actual gousto one day)

I found that they have a heavy reliance on stockpots and stock cubes for flavour. Also, they tend to use a lot of the same veg. One week I ordered a box of 4 meals and every single one involved a bag of spinach. The fridge could barely contain it all. Red peppers also used frequently. It all gets a bit samey after a few weeks. I think I did it 4 or 5 times and I'm not really tempted to try it again.

Ordering 4 meals with spinach in though would be your choice? There's lots each week to choose from so I made sure I chose a variety of different meals when I had it rather than samey meals.

I really liked the meals I had and kept the recipe cards. They were nicer than meals I'd normally cook as everyday suppers - with no more effort. And still not so fancy the kids wouldn't eat them.

I really would do it more often if I could justify probably will in school holidays as fun for the kids too and cheaper than eating out.

I tried them a while ago. I liked the idea that just the right quantities of the ingredients were provided, but the overpackaging was not good. Some tins were dented on occasion. I found a lot of the recipes were really quite complicated and I'm a good cook - it's supposed to be a time and effort saver but wasn't! Also a lot of the veggie options were very cheese-centric and I don't want to eat the same thing all week.

Other than that it was fine!

Op - easy answer is to try one. You dont need to sign life away!

We've tried hello fresh and Gousto and much prefer Gousto. Hello fresh just seem to make the ordering unnecessarily restricted whereas Gousto you can swap up and down numbers of meals and portions among any of that week's recipes.
On the actual food/recipes we tried, hello fresh were fine. I'd stick with Gousto though!

I think Gousto is better.

Better choice. Quicker to cook. Didn't go off as fast.

However with the self-selection on Gousto I was basically picking things I woudl like to cook anyway, and I did like the enforced change in meal style with HF.

I like Hellofresh a lot. I don't tend to go for stuff that I would have made myself, or meals that are too ordinary. What I do like is the vegetarian recipes and the ones where they're using things I wouldn't have thought of. I've rekindled a love of lentils and have discovered lots of new ways to use them and one of my favourite recipes is the lamb pilaf which I now just make myself. You can also scale up the recipes and a meal for two will generally stretch to three so I get the leftovers for lunch. I haven't had anything inedible but I've definitely tried things I wouldn't go for again.

Cons: the sausages they use are vile, and there's too much packaging, although it's fairly recyclable. After a while, the recipes become a bit samey.

I also tried Mindful Chef, but found their food a bit tasteless.

We use simplycook as life is far to unpredictable for the fresh food deliverys such as hello fresh and gusto. Simplycook gives you four meals worth of spices and seasoning with a recipe card to make tasty food. Weve not had a bad recipe and all have been really easy!

Just tried a Hello fresh meal and to be honest I wasn't that impressed. DS who has the subscription said it was OK but worst of the 3 he's had so far. It seems very expensive for what in this case was basically a bag of various veggies and a few spices. I get the everything ready for you to prepare and no waste but I won't be signing up anytime soon.

I've had both and personally prefer the Guosto recipes. We had both on offer and even now still use the Guosto recipes and rarely go back to the HelloFresh ones.

We've had both. Bad experience with Gousto when we had some off meat (still in date) delivered. Customer service was good though and they credited me with £10.

Have had Hello Fresh more recently and tbh the meals were on a par with Gousto.

I only order on an ad hoc basis though so I have no idea how repetitive meals are on either.

I did hello fresh and gousto once each. I found them both okay, just horrendously packaged and over priced.

We now use the recipes online and buy the ingredients from Aldi/ Tesco.

Love their recipes but had an awful experience with customers services who told me that an expected box would definitely be delivered that day as they had checked with the driver and he was only 10miles away. I waited and waited no box ever arrived. Hungry family had to get a takeaway instead.
Worst of all was their customer service lady (Mary....that's how crap she was, 3 years ago and I still remember her name!) was bloody rude to me and then told me she had to end our conversation as it was her home time
They did refund but didn't say sorry.
They also pester you to death with phone calls.
Never had a problem with Gousto.