Is hello fresh value for money or a rip off?

[cleocleo81]

Contemplating signing up to hello fresh. It seems for a weekly box for three people for three meals a week it is £35 a week. That works out about £13.50 per meal for 4 people- 2 adults, 2 dcs. Does this sound value for money or too much?

I have gone back to work recently and dh and I are struggling to make a healthy dinner for the family quickly in the turn around between finishing work and bedtime. Dh is struggling to finish work early to cook tea on time whilst I am out or still working. So I thought it could take the stress off him three times a week, be a good way of eating healthily, getting more varied food into the dcs and allowing me to monitor calories and portion size better.

However, our shopping bill has rocketed so I was hoping this might help reduce it too so that I done but as much in the weekly shop as I now only need to shop for 3/4 meals a week instead of 7. I don't want to end up spending our weekly shop plus HelloFresh. Do you think this is the case? It will be money saving overall?

We had a terrible experience of Hello Fresh. I'm a reasonable cook, and have time, but we had a discount voucher so thought we would give it a go.
There is a big 'lead' time, so we needed to know nearly 2 weeks in advance as to what we might like to eat in 2 weeks time. And if you want to cancel, you have to do it 10 days before delivery. In our (very overpackaged) boxes we rarely got the ingredients that went with the recipe cards. I definitely think it a waste of time and money. Rip-off.

I prefer the simply cook pots. Normally just need a couple of ingredients added onto Tesco shop. The kids aren’t fans though so it’s more an adult treat.

Didn't rate it. Bad aquality and their portions are off, two very tiny chicken breasts or thighs between 2 people just wasn't enough

Woeisme I agree re simply cook. That's one I've kept using. Usually requires very few fresh ingredients added to store cupboard staples. Takes 20-30 mins and a good chunk of the mental load out of it that's the benefit of these things. Usually delicious I think I've only had one meal I wasn't keen on

Tried hello fresh and was shocked at the quality of the veg they sent. Wrinkled and shrivelled, and they even actually sent half a carrot. I mean, carrots are like 20p a kilo, just send a whole carrot ffs! Also items were missing. And the recipes were a bit of a faff. But did taste good. Not value for money though. Easier to download recipes and buy in key herbs, spices etc then just buy ingredients as you need them.

Gousto have a shorter lead time, you can order (as I did this week) on Wed for a Saturday box. The amount of vegetarian and vegan meals is also greater, this week it was 32 although they do sell out of some. I've not had so many problems with Gousto in terms of missing ingredients as Hello Fresh, I left Hello Fresh due to this. There was also too much roasting veg in Hello Fresh veggie meals, that's nice but it takes ages and I can't be bothered. My fave meal in Gousto is a one pot one!

Those saying you could use the recipe cards and get the stuff from the supermarket- I have a friend who does this, but to me, the faff is the supermarket! I guess it depends what you are wanting- for me, it's a quickish dinner, everything supplied, different meals each week.

If you are looking to save money, I wouldn't use these boxes except on discount.

We had some boxes on special offer and found the portions to be tiny (might be about us, not the box), packaging split on one occasion (sour cream everywhere), missing ingredients (the spice mix for a curry recipe) and incredible amounts of packaging. Not great value for money as you could buy the same basic ingredients for a fraction of the price.
HOWEVER, I loved being able to try out a few ingredients without having to buy a whole bottle/jar. Some things are now an absolute staple ingredient in our cupboard and others were a let down so I haven't bothered with them again. We have limited budget/ storage space so this was handy for me.

We tried both Hello Fresh and Gousto last year.
We found Gousto was much better value for money, we were paying around £48 for 4 meals for a family of 4.
Other plus points for Gousto were:
Better quality meat
More sustainable packaging
More meals with more of your 5 a day

I definitely would not recommend Hello Fresh. I've just had a vegetarian trial box delivered with non-vegetarian ingredients such as cheese with rennet which I might not even have noticed if I hadn't glanced at the packaging. There were opened packets as well so I can't use them either and the veg is rather poor quality. Never again.

No delivery charge for Gousto either, I think it's £5 for Helllo Fresh

This referral link gets 65% off your first Gousto box so 4 delicious and highly recommended meals for 2 cost only £12.25! You can pause boxes or cancel anytime :)

cook.gousto.co.uk/raf/promo_code=KELLY42401604&utm_source=weblink

We have them every week and have for about 4 months, I love the convenience and find that we actually save money as we're aren't eating out 2/3 times per week.

I had a look on Gusto and it seemed more expensive but then once I put the order in Hello Fresh was more than I thought.

Well we are week 4 in and I absolutely love it. I keep saying to DH it's going to hard to give up as it's like restaurant food every night. We actually manage to make a box of 3 meals for 3 people stretch to 4 people and last over 4 meals and a couple of lunches for DH in the week. I guess we must be eating smaller portions. The Meals are delicious, the dcs have loved them so no stresses at the table snd it has got them eating lots of foods they previously didn't like. I think it might be saving us money or costing us the same as I now only do a big shop twice monthly and I don't go into the supermarket for a few bits anymore as I know good is waiting at home. I love the convenience and it's brilliant not stressing about having no food in and trying to cook something healthy quickly in between work, homework, bedtime etc.

I know what you mean about veg though. I wish more veg came with it so we are adding our own. Plus I do feel guilty about the packaging. I am going to contact them and see if they could go more green. Lots of needless one off plastic

I need to watch the calories too as lots of the meals are heavy carbs and much more calories than what I would normally cook. I am trying to loose weight..

It will be hard to give up.

Hi,

If you use my referral link you can get £22 off your first box with free delivery and then £10 off the next two. This way your trial is really cheap and then you can cancel if you want to.

K

Hello Fresh £47 off

We did Hello Fresh for a few months and got some fab ideas from it but its only worth it on discount weeks.

I got fed with having to pay more for chicken breast rather than thigh for example.

lots of recipes are almost repeat of others and I didn’t get on with the explanations in the recipe instructions. It was convenient up to the point I had to cook it, I’ve now memorized some recipes but skip unnecessary steps HF add in.

@sparkycats if you like the food but the packaging bothers you (it bothered me a lot and I let them know that was one of the main reasons I wouldn't continue, they said they were trying to improve, and that was at least a year ago), you can just pick out the card for some meals you've enjoyed, check the ingredients list and put it all on a supermarket delivery order.

Can I ask - I am keen to try with the discounts and then see but... I refuse to go through the checkout process until I can actually see what the meal options are and I can't seem to find anyway to look at the recipes etc until AFTER checkout. Is that just me?

I think this is the case with Hello Fresh but with Gousto you can view the meals available before getting to the checkout process. We definitely prefer Gousto out of the two. Better quality, less missing or damaged ingredients and much more variety of exciting meals. I also like that you can easily pause your subscription with Gousto as soon as you join them. I find it a pain that there isn’t this option with Hello Fresh and you have to remember to pause any weeks you don’t want a box delivered.
If you fancy giving Gousto a try then my link will get you 65% off your first box and 30% off any further boxes ordered in your first month. cook.gousto.co.uk/raf?promo_code=NICOL274409&utm_source=iosapp

I have been using hello fresh for a few months . Food is tasty and easy to prepare although i find following the recipes frustrating as i know how to cook and following their plan is a bit tedious. Ingredients have always been fine, fresh and good quality.
I am thinking about stopping using them as i pay 58 quid for 4 meals for 3 people. Thats about 14.50 per meal. i recently priced up a meal which was a Beef mince with Thai spice, hoisin sauce, pak choi, green beans and rice - ingredients from Tesco £6 - so we pay a premium of £8.50 pounds for this meal.
Basically on average we pay double for the ingredients - the equivalence of 100% inflation rate.

RIP-OFF
Same as it was 11 months ago.

We much prefer gousto than hello fresh and think it is better value too.

A fool and his money are soon parted, that's what I alway say.

Rip off

I've found mindful chef the best but helllofresh is good too, it saves a lot of time in the week. Of course the raw ingredients could be bought cheaper you're paying for the convenience and not having to organise it.