What's for Dinner? My Take on HelloFresh Meal Service
First things first, I want to make clear: I am not a paid spokesperson for HelloFresh. I am not sponsored by them, nor do I get any kickbacks. Curiosity compelled me to try one of these subscription meal boxes. I continuously heard good feedback about HelloFresh from many people.
If you are wondering, HelloFresh is a food delivery service that packages ingredients for meals that you cook at home. Yes, you heard that right, they package all the food portions for your family’s size, with the exact ingredients that you will need, and send it to you with the instructions on how to create something healthy from scratch. All of the meal ingredients ship directly to your door--seems pretty great right?!
For a while now one of the main topics for discussion at my house is who will cook dinner? Follow up, who has the ability to cook dinner? Since the kids were little I always did all the cooking. I actually just self taught myself for most of it, making mistakes and a hodgepodge recipes from either the Internet or different cookbooks that looked pretty. When I started my own business, and it subsequently picked up to being pretty much full-time, most nights I don’t get home from work until six or seven. By then, everyone would be starving, and yet no one had taken the initiative to start cooking anything. Something had to change.
Since the pandemic my hubby has been working from home. Like so many others newly working remotely, he had more time home, providing a good opportunity for him to try his hand at cooking. He was very reluctant, saying that he really didn’t know much about cooking--other than making amazing breakfasts, which he really does rock. So I thought, “what a great time to try out a meal box subscription?!”.
One of the main claims to fame with these subscription boxes is that they are a great way to get everything you need, along with instructions to help you learn how to cook. It potentially could teach the kids to cook as well. So I decided to take the plunge and ordered a subscription of HelloFresh.
Guys, it has been honestly amazing!! Everyone has chipped in and taken a turn at cooking! Even on the nights that I work, I don’t mind coming home to cook if I don’t have to do the shopping or try to decide what to make at the last minute. I’m so grateful that services like this exist for busy families who still want to eat home cooked, healthy meals. Down below I will share a few of the reasons that I love the subscription and a few of the things that I might change. We have been doing this for about a month now, and I look forward to continuing this and possibly trying out different ones in the future.
Here are some of the things that I loved:
I love that it helps us to branch out and try things that we may not have tried before. HelloFresh sends a variety of dishes, from simple burgers and fries to authentic traditional dishes from other countries. It’s definitely a great way to expand your palate without ever having to leave home.
I love that it saves me time when grocery shopping. I am one of those people who, when I go grocery shopping, I like to take my time and meander around the isles and see what’s new and trendy. This can be quite time consuming, and often I buy way more than I planned. You spend money on the transportation to get you there, and once you are there, you may spend more money than originally thought. It can also be dangerously expensive as every new shiny seasonal item distracts, and drives you to purchase them. Then you may have no idea how to prepare it or what to do with it most of the time resulting in it going to waste.
Now that last point: I love that HelloFresh helps prevent the wasting of produce and other grocery items--no more impulse buying or even over-buying.
I love how healthy and fresh the options are. I feel like I’m giving my family the best chance at eating healthy, and learning how to create these amazing dishes for themselves. We have had a hard time with portion control in my family so with everything already portioned out when it arrives, it just makes eating healthy so much easier.
I love that all of their meals are offered online. If you lose one of your recipe cards, especially if it was a family favorite, or need inspiration, they are just right there and easy to look up. Little tip: you don’t even need to have a subscription to access them, you can just go on their website and look up recipes if you want to make them. You can grab your own ingredients at the grocery store of your choice. I love companies that do that. It really feels like they’re giving back.
Something I didn’t know right off the bat, but then learned later is that you can skip weeks. This comes in handy if you have too many meals that you haven’t had a chance to make, yet and they’re filling up your fridge. Or say you had a financial burden unexpectedly, and need to take a week or couple weeks off, you can pause the subscription. Same is possible if you’re planning to be out of town for vacation.
Things that I didn’t really love
I didn’t love that it was a bit expensive. With the classic plan (three meals for two people) it ends up being $10 a serving. This feels super pricey for just receiving ingredients and a recipe. I did find that, with some of the recipes available online, I could pick one and go get the groceries that I wanted or needed at Trader Joe’s to be more cost efficient. One tip I have for ordering your meals/boxes: while the pasta and soup meals are tasty, I don’t think they’re worth the price. I’ve tried a few of the HelloFresh pasta meals and found them all to be good, but I felt like I could’ve easily duplicated them for a lot cheaper from Trader Joe’s. I would say experiment with the Hello Fresh soup and pasta recipes from their website, but buy your own ingredients! I do find HelloFresh boxes to be totally worth it for the burgers, and other meat dishes.
I didn’t love how they don’t really communicate with you until your box has already shipped. So if you forget about your upcoming week's order, then they will just send you random dishes. Some weeks have been great, some weeks not so much. Our least favorite dish so far has probably been the spinach gnocchi. We thought we would love it but actually it was just a little too much. If you do have a weekly subscription I would definitely recommend setting an alarm in your calendar to remind you to pick your meals before your box ships.
I also didn’t love that, the first time we got our order, they didn’t ring the doorbell and so we are not really sure how long the food was sitting outside. In Roseville that can be really dangerous and 110° weather. I did go on HelloFresh and make a note to them to please ring the doorbell and so far we haven’t had any other issues.
Lastly, and this isn’t terrible, but I did find that sometimes they gave too much of the ingredients and we ended up using half the amount. For instance, in one of our recipes they gave two packages of cream cheese two and packages of Parmesan cheese. We don’t do a lot of dairy, so I found myself using half of the cream cheese and half of the Parmesan. My kids were able to use the rest of the cream cheese for the bagels, so luckily it didn’t go to waste. That’s just an option of how sometimes you want to cater things to your liking.
Final Thoughts
If you are someone that hates putting together recipes, then HelloFresh meals are a great option. This meal-delivery company will pick a recipe and send you all the ingredients. All you have to do is follow the instructions.
The preparation and cooking time for these meals are fairly short. They are ideal for people on the go and busy families who can’t get to the grocery store.
If you are interested in HelloFresh, you will need to set up an account with them. Once you have signed up, you can check for their weekly meal plans and select the ones you prefer. The meals are a great way to learn how to cook and there is a wide range of options to choose from.