this video is not sponsored. My goal was to order a meal delivery box service, put it to the test and then compare it to ordering groceries online. These are my findings ☝
This was a great comparison video. My friend orders, those premade dinners, and I think it turns him into a robot. He came over for a meal, which of course is home cooked in my house and asked where we bought the potato salad? Ha ha. What I like about your videos is that they have built up my cooking competency and confidence. You can’t get that in a box at your front door.
@@tomlidot4871 These boxes are not premade meals, you receive the ingredients but have to cook everything yourself. They are excellent to help people who lack confidence in the kitchen because by putting these meals together, they realize that they can actually cook something themselves.
I think you might have convinced me to give Hello Fresh a try! I'm still very shaky with my cooking abilities, so I think having that inspiration in the kitchen would keep me from eating out so much and benefit my health and my wallet greatly. Then I can use that to learn how to be resourceful in the kitchen and shop smart. Thank you for this amazing video!!
Very interesting how close in cost it is to your grocery orders. I wonder how much of that is aggressive pricing as a result of venture funding that will end up proving unsustainable and needing to be raised. All the more reason for a fresh newbie to take advantage while they still can though!
I know a few friends who used various services long enough to get inspired/reinspired to cook, kept the recipe cards for the meals they liked, and then cancelled their subscription until they hit a rut again. I honestly think it’s a great strategy to help people cook at home more often, if they can afford it.
Honestly I think these kind of meal delivery services are super valuable for people that maybe don't have a lot of experience cooking. It takes the stress out of finding a recipe and shopping to let them focus on just making the meal. Plus at the end of the day you still have all the recipe cards, just stick them in a binder and you're essentially building a cookbook with only recipes that you've tried and liked.
I would half agree except that free, great recipes are more accessible than ever and going shopping yourself with bigger meal portions in the end should definitely be alot cheaper than the prices hello fresh got. Like I get good meals for way under 60 bucks for the whole week and not just 2 meals. Also the amount of packaging is scary to me
This is actually exactly why I started with hello fresh. I did know how to cook in general (like cook a chicken breast or potatoes) but I had no idea what to cook especially when it came to veggies. So getting the boxes and focusing on also trying new stuff helped me build knowledge about what you can do with the ingredients. So yes quite a find for someone starting out and it saves a lot of time. You not only save on time finding the ingredients (online or in store) but also figuring out what to cook. Sadly where I live the price is just not worth it in the long run so I stopped using the service
@@AemilianaRosewood yeah but the point is the exact portions you need of each ingredient being sent to you is much less stressful than buying each ingredient and wondering which brand is best or whether you’re buying the right thing then getting home, making the recipe, and having a bunch of extra ingredients you don’t know what to do with (assuming you’re not used to cooking) i think doing hello fresh for a a few months to build your cooking skills + have a few recipes under ur belt would be cool, just don’t see why someone would continue past that point.
When I was 17, I requested my parents to start HelloFresh and told them I would cook all the meals every week. I wanted to learn cooking, with the comfort of not having to find recipes and do the grocery shopping. I think it's a great way to actually learn how to cook in a very convenient way.
Well that is one way for learning to cook. I am more like this guy one the video and don´t use recipes. I might look what ingredience i need but after that i just make the food and if i think it might need some adjustments or have something i don´t like i just swap that thing to something else. But anyway before you have such amount of experience for years of cooking things it´s not bad way to improve of cooking things and before you even notice, you don´t need recipes anymore. You will learn to buy base elements for your cooking like dry ingredients, spices and favourite veggies you like to use. Just remember to use good ingredients so the taste in the food is always so much better. Also learn to taste food as making and you´ll develope skill to add some more spices if needed. Happy cooking! Sorry if there are some mistakes on writing. Im a finnish dude so my english ain´t always perfectly right.
My main problem outside of the cost is the amount of waste. Yes, maybe they can reduce food waste, but everything they ship is plastic wrapped, down to spice servings, and then the whole thing comes in an insulated cooler box.
not to mention the ridiculous amount of packaging material and deliverie for just few meals. Repeated to the infinite, it wastes so much everything, it is ridiculous.
THIS. This is my biggest issue. Once plastic is created, it never goes away, only transformed into other things, or sits in a landfill or floats around our oceans.
I remember seeing a Canadian meal service that puts everything in a reusable bag with all the ingredients in one durable plastic container separated in squares. You just leave the container outdoor or give the container back to the courier and he gives you the next container with little trash produced from packaging.
@@JFarinaSingsnothing just sits in a landfill. Before things go into the landfill area they get incinerated and turned either into very small pieces or ash. Also nothing wrong with recycled plastic. It’s those who willingly choose not to properly throw trash in the appropriate bins that are the problem. By the way, Hello Fresh has a less waste option.
The trick with Hello Fresh is just to order 1 week of food. If you cancel, they will offer you a deal to come back, usually it is 50% or more for the first week and then lower discounts for following weeks. If you just cancel after 1 week, you can always keep getting a 50% or more discount as long as you don't mind having a gap of a few days in between cancellations.
yeah I just get the 4 cheap weeks and wait untill they call me again for another 4. I also get 5 meals a week so I pay even less per meal. (2 a week has a way higher price per meal)
You can go further if you mix companies. I cycle through Hello Fresh, Chef's Plate and either Goodfoods or Fresh Prep (the last two ARE more pricey, but they're also local so the quality of the veggies is MUCH higher). By the time I'm ready to pause one, the oldest site has contacted me with a discount =P
I noticed this, but I had the opposite trend where I got an increasing discount stopping at like 60ish% off, but I also left when they were getting real popular\ Edit: I also never went back cause the app let me see recipes, and instructions without paying xd
Nobody ever taught me to cook. I subscribed to hello fresh after becoming a mom and wanted to be able to cool healthy, creative meals for my children. I loved having all the decisions taken from me and don't have to go shopping. I really learned to cook through hello fresh. I stopped getting the boxes now, but I have a big folder with over 100 recipes my family loves and real confidence that I can cook good dishes.
As soon as he said 61 dollars for two nights for two people, I said hell nah. 60 bucks can last multiple days for 2 people at regular groceries and butcher shops.
I night a whole weeks worth and the price only came up to $128. I usually pay about that much without excluding snacks, fruits, and desserts. Great value if you’re buying and using more than a few meals a week!
you are looking for some recipes very small portions like 300g and spending so much money when the main item is a very cheap item like potatoes, rice or pasta is mad. the only thing you have to work out is the herbs and spices used in what dish and you can really do it all yourself. come on you still have to cook everything to make the meal. I costed the meals I got from Gousto and did videos to back it up. these company make very good profits off each meal sold
Unless you’re me and you have no self control at the store and buy everything. It’s way cheaper for me. Plus, I don’t have the time to come up with recipes.
I'm kind of with you, for those prices I can just get takeout, at which point, why bother cooking? This might be more appealing to people who live in more expensive areas I guess.
my fiance and I used to get hello fresh all of the time, we always loved it. we don't really use it anymore BUT we saved all of the recipe cards and we go to the store and buy the things for our favorite recipes and just cook them up lol
@@天敵神手王 For sure. A side-benefit is if you do Hello Fresh (or any of these services) for a few months, you end up with basically a high-quality cookbook with a full breakdown of ingredients as well as step-by-step instructions with pictures for each step.
I think you nailed the biggest benefit with "Not something I'd normally be cooking", it a great way to be exposed to flavors you'd never think of normally
100%. I have made things I’ve never even HEARD of, knowing it’s just one meal for my husband and me, and if we don’t love it, there’s no leftovers to wonder how to salvage. But we have liked everything so far… the only things we don’t do is make tostadas because it’s too much extra work when I can just heat the tortillas and make tacos.
Sure. But a quick poke around on the internet can yield the same thing. Just last week, I discovered a Bon Appetit (thanks, Claire Saffitz!) recipe for kimchi and scallion pancakes, something I'd never made before, and which takes like, 20 minutes, start-to-finish, and is delicious (it'll go into my permanent repertoire). But the reason I made this recipe is I'd never cooked with kimchi before (never _purchased_ kimchi before, actually), and I saw it in the store and it spoke to me (or something like that - I've always liked kimchi when I've gone to Korean restaurants, so I figured I'd get a Costco-sized jar of it). To me, new ingredients (which I buy on a whim, like I described here) and techniques (which I find on the internet, including on TH-cam cooking sites like this one) provide the inspiration. And while I followed the recipe verbatim the first time I did it, future attempts will absolutely be adapted to my own personal preferences. Another example - pizza. I've made my own pizza for 20 years now (with from-scratch dough and sauce), but over the last couple years, I've substantially transformed my technique thanks to one Adam Ragusea, improving my pizza game by a LOT. That's a technique thing more than an ingredients thing, but still, the point stands. If you are getting bored of the same types of dishes and flavors in your life, it's not hard to find inspiration. I experiment a LOT in the kitchen (based mainly on things I've seen online), and I've been constantly surprised at how much variety you can get from ingredients with which you're familiar, just by altering your technique. I think that there are three potential advantages Hello Fresh (and its competitors) give people. The first is they save you (some) time - time shopping (although unless you're getting food exclusively from such companies, you're still going to be shopping for all of your other meals), and time searching for inspiration on the internet. If you are exclusively using their services, it's probably at least 3 hours a week, while if you're still doing some of your own cooking (and thus going shopping anyway), it's maybe around 1 to 2 hours (depending on how many meal-delivery service kits you order). The second is an advantage exclusive to people who are not confident in their own skills in the kitchen - they do all the work (at least that's the pitch). And finally, the third advantage is that there is little chance of food waste. Everything comes portioned for the dishes you're making. You don't have to deal with an extra half-bag of carrots, or the rest of the bottle of chili flakes. For perishable products, this is certainly a benefit to meal-delivery kits, but for non-perishables like pasta and spices (which will last 2 or 3 years before starting to become noticeably worse), it's sometimes good to have these kicking around (and indeed, most people DO have these kicking around in their kitchens). For these advantages, you're paying a 50-80% premium on your meals (compared to their cost had you made them from scratch, buying all the ingredients). So to me, the only thing that matters when deciding whether to sign up for such a kit is, is the trade-off worth it to you? Personally, I think that the time issue is overblown. Cooking can be a family activity - most people can spend a few hours on the weekend going shopping with the kids, and getting them to help you prepare a week's worth of suppers (perhaps 3 different dishes that are big enough that you can eat each of them for at least 2, and maybe even 3 days...I've always been a leftovers-loving person). Stir-fries are a great option here, but there are a lot of one-dish meals that are easy to make and delicious, things that can be made and frozen, and popped into the oven when you're ready to eat them. As for the potential skill issue, I don't see how there's a difference between following a recipe you found on the internet, and following a recipe that Hello Fresh sent you. If you're trying to develop your own creations, fine, skill is an issue, but merely reproducing other people's? That's far less of an issue. And regarding leftover ingredients, because these CAN serve as inspiration, and you can find recipes that use them up (or plan your meals so that you don't have leftover ingredients), this is also not such a big deal. So...I don't think I will be getting such a service anytime soon. It just seems to me to be a waste of money that I could spend elsewhere.
Lot of people aren't adventurous culinary wise My mom is, my dad wasnt unless he was traveling,my brother isnt....I can be when I'm tired of comfort choices My mom made Teriyaki cows tongue and Shark fin soup and both were among the 1 time only dinners my Dad was ordering Pizza after my mom went to sleep😹
We were subscribers to Hello Fresh for about a year. It was great at first and I considered the additional cost worth it. The produce was very high quality. But over time the produce quality started going down and often times the kits were missing half the ingredients that were supposed to be in them. After a few complaints and continuing to see further decline in quality, we cancelled. But, we amassed a huge list of recipes that I often use to build the meal plan for the week. So, even though we had our issues, I think what we got out of it was well worth it, so I applaud Hello Fresh for that.
I got my first Hello Fresh box today and was amazed at the quality of the veggies. Hopefully it will continue. I’m using Hello Fresh as a way to learn to cook.
My first time ordering hello fresh I was missing cooking cards and half the ingredients. I don't know how to cook and relied on hello fresh to provide EVERYTHING and they didn't so half of it went to waste unfortunately.
same thing here, but with a delivery service that only served canada used to have huge portions, and high quality ingredients, but after the 2nd year, they were almost consistently missing one or 2 ingredients, putting the wrong recipe cards or missing them entirely, and most importantly the portion and quality of the produce went down. my guess is mostly because of the amount of people using the service grew, but they seemingly weren't able to scale accordingly so QA went down with it
Yeah, same here. Well, the quality is still good over here. But.. we are in Italy and as you probably all know, Italians are extremely picky with their food 😅 However, for example I refrain from getting recipes that contain chicken, because I don't like their suppliers (I prefer to buy my chicken from a local farm that produces things in a very controlled way without any antibiotics, hormones and all of that, whereas HelloFresh uses the mainstream producers that keep the chickens in cages, shitting all over themselves and things like that). What I do is I check the recipes every week, and when I see one or two that I might want to try, then I activate the week. I have a big collection of recipes that have become family favorites, and I keep making them over and over again. So, yeah, for me, if used in the correct way, it is a good resource. Also, I need to point out that here it costs waaaaay less than the US.
We experienced the same thing with HelloFresh, started off really well, but to be honest the recipes were all very similar after a while. A lot of them were quite spicy which didn´t suit us as my partner doesn´t like spicy food that much. If you wanted anything remotely fancy, salmon or steak that was at an additional cost. The quality of the ingredients definitely declined and things were missing, recipe cards were missing, so long story short we stopped our subscription and have a nice collection of recipes that we liked and started making ourselves at a much reduced cost!!
Been getting Hello Fresh for about a year now. I’m a competent cook but I live alone and am pretty disorganized, so HF has been a lifesaver for me. It saves me from having to plan and shop, and it has me cooking food again regularly instead of ordering out. The time and energy it saves me is worth the extra cost, at least for me
The people who enjoy meal prepping (whether it be for the prepping itself or for the end product) simply do not understand that not everyone likes prepping. Most people with enough disposable income and no interest in meal prepping would rather spend some of that disposable income on freeing up time from prepping and getting right to the cooking to strike the perfectly balance between time spent preparing meals for yourself and the health of those meals.
@@thelelanatorlol3978 it's also very helpful if you struggle with executive dysfunction, which people usually only associate with ADHD but is also prevalent with other disorders. I can cook but I struggle planning and balancing food/cooking along with everything else in my busy life. I don't personally use a service but having someone else plan for you sounds really helpful
@@thelelanatorlol3978 it's not about the prepping, it's about the enormous extra cost with little to no benefit. With 60bucks I can provide meals for the week, not just 2 nights
@@ironbooze2937 They clearly see the benefit. To them, they simply have no interest in spending time planning for meal prep. It's like how people will go to auto shops to get their car fixed instead of learning a how to fix a car yourself. For some people the time is more valuable than the money.
Hello fresh is just a gateway to home cooking. It’s like training wheels that gets people started and will inspire a good number to go on their own once they build up their confidence.
Thank you for that comment. It’s opened my eyes. I’m here thinking “my income and expenses don’t allow me to do this” But on the flip side, is what you just mentioned. Thank you
@@raflim i got them a few times , i get them with the discout and then cancel before the last week as the discount gets less every time. then a few months later they other the full discount and i do the same again, now i have the cards with all the info to make them at home and like the op said it will show you how easy cooking is.
@raflim Just use it for 3 to 6 months and keep the recipe cards. This will let you know how they are prepared and what you need. Then when you unsubscribe you can just make your own meals and plan grocery trips around these meals.
Just FYI: When looking at the menu listings for each week, many of the recipes WILL have a printer icon above them when you click on it to see the ingredients. I print out LOTS of their recipes now that I have stopped delivery after the discounted deals went away. ($60 for 3 meals is insane...$28 for those same ones is more my speed)" I have links for Hello Fresh, Every Pate and Blue Apron on my computer and now use the downloaded recipes and shop local to get the same thing. (And most of the spice blend recipes are ALSO online, so you can make them yourself for future use inexpensively)
My wife subscribed to this when we were both super stretched for time. We ended up getting one of our favorite meals, a Korean noodle bowl. We copied the recipe and it's actually a super easy and quick meal that you can make on your own in about 15 mins. If anything, I think it's a great way for beginner home cooks to get ideas on how to put together solid meals with basic ingredients. It's one thing to read a recipe online and something totally different to get those materials on hand and put it together yourself.
Agree great for learning techniques too. The cons were: So much packaging, and you’re locked into cooking that meal within the next few days. Not too bad we tend to go in and out of these services.
That was my thought as well. For people new to cooking. Don't know how to buy groceries for the week, stuff like that. Makes it easy to learn how to cook, how much, and gives confidence to cook more
I work a ton and have severe executive dysfuction. HF was literally the ONLY thing that snapped me out of unintentionally starving myself for years. I meal plan by myself now n buy groceries but i never would've gotten to this point without HF
Hello, executive dysfunction friend here. I buy ingredients for meals and then keep them in plastic shoe containers in my fridge separated by meal. Then I just pull the box out when it’s time to cook. I sort things into the boxes when I’m unpacking the groceries, so it’s pretty easy to just toss things in!
Yeah it's similar for me. I'm disabled and generally re(dact)ed when it comes to meal planning etc., so HF has been a great help for me, eating more healthy, less out and especially losing a lot of weight. However I still mess up the planning sometimes and over-order.
I worked for Hello Fresh. They freeze their meat. We had to tell every customer that all food was fresh, never frozen. Not a big deal. I freeze meat at home all the time. I just don’t like working for liars.
@@thegray0 Why would big company selling food lie about how fresh is their food? If we can't trust companies not to freeze meat so it doesn't go bad quickly then who we can trust?
I did hello fresh for a year when I was taking care of my 99 year old aunt who was an extraordinary cook. When she was no longer able to cook she was eating the frozen dinners (these were tasteless and full of starch so she would get a little sick) Very shortly after going to her I began Hello Fresh. The first time she tasted it she looked startled then looked at me “This is DELICIOUS “. This is from an aunt who was my most persnickety aunt lol. The last year of her life was really enhanced by HF. BTW we were like 20 miles from nowhere and 40 more miles from something so having everything I needed in the kit was very important. I usually had more spice left over that I saved. Our favorite meal was the farmer’s casserole.
I bet the company would love to hear your story. But more importantly, I am so glad for you that you were able to have that time with your aunt and that you had the great idea to use their service which seemed to fit perfectly for a number of reasons. She knew that you cared about her enjoyment and prior standard of life. We all hope that someone will treat us with thoughtfulness when we are vulnerable or in need. Hope you're well.
That is such a heart warming story. Really happy that you dedicated that time to you elderly aunt. Can't imagine how nice she must have felt to be cared for. Have an amazing day!
Such a sweet story. I can imagine the convenience and having the charm of a homecooked meal together is great in this case. Good on you for looking after your aunt, take care!
As a Chinese person, Hello Fresh helped me become more comfortable cooking western dishes. I also hate grocery shopping with a passion, so being able to skip that entirely is a huge plus for me. That being said, I only use it once in a while and only with discounts.
Yeah, the discounts are pretty good. The normal price is expensive. But with a rebate I can often pay about 2 euros or even less per portion. But the normal price is often about double which is a lot more expensive than the supermarket.
As a beginner, Hello Fresh is a godsend. Its teaching me how to cook. And im eating pretty damn nice meals. Sure its a bit costly, but im getting a huge variety of dinners. Food id never even heard of. And im minimising how much food I throw away at the end of the week. Downsides for me is obviously the cost. Sometimes the portions arent that great for pasta and rice and meat. Theres a LOT of meat. And often theres not enough pasta or rice for the portions requested sometimes.
As far as I can tell that's on purpose. Part of their draw is that meals are supposed to be healthy so they cut back a little on carbs and put in more protein.
I had a friend who didn't know how to do weeknight cooking, so they ordered Hello Fresh for like a couple of months to improve their cooking abilities and develop their skills. It seemed to work pretty well. They cook for themself a lot more often now.
yeah great way to get you use to handling different flavours and ingredients and you dont have to worry about portion sizes etc. i think they are also good value if you use one of the numorous codes going around from people they sponsered where you get it like 50% off or an extra meal for free etc. probably also varies a bit on where you live. sometimes may work out cheaper because say where you live you have issues or will end up paying a huge premium for certain ingredients
That’s exactly what I’m doing. Literally never cooked in my life besides microwave meals & a friend gave us a code so we tried it out. We get 2 recipes a week and we’ve stopped ordering food out and have been recreating the meals we get because we love them so much. The more you make them, the faster it gets lol. I’m a picky eater and it’s made me try a bunch of different foods I wouldn’t have gotten to otherwise. The quality of food we get is always good, no complaints. I think it depends on which warehouse location you get tho. There’s tons of codes online to use to reduce the price. $60 for 2 recipes with 2 portions each basically equals $15 per meal which isn’t too expensive. Basically what we spent eating out anyway. All of our recipes so far have been 10/10 and I can’t go back to eating bland food anymore lol
This is how I learned how to cook. I did the HelloFresh for about 8 months, got comfortable with the food and cooking. I cook a lot of food on my own now but still have dishes I refer to from hellofresh to make every once in a while.
@@michaela1528 I'm really glad that worked for you! And now you can take the techniques that you learned and try them with different ingredients and flavor profiles too. Don't be afraid to experiment!
I am a pretty good home cook. I initially signed up for hello fresh to get out of a food rut. For me, it takes away the stress of what will I make today. At least once a week the stress would win, and I ended up spending $50 on takeout. They throw discounts at you if you pause and reactivate, so I have never paid full price. I have saved so much money. We have all lost weight because the portions are not big. We are eating more veggies with no leftovers. I find the recipes super easy to follow. I usually get a box for 6 meals for 4 people for around $100-$150 per week with discounts. I can probably go cheaper at the grocery store, but for me, not defaulting to takeout means I have saved a lot of money overall.
That makes sense, but I personally enjoy the 'hunt'. Sometimes going in the store with no clue of what to make, but just looking at the produce and letting the ideas flow is often where the magic happens
@@tulgabois1250 I agree I have this fantastic mall like a block from my house that has a produce market that's super cheap, a butcher and also a grocery store and every month I find new and exciting things to try. Last month they imported a cactus fruit called shu Shu I'm told it's from Mexico and I pickled it and had it with everything it was so good. If you find you have left overs you don't know what to do with you just need a chest freezer they aren't expensive surprisingly and you need to start pickling things it's so rewarding.
@@tulgabois1250 I do agree. I prefer to choose my ingredients and the quality of them. Im not referencing calories or sugar contents. I want my food to be healthy and taste good. You have more control over how much you spend and what you buy if you do it yourself. I have commercial kitchen experience in cooking. Transitioning to home cooking isn't too easy because I am very used to the commercial kitchen equipment. However, I think it broadened my capabilities to shop and choose. I do sometimes go into stores with an idea and come out with something else. Then the question is where is the money being saved. Food is expensive in canada always. Our discount is comparable to full price in the US at times. Saving money is not always in the dollar itself. I will cook with the intent of left overs to cook fewer times a week because just like everyone. I get stress too. Sometimes the saved money is in the form of saved time and I rarely eat take out because you have to be conscious of whether you get take out or not. Does not just happen. When you buy from companies like hello fresh. They account for the food waste that you dont have, you pay for that. They do account for portioning, you would pay for that too. I have heard stories of the food lasting people at least a couple meals due to the sizes and I can see how that is a possibility. If you are big eater or not. I would bet that most of what you pay for in these delivery services, you pay more because convenience comes at a price. You pay for those workers to do the hard work for you. Most probably falls into shipping, at least in canada.
I'm a former chef and pretty good home cook. I was thinking as I watched that it might be worth it to me for a short stint to break out of a rut or for less food waste since I'm single. Other than that, it's too expensive but it does look yummy!
As someone who orders hello fresh in germany, it was super interesting to see the different packaging. A lot of the spices, etc. in germany are not in plastic but in some kind of paper
I think that the EU has a lot of regulations around single use plastic packaging that we don’t have here in the US. A paper wrapper sounds more efficient, but also probably more prone to getting wet/torn.
This is so interesting. In your opinion, how did you feel about how your produce and meats (if you did) were sent to you? Also how long does hello fresh take to get to you?
@@Sniperboy5551Apparantly this company does whatever they can get away with. Concern about overpackaging is what would keep me from using a meal service like this. They can accommodate Europe's realistic concerns, but feel free to engage in overpackaging pollution in the US.
@@Nessal83 When there is overflowing trash and `recycleables' that can't be recycled economically in your back yard, because there's no more room for landfills, I expect that you will, frankly, gaf.
I signed up to one of these recipe boxes a few years ago during Covid as my mental health was in the toilet and I really wanted to learn how to cook because I was a complete novice. Literally, everything I cooked before then was just frozen processed, carb heavy stuff thrown into the oven for the designated time. Even initially following the recipes I was terrible, but as the years have gone on, I've become much more confident with cooking in general, and nowadays I barely even read the recipe cards (even for new recipes). They're a great way to give you a basic skill set and develop good habits for cooking.
I used Hello Fresh for about 3 months to aid in teaching my two teenagers to cook. I had already taught them some basics but the Hello Fresh meals made it easy for them to see how to make a more complex meal with side dishes. Once they became comfortable with using Hello Fresh we stopped the service and now they each make one dinner per week by picking a recipe, making themselves a grocery list and then putting it all together. I found Hello Fresh to be an excellent tool for teaching especially because I rarely cook by recipes anymore so when teaching them I kept saying just put a little in. That's not specific enough for a learner lol.
Good idea. I tried Green Chef to get my husband cooking. He liked it but still doesn't cook like your teens do. Good job boys! Thank your Mom for helping you learn a valuable skill!
Worked so well for my husband too. I'm happy to give him detailed recipes, but he was always asking me a million questions anyway and wasn't great at buying the ingredients either. Writing up several meals a week took me so long, since I'm well past the stage of needing a recipe for cooking. Plus, Cooking my recipes just got him too anxious about trying to exactly replicate the meals I made. We got Dinnerly and now I'm not the authority to ask anymore and he's not trying to replicate something I've made. He happily cooks the meals on his own and doesn't need to shop for them, which is great.
The main issue with the "beginner cook" is that they don't want to buy 12 carrots, they just need enough to make that meal, because they will most likely waste the rest. I know that sounds odd to some, but that's the demographic these companies are shooting for. They are definitely geared towards having things ready to go, not having to think about it and giving you exactly what you need to get those meals on the table. Your description at the end was spot on.
I totally get that. If someone just wants to experiment with new recipes, they are a great option. I know what it's like to crave a certain meal that requires things like carrots, celery, etc, that you can't just buy one or two stalks of, lol! So you have to plan the rest of your week's cooking around that leftover produce so it doesn't go to waste.
@@MicukoFelton i can only buy stuff in bulk.. like it’s always at least a couple of carrots or 4-5 zucchini. Same with salad. It’s either not having it or eating it for days.
@@mmoboxs A couple of carrots doesn't seem like too much? Use 3 in a meal and the other 3 grind into a healthy salad. It's so easy to use them up. But even if you leave them in the fridge for a while it's not like they'll immediately spoil.
I feel the major value adds for Hello Fresh is not having to come up with two unique meals each week, but also not having to compare exactly what you have in your cabinets already with what you need to buy from the grocery store to make a new recipe you've never tried before. Both of those things combined make it worth it in my opinion.
The price is never the thing that draws me to meal kits. Less food waste, less mental energy to figure out dinners. They're never going to be cheaper than shopping for groceries
@@DearLilBunBunplastic packaging is the last concern for me. If I have to choose between feeding myself or eating my neighbours dogs again, it’s an easy choice.
Hellofresh really got both my kids (11&14) into cooking. They can cook the recipes and have even started cooking other things because they feel more confident. I order them every other month to mix things up and help make dinner easier. I also have chronic illness and hellofresh is amazing when I'm not feeling well.
I used Hello Fresh for a little more than a year and ended up with a little short of 150 recipes from them. I kept all of the recipes and put them in a binder. Now I've been using them to plan out my weekly menu and grocery shopping. I'm able to select 4 or 5 recipes a week that all have overlapping ingredients and gives me 7 nights of meals, usually 3 or 4 lunches (including leftovers), and very little waste. I figured out that I paid roughly a 25% premium for Hello Fresh. This premium is well worth it for people who have a difficult time planning out their meals and just want convenient, well planned, and easily made meals. Just remember to save the recipes you get (although Hello Fresh is very happy to send you replacements as long as you're still using their service) so you can make em later. Careful planning of the week's meals will almost certainly see a significant savings on groceries since you can work it out to have as little waste as possible.
The premium is well worth it for anyone who has the disposable income and no interest in spending free time (something way more valuable than a couple extra bucks for those with enough disposable income) on things they aren't interested in like meal planning.
I've printed recipe cards off their site for free. Unless they changed that policy. I've never had the disposable income to purchase my own kit. Still, I'm glad you shared how you picked out meals! It gives me inspiration for how to search the sites to start trying new things!
I love that you organized everything by overlapping recipe ingredients! Something I’ve been meaning to do for my own favorite recipes in general! Inspired :)
We did Hello Fresh for a couple of years. When we lived in the Midwest, the portions were big, had good quality ingredients, and never missed an ingredient in our box. Moving to Central Florida, the quality went way down, portion sizes were tiny, and we were missing at least 1-2 ingredients per box. Absolutely terrible with the prices! We enjoyed the meals (and still make the recipes) but we buy our own ingredients and ignore the “please come back” mail.
My coworker had a coupon for a free hello fresh order. It was awesome i ordered my food and it was great except my mom used some of my ingredients lol i didnt like the quality of some of the produce though at the time I felt like the high price point wasnt worth it. Nevertheless it was a super cool experience and loved how everything was prepped so you just add all the food together so it was a plus
Yea. I think it depends on the area. With Everyplate, I noticed the quality of box deliveries (missing items, damage, etc. ) got worse over time... still saves us a bit of money. Now we have so many recipes, we have a portfolio folder that we organized by meal type. we skip some deliveries, pick 3-5 for that week, and just buy the ingredients at the store. We'll order a box if we see new meals we might like. FYI. Hello Fresh is the parent company for Everyplate.
My big issue when I tried hello fresh was the portion sizes. Some items were fine others were a bit small. But the worst part is no leftovers! If I’m doing the work to cook I’d at least like lunch the next day
You could pick how many portions for the number of people you were cooking for, lets say 4. You can then turn those 4 portions into 4 days of meals. Now this is only coming from a single person that only had there own mouth to feed. I thought I saw a leftover option in an add but could be wrong.
Yeah, I felt that too when I tried it. I got enough for 2 people, me and my dad...it was some kind of pork tenderloin dish, we ate it and... felt hungry after. ^^;
I had tried blue apron quite a while ago. This was when I didn't know how to cook at all, and these boxes were fantastic in helping me practice my basics. I would credit these heavily for me starting to cook. During Covid my wife also started to cook thanks to the blue apron and she's much more confident making meals now. I don't think they are worth it in the long run, but fantastic way to get started with cooking and build confidence.
I had a very similar experience. Barely knew how to cook when I moved out on my own. Tried a few different meal kits and got comfortable with basic kitchen equipment and started experimenting with new ingredients. Nowadays I consider myself a good home cook and feel really comfortable in the kitchen.
That's about all they are good for. they are expensive, waste a lot in plastic packaging and are not good quality. Chicken in a watery bag? All the salt in those dried ingredients is bad for you. What you've done is the smartest way to use these services. Maybe use their recipes, but go out and buy the ingredients yourself. at least then you can pick the quality you can afford.
@@castleoffiction96 mmmm. Still not sure if I would bother. We get so many bargains by shopping in person. I don't think I could every substitute that experience. We regularly get things that are half price or on special, which Hello Nelly would never give you. Shopping personally does cost time. But the whole experience of preparing food should not be seen as a chore. But then again, I'm older and can afford the time to entertain those that visit with the finest.
I've actually worked at a Hello Fresh distribution center as a pick-packer before. Probably the highest praise that I can give Hello Fresh, having handled the products myself, is that working there made me want to start ordering the boxes for myself. The meals all look delicious and the produce is all fresh (it's packed by hand and all the produce is checked whilst being packed into meal kits, with lower quality stuff getting the toss). Worst thing I can really say is that because the packing process goes incredibly quickly (you've got at most 2-3 seconds to pick the ingredients you're responsible for and put them into the meal kit) sometimes you'll get a lot more of one or two ingredients than normal in a single meal kit. Sometimes less, but under stress it's a lot easier to pick up a few fingers worth of garlic than an individual clove, so it's usually more. With that being said I ended up going with a pre-prepared meal service, because I was too lazy to cook. HAH!
@@Jimmy_Jones No, we didn't get to take anything home with us. Not that we'd want to, because the "lower quality stuff" was usually damaged or rotting. Instant throw-away!
my problem with it was the small 30gram packets of cheddar and such which were sch a waste of plastic. I know they could help this if you could edit what you get in your kit to be more cost effective.
I’ve subscribed to Hello Fresh for my husband and me this past year for five meals a week. I LOVE them! No more trying to decide what to cook, food is always fresh, portions are perfect for each of us and I never have to waste food because I didn’t use it in time. I can say nothing bad about them.
I was choking on the prices - sixty bucks is my WHOLE grocery list for a week as a single guy. Per week, not for 4 meals. I guess looking a promotions and shopping in-season really makes the difference, or the online delivery service is just that more expensive (don't know about prices in the US).
Same! As a single gal I usually pay between 50 and 70 euros for about a week, +/- 2-3 days. Meal-kit deliveries are convenient so I get why people who can afford it go for that option.
same! that's pretty much my household weekly food budget for both myself and my husband, breakfasts lunches and dinners. Maybe groceries are cheaper here in europe, or maybe we just make more frugal meals idk, but for me personally spending $60 on two meals for two is closer to the budget for eating out than it is a viable replacement for daily cooking. I get the feeling that Hello Fresh and similar programmes only really make sense for people who only cook sporadically and would otherwise waste the remaining ingredients (even though, like, freezers exist) and whose goal is to eat out less often.
$60 a week for one person feels high, but i've been getting hello fresh for over a year now, and it's $80 for 2 of us 4 meals a week, seems a substational part of the cost is the shipping and overhead.
I’m so glad the women in my life taught me to cook frugally, by feel, with ingredients on sale… After a month of Hello Fresh, my son and his wife have been spending time in my kitchen-learning.
As a single person who hates cooking I really like Hello Fresh as it has taught me to cook and I essentially get 4 meals (some times 5 depending on portions) out one box. It has given me a better appreciation for cooking and I've been eating better. I've had a few issues, but they are really good at crediting for a missing or bad item. My only complaint is when they send too much of a spice or noodle that you only need half of, my pantry is full of little half used spice baggies.
Get some small spice jars and put the packet spices in them. Then cut the labels off the packets and tape them to the jars. I buy and use Penzeys spices and they have sample size packets of some of their blends. They’re substantial enough to fill one of their 1/4c size jars about 2/3 full. I cut the names off and taped them, but then learned that if I cut off the top and bottom seals, they slide right over the jars like a sleeve.
I am in Germany and Hello Fresh exploded here, and sadly they were not able to follow through with quality control. I am a bit of an expert in QA for fruits and vegetables, and I was able to experience some stuff that told me "they are not ready yet". I guess in the USA they are better than in Germany.
I just use all the spice. I agree it's great for a single person. I do meal prep on the weekend for the week and put everything in the freezer and grab something on the way out the door for work. It keeps my I've also found some things that I would never had made before that were really awesome and some things that I liked a lot and was shocked by (the black bean soup is now one of my favorites!). I've been doing it for 2 years, though, and I have found that the recipes tend to be insanely repetitive, and also there's shockingly little variety in the long term. For example, I've never seen a recipe for eggplant (which I don't eat, so I don't especially care), or lentils (which I would like to eat), or cauliflower (which I like) or celery in any form (salt, powder, fresh, whatever) but I'm about halloumi grilling cheese & zataar spiced out. The only turkey I've ever seen is ground, but I've never seen ground chicken. And they do not tell you which meat substitutes they provide, which for me is super important since Impossible contains an ingredient I have to avoid. VERY lately (like in the past 2 weeks) I've seen some new things, but at the same time there are things I don't want to see them stop selling (the aforementioned black bean soup, for example). I have absolutely no idea how they are supposed to address everyone's "favorites" all at once. And honestly, I *can* cook and should stop being stupid and just make the soup myself. I have a similar recipe that I really like as well (not from Hello Fresh) that I don't make at home because it's not possible to make it without making 8 servings; I get bored after like, three, and I don't have a deep freezer where I could make an 8 serving recipe one week and a different 8 serving recipe the next week and just grab one out the freezer so I don't get bored. (I should probably get one, to be honest). I do take objection to the single serving sized sour cream, creme fraiche and Greek yogurt, though. Those tiny little plastic containers are a pain in the ass to open and get all the contents out without making an enormous mess, and I myself would prefer to just be told "add 2 tablespoons of sour cream" or whatever. I didn't know about Fresh Direct; I may check them out! Thanks for the honest review; it's good to know I'm not being completely foolish with my finances. :)
Can we talk about garlic?! Lol I always have like 4 full bulbs of garlic and one that has maybe 2-3 cloves missing. Thank you for my endless supply of garlic HelloFresh. 😂
My wife and I are vegan in a very small town in Germany and before hello fresh we were eating pretty much the same things every day; we’ve been using Hello fresh for about 4 months now and I can say completely it is so worth it for us! We pay about €50 a week for 4-5 vegan meals and the variety, relief of stress on needing to go grocery shopping, having everything pre-portioned out, it’s wonderful :)
@@JackSilver1410 Germany actually has alot of vegan/vegetarian people and eco-conscious citizens. I live in a big German city (Munich) with tons of great vegan/vegetarian cafes, restaurants and grocery options. Plenty of vegan food in our supermarkets too. Fyi this is coming from a meat eater who likes using plant based meat sometimes and has switched normal milk for oat milk. All of this caters to mixed diet and curious people too
For me, the reason I started to use Hello Fresh was because I realized I often ended up with excess food I had to throw away because I didn't use it up fast enough. So while I think the observation that Hello Fresh is probably a tad more expensive than if you buy the groceries yourself, the fact I don't need to throw away as much food as I would do when I cooked everything myself. Also, I would often feel I needed to buy more groceries to fill in a gap in a dish I wanted to cook just to use up the excess and then something else would go to waste.
i used hellofresh when my partner and i were renting a place that only had space for what i think is the world's smallest fridge. because everything was just enough for the two of us, it all fit in the fridge, and meant that we only had 2 "fend for ourselves" days a week, one of which tended to be a cheap takeaway and the other being what little we could fit in the sorry excuse for a freezer compartment. now that we have actual fridge and freezer space, it doesn't make sense to do anymore, but for the time we did it, we really enjoyed it. still keep quite a few of the recipes in rotation too, just able to buy more food and have somewhere to store it!
A *tad* more expansive?! Maybe it depends on where you live and they'll "only" charge a premium. Where I live, I can get organic (!!!) ingredients for around half (or even lower, depending on what they'd ship) then what those greedy scammers ask for conventional food. If I threw away literally half the food I buy, I still wouldn't pay a dime more then what HelloFresh would cost me - and again, organic, not conventional food. Just try to learn to cook and buy the right amount. It can be difficult, but it is doable. And maybe buy more "durable" Foods, I mean stuff that doesn't spoil quickly. Like the last Pumpkin I bough, I used that sucker up gradually in around 2 Month time. Also: Keep the enviroment in mind. Yes, throwing away food is BAD (again, you can work on that), but throwing away a little bit here and there is NOTHING compared to this insanity. Just the motherfucking packaging on those things - it's beyond good or evil. This needs to be banned all together, Jesus Christ!
Oh, for the price, I almost forgot.... It is actually possible to eat out for what the Scammers ask. Yes, I can buy hot and ready to eat food for what Hello Fresh asks. Not because going out would be cheap, far from it, but because of those absolutely insane Prices that Hello Fresh wants. Now the restaurant has to employ cooks and staff, rent is high AF, prices are high - while Hello Fresh has almost 0 costs in that regard. What I'm trying to say: Don't shove Scammers Money up their Arses. Just don't, even if it is convenient.
@@sagichdirdochnicht4653 I agree that their packaging practices is bad and it's something I consider to be a huge downside. I do sort all my trash though, so I find it less of a problem. And believe me, I've had pumpkins and other foods that don't spoil quickly go bad on me too because I just don't always have the motivation or the inspiration to cook a dish that requires a particular ingredient. But before I used Hello Fresh, I would find I often had my fridge full with food I am not even using up most of the time and I had to throw things out because it had gone bad. I mean, who are you to say how I should lead my life with regards to that anyway? The argument may not be viable in your country or in your situation, but it is viable for me. I did a baseline calculation and given my propensity to want to cook with fresh ingredients and such, Hello Fresh is not necessarily cheaper than if I bought all the ingredients for myself. It all depends on the dish. So if I think I'm going at least even and it's worth it, it *is* worth it for me and you have to be honest no right to say otherwise. You can disagree based on *your* situation, but you certainly can't say I am wrong for my decisions as long as they're informed, which they are.
In the past 7 years I tried Hellofresh purple and blue apron. They all had a few good meals here and there but nothing consistently good. Produce was often wilted, bruised or moldy. Lots of boxes included both extra items and missing items. Everytime sour cream was included, it was separated and curdled.
I've been ordering Hello Fresh for about 2 years. Started with every other week. Now just once a month. We do it more for variety, meaning things we don't normally cook. Their sauces really make the meal. Like you, I have duplicated some recipes on my own because they are quite simple.
I think that’s a good idea - I would say that HelloFresh is good for variety but if you are good at planning out your meals and shopping wisely, it isn’t cost effective.
Hello Fresh's claim of saving money relates to fact that they send you only exactly what you need, and you don't have to worry about any excess ingredients. This is beneficial for those who struggle with using up ingredients before they spoil. (This is a thing that ADHDers struggle with, as well as others.) If you are someone who is good at using everything up, then these meal services are not economical. It just depends on a person's individual needs.
Thank you, well said. I got adhd, adult onset and have struggled with going from household full of young kids, that ate everything I made to now they got dietary restrictions, allergies but I'm still shopping how I used, a couple of decades ago. I am struggling making transition so this may actually help me out.
I here your point, but I would prefer to get more for my money and have extra left over to use or not use. It's like buying something at costco vs other places, you pay 20% more for at least twice the volume. Having said that I'm always more worried about my bottom line then waste which is a bit selfish but it is what it is. I just mention in because your point said what's more economical. If you spend the same but one leaves you with leftovers and one doesn't, which is more economical? The biggest thing I got out of using hello fresh for months was the meal ideas, It taught me a lot of basic cooking things and flavors mixtures I would have otherwise never tried, unfortunately less then quality produce and sometimes missing stuff made me stop. Now I find it's definitely cheaper to buy this stuff and make it yourself
Oh yes, I'm not suggesting that meal kits are objectively more or less economical than purchasing your ingredients yourself. (As they like to imply.) I'm suggesting that what is more economical for each person is subjective. For those who are good at using the ingredients up, it's certainly not economical. On the other hand, if you pay a certain cost and have no leftovers, that's more economical than paying that same price and having leftovers which you then pay to refridgerate and ultimately trash. This is especially true as some people also have trash fees. TL:DR - Different people have different needs, so there's no truly universal answer to "which style is more economical." It's going to depend on the individual, and that's valid. :)
We have been using HF for about 6 months. I’m a great cook, but my hubs and I are in our 60s, retired and I am SICK of deciding what to make for dinner. I love the meals and I hate wasting food so the fact that everything is portioned exactly avoids that. Price is about what it costs when we have take out. Very happy with it.
How much did you sell this account for? Because this reads like corporate marketing BS. Same cadence as the rest of the top comments here. MLM scumlords.
Here's a tip to save money: When your promotional period ends switch to a different meal service and close the account to the 1st one. They'll lure you back with another promotional period. If you get the timing right you'll never pay regular price.
I love cooking and grocery shopping so would never be a regular Hello Fresh customer. However, I used Hello Fresh when my mum came to stay with me for 3 weeks. Rather than trying to describe my dinner idea to her and have her question and debate it with me, it was easy to have her go through the hello fresh options and choose the ones she wanted to try. It really simplified cooking for her and we both enjoyed it all the meals.
being chronically ill and disabled, having the exact recipes and measurements is so helpful. Also, I can see Hello Fresh helping anyone who never learned to cook
.. having the recipes and measurements that you could easily access online, is the thing that's most helpful for a disabled person? Not.. the lack of shopping and having to run around??
im considering hello fresh as well for these factors, cant cook properly healthy meals and going out to the supermarket is a strugge each week or so. just have to see if its in the budget really
@@GlorifiedGremlin stop assuming everyone can access the internet and try things out just like you can. Disabilities affect people all kinds of different ways and it's not just laziness or lack of will.
@@MrLense *BRUH,* it's literally a service that requires the internet to use. And I never said any of that other stuff whatsoever. You're one of those who just has to get offended by something, ANYTHING, even if it's on behalf of other people huh? Make you feel like a good person?
As someone with a chronic illness that works full time, meal boxes are completely worth it because I literally don’t have the spoons to plan meals for months at a time sometimes. My favorite right now is Daily Harvest since it’s basically just frozen meals - but with healthier elevated ingredients than the alternatives.
this! as someone who is going to move out from my parents house for the first time soon, knowing it takes me quite a few spoons to cook,,, hello fresh or something similar sounds ideal, especially to get my footing in preparing all my own meals
My biggest issue with meal kit services is the amount of waste. As one person with ordering 6 servings per week, I was filling a 12 gallon garbage bin and 12 gallon recycle bin *every week* while using hello fresh. Also since I have a local grocery store, the cost difference vs buying my own ingredients is about 2x.
You can… you can order less food. You can put food away for the next day or something. It just sounds like you’re throwing away good food honestly. You don’t have to get a kit every day, even just once a week could feed you, what, six times?
@@alteregobruh I don't mean food, I was eating all the food. I'm just talking about the packaging and ice packs. The amount of packaging I got on a typical week was more than shown in the video as well. This was only for 6 servings of food per week I will restate (1 box with 3 recipes). I need to prepare 9 servings of food per week, so this wasn't even fully covering my needs.
@@alteregobruh you didn't see the video did you? every gram of stuff has its own little packaging. Who cares, right? in the end is just natures problem.
@@fofopads4450 It’s just natures problem until we want to eat meat and all the animals are sick and dying because of the way we’ve treated the world. It is NOT “just nature’s problem” when we rely on nature. Our meat is already fucked because of industry farms but if this continues, there won’t be any natural or healthy meat left. We want fish? Well too bad. We threw all our trash and plastic in the ocean until fish became a rarity. Nature’s problems are our problems because we get our stuff from nature. We get paper from trees. We get food from the ground and the animals. We get materials for homes from the ground, the trees. If nature dies, what are we to do? We can’t continue as we are if nature dies because we don’t care.
I used Blue Apron during a stressful period in our lives. I thought it was very helpful, better than takeout. However; I liked the food better than my spouse. But he got hot meals so didn’t complain too much. I loved all the little containers of spices and other seasonings. It was like playing house! I’d use a delivery service like it again in similar circumstance.
the slight extra cost is so worth it to me because the meal kit drastically reduces my food waste, makes me eat way healthier, reduces the need to get takeout or fast food, takes away the mental load of deciding what to make every night and finding everything needed, and on top of that, teaches this baby adult how to make things i would never have thought of on my own
Wow, so before when you cooked you threw the leftover ingredients or something? Didn't think what to cook to reuse stuff and clear the fridge for the next grocery stock up? And you call it a 'mental load' to decide what to cook? 😂 you're absolutely pathetic...
I tried Hello Fresh with my partner who's vegetarian and we ended up with a cupboard full of beans because we got sick of having beans and ended up using all the other ingredients to make something different. I wish vegetarian options like this weren't so cheap and unimaginative
Tbh Hello Fresh makes most of their money selling carbs, beans, broccoli and chicken. They usually break even with the other ingredients to maintain competitive prices and market share growth.
I hated the vegetarian options at hello fresh. I'm muslim so I can't order the meat option, just vegetarian and fish and they are sooo boring. The meat dishes always look so good and imaginative
To be honest, I think our pro home cook chose the meat options for a reason. It is easy to make a tasty recipe using meat and stock, as our body recognizes and uses those nutrients really well, hence it triggers the reward centres in our brain easily. It is way harder to get the same result in a vegetarian meal, unless you fall back on the staples in cooking with a lot of savory taste like onion, mushrooms, cheese. Making a veggie stock is also great as a base for flavor. (or kombu if can find it somewhere) Nonetheless, as a non-vegetarian, I find beans incredibly tasty. There are a lot of different kinds of beans and there is a big quality difference between cheap brands and the specialized organic ones. As MK ULTRA mentioned, HelloFresh is saving a lot of money on cheap ingredients, it is what makes these companies so profitable. If they used the stuff I buy for their meals, they would lose money on every box ;P
@@pinobluevogel6458 Yeah I agree, at the end of the day HF is a business and these ingredients must make sense for them. Although I wish there were more imaginative vegetarian options, I guess the real value add is for people who struggle with wasting food. But they could have at least thrown chickpeas or something in there once in a while, it was so much black bean! 😂😂
@@thefacebookhasser Wait Muslims can't eat meat? Not even chicken? Is it like a different practice but the same religion kind of thing? Because i have Muslim friends here in India and they eat a lot of meat and so do many others. I'm a hindu vegetarian so I'm not aware of the customs of muslims, sorry if you were offended.
I think you proved one of their biggest claims. That they reduce food waste. Once you buy all these ingredients for a meal, you're gonna have leftovers, and the average person isn't gonna find a use for them all. I think this really shows that hello fresh is a better option for people who just arent that into cooking or dont have the time to be thinking about the ingredients.
@@iridescent5455 I'm pretty sure big ass supermarkets also has a lot of plastic overhead, it's just not very visible in their logistic department before it hits the shelves
I have been using Hello Fresh for about 6 months now for a family of four. Our food wastage has gone down significantly. Hubby and I cleaned out the fridge and were surprised to have so little to throw out. It was from old dressings only. Our other thing we throw out is occasional bad apple or orange from a grocery bag full. I've liked Hello Fresh because I don't have to come up with something when I am tired.
$61 dollar budget for dinner is crazy😂 I tried it and the first week I got two meals with 4 servings and ate then in 1 sitting. Was discounted with the promo but after week 1 there is a massive pay jump. So ended it after.
I am so happy to finally see a non-sponsored Hello Fresh video! (Now I want to see one for Bright Cellars) As far as Hello Fresh themselves, my own experience with them was pretty good on the whole as well. We did pay a little more for the convenience, but overall I didn't feel that it was outrageous. Where it fell short for me, and why I canceled it after just a month of dishes, was that I actually enjoy the process of finding recipes and menu creation, or going to the grocery store with your list but then being inspired by something you see in the meat case. I get that many people don't like those parts of cooking, or don't have the time, so Hello Fresh would be great for some people. It just wasn't my bag.
Yeah, Pro Home Cooks might find they chafe under the formality of everything. I mean, just look at the third set of meal(s) he made with all the groceries he bought! “I have a bunch X, and a bunch of Y, what can I make with it?” is a powerful inventive force, especially if that’s what you’re into!
As a current EveryPlate subscriber, this has just shown me that HelloFresh is the same as any other meal kit delivery service (ingredients are the exact same, same packaging, same presentation) but more expensive. If anyone is considering HelloFresh I definitely recommend taking a look at EveryPlate or Dinnerly! The same delicious meals but a bit cheaper :)
I use Hello Fresh during my busy season at work. I don’t have to think of recipes, make grocery lists, or go shopping. Plus, my food waste and restaurant costs are WAY down using it.
honestly a very well made video, I was considering using hello fresh but was somewhat scared of the quality of the products and other things but you let me know the pros and cons about it in actually home cooking so great job
We subscribed to Hello Fresh for about 6 months. Then, they started missing deliveries, putting in the wrong ingredients and finally almost dead vegetables. That was the last straw - we cancelled and that began the begging for us to reconsider. Friends have all had similar experiences. It was fun while it lasted, especially since it’s just the two of us and there was so little waste with their meals.
We had the same experience, great to start with then, dead carrots delivered, and then missed deliveries, and finally no deliveries at all. Goodbye Hello Fresh
This! Exactly. The last box was missing the chicken; box before had dead ginger. Not one “reward” has ever worked. Rare refunds for bad or missing ingredients are applied to a future box not actually refunded.
Same, and very first box was full of wilted and soft produce, and I sincerely felt that I could not trust anything else in that package. It all went into the trash, and had to go through several 'are you sure?' layers to fully cancel.
I use Chef's plate which is owned by hello fresh, and any time i've had so much as a missing pack of spices, i contact their support and I get a credit. Sometimes 10 dollar credit, sometimes 20 dollars (so the cost of one recipe with Chef's Plate), sometimes an entire free box (just for a couple rotting or missing items). I encourage everyone who has any issue with missing or bad items to contact the support. I didn't even have to ask for credits, they just gave them to me. I
I did the same comparison. I found this delivery service was more expensive than deliver from my local grocery store. The difference was $10 to $15. What I did appreciate from the meal service was the portion control. That’s something I’m learning now that my family is downsizing.
Sincerely wish you good luck with portion control! I know how hard that is and how tempting it is to make more than you need to be SUPERsatiated... all to well. I hope your family manages that with flying colors!! 🍀
they are pricey but for someone like me that has issues with portion control, they are a godsent. i also love trying different cuisines but always end up wasting the specialized ingredients i get for specific dishes, so the pre portioned stuff def helps with that
I find that issues with portion control are double-pronged, bad for your health and for your wallet. You can avoid both stings with good shopping skills.
I haven't used Hello Fresh, but that's definitely something I've thought of. I've got spices in my cabinet from 4 years ago from a dish I made once, and I might use them one more time before I die.
@@HipposaurusRex Haha 4 year old spices might have lost their flavour already. I found some old, lost coriander seed powder that had got hidden at the back of a cupboard and it smelled of absolutely nothing!
@Scarlett Widdowson forget them I have adhd so it's hard for me to plan things so I'm with you on that. This will actually get me to cook so I only do take out. Or bake because its easy. Plus I struggle with if I do cook what do I make. I think that the hellofresh helps with all of the decision making easier worth it.
@@scarlettwiddowson4245good for you. Yes, let's destroy the environment because a few people are too lazy and too stupid to look up a recipe and write it down. Don't have kids.
Chef’s Plate (Canadian Hello Fresh) is definitely not cheaper than cooking meals with ingredients from the grocery store. But it IS cheaper than me saying “screw it, I’ll order pizza”. Every pizza I save myself from buying is money in the bank.
Yeah, I realised while watching this that it’s good for people who get takeaways because they are bored of what they usually eat. It’s a way of having something different and it could inspire you to create new dishes of your own too. I can definitely see its value to some people.
You buy Pizza that's more than 15$ every time? (60, 2 people, 2 meals, 15/person) You can get four pizzas for 20 bucks and feed 8 people for a third the price of these meal boxes. Problem, is how unhealthy it is to eat like that.
@@asitallfallsdown5914 Chef's Plate is 43.55 USD for 3 meals for 2 people. (0.00 shipping) That's 7.25 per serving. Meanwhile, getting a pizza from my favourite pizza place comes to about 24.00 USD for a large pizza after tax and tip. I get 3 meals out of a large pizza, so that's 8.00 per serving. So it's actually more comparable price-wise than I thought, but Chef's Plate comes with health, variety, and tastier food, so it still wins. Heck, today my meal from Chef's Plate WAS a pizza. (A white sauce pizza with bacon, tomato and pesto that tasted better than my local place and was SOOO good... Ugh I just wanna eat it again...)
Been using Hello Fresh for about a year now. In Canada you have to get 3 meals per week. We get meals every other week. It's been super helpful. The nice thing is if you really like a meal, you have the recipe card and can then make it whenever you want. It's also great for people who are just starting out and don't have a huge pantry, they provide all the spice blends and everything other than white sugar, oil, salt and pepper. If you really like a certain spice/herb or sauce, then you can spend the money to invest in them.
I joined Hello Fresh off and on. I loved it!! I loved the organization, fresh ingredients, and outside the box recipes. I learned a lot. Delicious! It’s just too much food for me.
I've tried a few of these services and thought, "this is crazy I can make things myself so much cheaper". However, it's also nice three times a week to not have to come up with something for dinner. I get Everyplate, HelloFresh's cheaper company, and it's been working well for me even as someone who knows how and likes to cook. Love the comparison you did and that rosa pasta looks amazing!
Yeah as a proficient home cook, I can certainly make most “hello fresh” meals without even a recipe, and since I have a well stocked pantry, for the most part I can solidly say I can make the recipes for cheaper. However, after about 6 years of using the service on and off I find the value in how much of the “mental” load of cooking it removes. I don’t have to plan meals, source ingredients, organize meals to limit food waste. I barely have to measure, clean up is relatively easy, and a hot meal that my kids will eat is on the table in under an hour. Bonus that my partner, who isn’t as proficient a cook as I am, can also easily get a meal ready. There is real value in the service even if it isn’t monetary value like they try to claim.
@@JDStarr exactly! The convenience is worth it to me. It does remove stress & my boxes are only about $5/meal which is still pretty decent compared to take out. Plus I can be creative on other days I don’t make a meal kit so it works out.
I don’t think you mentioned this, but hello fresh is perfect for vacations(if you’re staying in a rental/airbnb). Bringing a box with 4 meals or whatever and bringing it on vacation is a great money saver if you don’t wanna eat out everyday. Did this for my trip to the coast last year and it helps you avoid that grocery trip while on vacation, all you have to do is bring the box and put it away at your rental. The food is always delicious and it takes away a question of meal planning so you can focus on your vacation! I usually don’t get hello fresh when I’m just at home. I prefer meal kits that don’t give exact portions sk you can have leftovers or multiple meals in a week. Hungry root is a great example of this, instead of giving u 1 bun and 1 portion of tuna. They give you enough to make 4-5 sandwich’s throughout the week. I like this format because you only need the instructions the first time you make it, and then it’s a quick meal a few more times throughout the week. So you get 2-3 meals but in reality you get 5-6 meals while eating multiple of the same meal (which I do not mind)
That is a really genius idea. Unfortunately I’ve had a really bad experience with Hello Fresh - the ingredients have always been the OPPOSITE of fresh! I’m in Australia so maybe it’s different in your country?
I order meal boxes...of course it's cheaper to do your own shopping sure but the meal box actually encourages me to cook and also gives me the opportunity to try things I wouldn't usually try and takes the energy draining part of cooking which is the planning. To me, that's worth the extra cost.
For more experienced home cooks the value of HelloFresh is that it inspires you to try out new things. I will order a box every now and then for that purpose (usually with a large discount). It has given me new recipe ideas. Pretty much what you experienced yourself
I use meal boxes, and for someone who wasn’t taught to cook at home, it’s was a great way to learn how to cook. The ingredients are there, it’s simple to follow, and it’s moved me to being more interested in cooking. I have started to buy spices I liked, and have started to looked up with a few recipes on my own. On the weekend I made pancakes and berry compote from scratch, and this is something I wouldn’t have believed I could do it without building confidence with the boxes.😊
I've been using Hello Fresh for almost a year now, and I can tell you with assurity, all the recipes are bangers. For someone who loves cooking, but can't plan ahead or organize very well, this is heaven-sent.
This is it. You just save a ton of time as well and its worth the added price for me. The whole shopping odyssey is now a 5 minute deal where you chose you're favorite dishes for delivery. Plus the sheer pride, as someone that couldn't cook much more than pasta before, when cooking a challenging meal and it comes out delishes feels amazing
im not in north america so i cannot use hellofresh, but it really does sound incredibly convenient. i’m not very good at coming up with new things to cook but i looove cooking, this would be such a great tool. hope they expand to more countries still at accesible pricing!
@@azul4904 Check if your country has another company for meal boxes. That's what I do - I use a local company and they are LEAPS and bounds better than HelloFresh! All organic ad much, much higher quality. We get the convenience of meal boxes, we don't need to plan meals, we get fresh ingredients, but without having to use Hellofresh and their disgusting low quality.
i've seen youtubers promote hello fresh before and it seems convenient, delicious, and like a good way to start leaning how to cook my biggest hang ups are the price, the environmental impact (packaging), and i've heard they're lying about their meat being fresh which is not surprising
I wish I had something like this where I live. I could never imagine doing this long term, but to subscribe to something like this for 6 months and get enough recipe ideas and understanding of how to cook different things is where the real value lies. The biggest thing that turns me off trying a lot of new things is buying excessive amounts of ingredients for one dish without understanding where else I can use them. Getting correct portions and finding recipes that overlap the same ingredients would help me no end.
You can find the hello fresh recipes online. I used to use hellofresh but then it helped me become more comfortable cooking on my own. I still make a lot of their recipes
Check to see if there is, I've heard the UK has some subscriptions like hello fresh that are available. There maybe some available near you that you just haven't heard about.
I think the only reason I would get this subscription is for the same reason you mentioned, to get some recipe ideas. He ended up spending the same amount of money, but he got more portions with the grocery shopping, and some ingredients like spices he only has to buy once since he got large amounts that can be used for dozens and dozens of recipes.
@@Lightsaber360 Unfortunately I live in Laos, where even home delivery of cooked meals is a relatively new trend. There are these meal packs in neighboring Thailand but not here yet. I should probably go and discuss with some local restaurants to provide some and start myself a little side hustle 😁
man i wish i had a kitchen large enough for an island like that that's the only thing that really makes me jealous of cooking videos like this, just y'all have so much space to do things lol
I'll be honest here. For counter space, island spaces are amazing. But they are so overrated. Had mine for nearly two years and I've never sat at it. Getting rid of the stools is a nightmare because NO ONE wants them because they're so niche.
Dude I feel you. I have one normal sized counter and the other one is where I have to house all my appliances - my kitchen is a kitchen in an old a55 house so it wasn’t meant for socializing in. I don’t even have a microwave bc I have nowhere to put it. It makes cooking such a huge hassle.
Chef's tip : put a lid on the potatoes while cooking. When they come to the boil, turn off the heat. Leave the potatoes for 10 to 20 minutes, check they are cooked with a fork, if the fork goes in easy without resistance, they are cooked. Use the cooking water for stocks or soups. Reduces energy costs.
Considering giving it a try not because I can't cook or am wasteful with ingredients (I've always been pretty efficient) but just after years of cooking for myself I'm just tired of having to come up with what to cook several times a week so removing that decision might make me feel a little less burnt out
I am vegetarian and have been using HelloFresh in the UK for 6 weeks now. 5 meals a week for 2. I have to say I am usually very happy with the quality and quantity of what we have been given. The meals follow a definite pattern for veggies though. rice or pasta base usually. A sauce. Roast some veggies & combine. But we have eaten no duds. Our food waste has dropped dramatically. We were forever forgetting about potatoes or eggs or something so from that point of view it is very good. BUT - we are going to have to either spend more money and adapt their recipes or eat less of their meals per week. Why? Protein. HelloFresh are guilty of only adding a tiny amount of protein to a lot of their veggie meals. Some are almost exclusively carbs. The nutrition stuff I have seen suggests a least 1/3rd of your meal should be protein for a balanced diet. HelloFresh gets no where near this for most of their veggie meals.
I used HelloFresh for a few months when I was getting used to cooking for myself at home and had a busy work schedule. It helped me come up with future meal ideas and kept me from eating a bunch of fast food. It's too expensive for me to do in the long term, but it helped me get a good foundation on what I liked to cook. I also love how they managed to time the recipes so everything gets done around the same time.
Thank you for the download! I just started receiving Hello Fresh and their recipes are delicious! I didn’t expect that but was pleasantly surprised! Loved your video!!!
I think the only thing that is holding Hello Fresh back is the amount of plastic and disposables packages that they use but I can’t think of another way to deliver pre portioned ingredients
@@goodshowmanythanks its not more than when you just buy it in the supermarket only you trow away less stuff that you didnt need. Cause you get the exact measurements.
@@goodshowmanythanks here in the Netherlands you get like 2 maby 3 small sachets for each recipe. Whats worse having 3 small sachets more (wich all get collected here and recycled). or trowing away half of your onions, fresh herbs and stuff like that.
I love what you’re saying about learning how to cook without recipes. That’s my goal for this year. I was using meal kits all throughout 2022 and I get so stuck on making sure I always follow every single line of the recipe correctly. It makes it hard to actually put any cooking knowledge to use. So yesterday you inspired me and I made one meal without any recipes whatsoever and it came out really good!
I’d love to see a series on meals that freeze and reheat well. I’m pregnant with my third baby and while I love freshly cooked food, I will be newly postpartum and not near any family. I’d love some solid recipes to feed me and my family.
My sister in law sent me a cookbook of freezer meals. There are several on Amazon, but I can't find the exact one she sent. It's a great thing to do for yourself. congrats on the little one!
I got one from a friend that i cooked , i think it came out well and i was pretty pleased, recipies are well seasoned and amply portioned, i'd say it was worth the money, the stuff is fresh too.
My opinion, it’s cheaper to do your own shopping and cooking. Learning to buy and cook your own food can be a fun learning experience. Buying fresh fruits and vegetables by your seasons is very cost effective.
Is it cheaper though? Unless you use every ingredient before it spoils, you're losing money on wasted food. I know I dont use a whole stack of scallions or container of sour cream every meal. Most of it sits in the frig to inevitably spoil.
@@gravityslave6277 You can just NOT buy the industrial sized package of an ingredient you rarely use, or become Slavic and put sour cream on everything if you insist on buying a 3 liter tub of ingredients that spoil fast.
I have gotten Hello Fresh before and I'm not a natural in the kitchen, so for me, I appreciated the step-by-step instructions and pictures with the proportioned ingredients. It's not inexpensive, but it is simple and helpful for me. Thank you for reviewing this and especially sharing your thoughts!
My husband and I have been getting Hello Fresh for almost a year. With just the two of us, and we get 4-5 meals per week. The recipes have been great, especially because it’s easy to think of ways to alter/combine certain parts to create other meals with things from the grocery store. You’re right about the sizes of the packs of meat and veggies in the store is overwhelming when you’re only cooking for 2. So I get much less waste with Hello Fresh. And the recipes are so much faster than many I’ve made over the years. I’ve been really happy with it!
If the sizes are too big from the store for you, divide it up and freeze it. It actually saves you money buying in bulk. It's how I'm able to eat prime rib for less than $5/pound, because I buy it when it's on sale.
@@aewtx everyone knows buying in bulk saves you money, some people either just dont have the space to store it, or dont have the time to weigh it out/the eye for knowing what is the right size. its like telling someone in burger king to just get the double cheeseburger cause its only 20c more expensive, better value isn't always what people want.
Meal kits have been good for me as a disabled person who enjoys cooking but doesn't have the expendable energy or physical wellbeing to meal plan and shop on top of the actual cooking. It's a hell of a lot healthier and cheaper than eating out or having ready meals every day and it gives me something to do that's actually feasible for me. It's a'ight.
Ive never actually ordered from hello fresh but I often go to the homepage for recipe ideas. Glad you cover the service from a non paid perspective since I'm always sceptic about the videos who are sponsored.
Of course it costs more. You are having to pay for someone else to do the picking, the packing and someone else to come up with the recipes. Plus someone else to deliver it. Also all of the little things, such as someone going through the fresh produce and discarding anything that might not even look in decent shape. A small task when you are shopping for yourself, but it is a task and more importantly they are paying for all that is discarded. Shops try to sell as much of that as they can quite often, as there are plenty enough people that will just take it ... unless it is really horrible ofc. I agree with you, it is not for me and I am fine doing all that for myself. But it clearly is going to cost more having all that done for you. And it is healthier food, than if you go to a lot of restaurants or especially fast food. Again not for me, but I am sure that will appeal to others and is worth the cost.
Very true. But HelloFresh gave me several recipes that I have kept and made again. The best part was my husband stopped saying he can't cook. He can, especially when there is a recipe, he just doesn't like to. But he will cook dinner every once in a while now.
It also depends on what area of the US. I’m in a state that’s on the “affordable” end and that would probably run me around $40. Are food prices pretty similar across the whole of Scotland?
Yes, that was my thought exactly! In Germany I would be able to get those things for 50% of the price of Hello Fresh (I think it is ridiculously expensive), in a good quality and for 4 persons per meal. And the examples here aren't even fancy choices. Ofcourse it is convenient, but I can not imagine how someone could afford to spend so much money on regular food, if you get every meal from there. 60-80€ is the budget for us, two adults, for 7 days - all meals, snacks, everything we eat and drink (without coffee), good, quality food.
I've recently subscribed to HelloFresh (in Canada) again and I couldn't be happier. I do fully acknowledge that in most cases doing groceries will yield a lot more meals for the amount of money spent, but as someone who lives alone it can be extremely wasteful to buy regular groceries because you can't always get small quantities of things you might need. HelloFresh allows me to not be wasteful by only getting the amount of ingredients I need, try up a whole lot of recipes (I like trying new things!) without having to sit here with no idea of how to plan new meals. It's certainly convenient and helps me maximize my time and forcing me to cook proper meals for myself. I've never been much of a cook but I can follow recipes and it definitely helps me not falling into too easy/cheap meals that end up not balanced and making me feel awful. The price point does feel a little high once you no longer have deals but those meal kits certainly retain value from other aspects.
I don't get the whole "wastefull because you can't get the quantities you need" Freezers do exist. And if it's stuff like 5Kgs of potatoes than can easily be stored for a few weeks.
This is exactly what I appreciate too. Not sure if you'll like the gochujang sauce? Try it out! Wasn't your thing? Well at least it was only a small pack to toss, NOT a whole jar you dropped 10 bucks for!
My parents did it for a little bit, their verdict was the meals were fine, but it didn’t cut down on prep work too much and it was much more expensive than they could normally eat, around $8/meal/person
Depending on the meal, almost everything you can cook yourself can save you money. Buying large quantities of stuff like potatoes, rice or other things that last long really adds up. $30 for a meal sounds like restaurant prices to me. $8 is a bit cheap, but it seems closer to what seems to be real pricing.
My 3 personal benefits: Hello fresh has made me a better cook. It’s a big time saver to have everything portioned out. It’s mentally refreshing to have someone make and present the plan.
I was gifted a Hello Fresh subscription for a year and I LOVED it! I am a single person who is rarely home for dinner. But at least I knew I had a couple nights a week where I would have real food, with lots of flavour, that was healthier than anything I would pick up. But as I said, I am seldom home early enough to have the energy to make ANY meal. My two meals would sometimes sit for almost a week before I got around to making them. Sounds bad, BUT, I shows why Hello Fresh is a better option for me than real food. I could barely eat these two meals before they went bad. If you change that to full size groceries from the grocery store, I’m not getting extra meals out of it. I’m throwing away extra meals, because they went bad before I got around to eating them. The flavorful, easy recipes, and the perfectly portioned sizes of each ingredient was what made this worth the extra price.
I'm a single mum with a teenage son and I'm sick and tired of grocery shopping and making dinner. The idea of just chucking in the delivered, pre-measured ingredients and ending up with a healthy meal for the boy is very tempting. He could do part of it, seeing as it all comes with instructions. Less food waste, too.
I am a widow with children and I work a full time job which requires overtime and on call. I take my children grocery shopping with me because they learn the value of a dollar (or in your case, a pound). That is invaluable. They will learn how to budget money, learn how to prepare meals, because they will learn what goes into planning the recipes in order to fit a budget, and they can appreciate that shopping isn't always fun. Then, they can help you prepare the meals, too. Having the food delivered to your doorstep takes all of those lessons away.
HelloFresh saved my family when my daughter was born. I had no time to shop for groceries, make menus, etc. Plus I've got a great collection of recipies so I can remake any time now.
I did hellofresh for about a year, and i still order a box every now and then. Thanks to them ive gotten a couple of cheap & easy staple meals that i eat almost weekly without ordering their boxes
honestly for me I had trouble trying new food. This really got me out of a box and into a greater range of foods. Plus it got me making better meals to reheat at work rather than premade frozen meals
As someone who was taught to cook and bake my entire life, I guess I just assumed Hello Fresh was something geared toward people who wanted to learn how to cook. I know how to budget and buy ingredients, including seasonings, herbs and spices, that will be used in many different meals. I don’t eat fast food, at restaurants and I don’t buy prepackaged meals (or soups or sides). I definitely don’t get food or groceries delivered to my house. All probably stemming from growing up in poverty. Regardless, I can see a market for these meals. People who want to cook but don’t have much experience who can afford delivery services. Poor people and/or people who are experienced home cooks I don’t see benefiting from these meal kits in any way.
Yes, you'll do well to steer clear of this company. I'm actually canceling my Hello Fresh subscription, after a package never arrived, and was shipped back to the company, because it was damaged. I've written to Hello Fresh, I've called them and have gotten no response. I never received a replacement or a refund. It was $75.00. I could have used that for gas in my car. It's not a huge amount of money, but it's almost a weeks worth of groceries for me, so I'd like it back. The prices have also gone up considerably since I signed up a couple of years ago, with no warning. This company will take your money and run, and their customer service is non-existent. Think twice before giving them your money.
All, Wellington Street West suite of products that are not even a little bit about the collector and now I'll probably get in touch with me on the video formats available I don't think we can change it on my cholesterol levels of eating Bread
yup. i spend $40-$60 a MONTH on groceries. if people dont want to, or cant cook, they should save their money and time and just eat out. these companies are a rip off.
@@RachelLWolfe That's the complete opposite to my experience with Hello Fresh. I had a box not turn up and I was able to call and speak to customer service even though my delivery comes on a Saturday. They offered me a full refund or just my next box free and also gave me a £20 additional credit for the inconvenience. Also when I've had any other issues like a missing ingredient or something was damaged/poor quality they have been generous with credits to my account and I have had no issues when reporting to customer services. I am in the UK so maybe that's the difference.
I got it for a few weeks, with discounts it is AMAZING. I found out I actually like foods that I always thought I despised and tried recipes I would have never put the effort into. The only flaws are the full prices and the repetition of the vegetarian recipes. With more variety and less expensive shipping I'd purchase it MUCH more frequently. If you haven't tried it yet DO IT. It's amazing
You should try EveryPlate. It's the same company as HelloFresh, but half the price. Plus, you can get the discount deal again to make it even more affordable.
I agree, I tried every plate (hello fresh’s cheaper version) for probably 2 months straight because I had gotten so tired of my regular meals. I needed something easy where I didn’t have to decide what I was going to eat or do all the shopping. I was mentally in a bad place foodwise because I love cooking but I was just so burnt out on recipes. Like they say in the sponsored videos “it takes the decision making out of dinner” and it really did. It gave me the break I needed and allowed me to find some new recipes I probably wouldn’t have tried on my own. I would definitely do it again in the future if I began to get tired of making food decisions again
this video is not sponsored. My goal was to order a meal delivery box service, put it to the test and then compare it to ordering groceries online. These are my findings ☝
This was a great comparison video. My friend orders, those premade dinners, and I think it turns him into a robot. He came over for a meal, which of course is home cooked in my house and asked where we bought the potato salad? Ha ha. What I like about your videos is that they have built up my cooking competency and confidence. You can’t get that in a box at your front door.
@@tomlidot4871 These boxes are not premade meals, you receive the ingredients but have to cook everything yourself. They are excellent to help people who lack confidence in the kitchen because by putting these meals together, they realize that they can actually cook something themselves.
I think you might have convinced me to give Hello Fresh a try! I'm still very shaky with my cooking abilities, so I think having that inspiration in the kitchen would keep me from eating out so much and benefit my health and my wallet greatly. Then I can use that to learn how to be resourceful in the kitchen and shop smart. Thank you for this amazing video!!
Thanks for making this video!
Very interesting how close in cost it is to your grocery orders. I wonder how much of that is aggressive pricing as a result of venture funding that will end up proving unsustainable and needing to be raised. All the more reason for a fresh newbie to take advantage while they still can though!
Honestly I feel like the value add for Hello Fresh is just producing new weekly meals that you don’t need to spend mental energy figuring out
if you can't expend the low mental energy to figure out a meal...then I don't even know how you can operate.
Definitely!
Well said Lulu. I simply couldn't agree more. 😊😊
I know a few friends who used various services long enough to get inspired/reinspired to cook, kept the recipe cards for the meals they liked, and then cancelled their subscription until they hit a rut again.
I honestly think it’s a great strategy to help people cook at home more often, if they can afford it.
@@markmccoy3369 there is also value in not having to go shopping or go through online shopping to select ingredients to be delivered
Honestly I think these kind of meal delivery services are super valuable for people that maybe don't have a lot of experience cooking. It takes the stress out of finding a recipe and shopping to let them focus on just making the meal. Plus at the end of the day you still have all the recipe cards, just stick them in a binder and you're essentially building a cookbook with only recipes that you've tried and liked.
🎊 mate I have a (Mystery Box) package for you, Text the above username for acknowledgment
I would half agree except that free, great recipes are more accessible than ever and going shopping yourself with bigger meal portions in the end should definitely be alot cheaper than the prices hello fresh got. Like I get good meals for way under 60 bucks for the whole week and not just 2 meals. Also the amount of packaging is scary to me
This is actually exactly why I started with hello fresh. I did know how to cook in general (like cook a chicken breast or potatoes) but I had no idea what to cook especially when it came to veggies. So getting the boxes and focusing on also trying new stuff helped me build knowledge about what you can do with the ingredients.
So yes quite a find for someone starting out and it saves a lot of time. You not only save on time finding the ingredients (online or in store) but also figuring out what to cook.
Sadly where I live the price is just not worth it in the long run so I stopped using the service
@@AemilianaRosewood yeah but the point is the exact portions you need of each ingredient being sent to you is much less stressful than buying each ingredient and wondering which brand is best or whether you’re buying the right thing then getting home, making the recipe, and having a bunch of extra ingredients you don’t know what to do with (assuming you’re not used to cooking)
i think doing hello fresh for a a few months to build your cooking skills + have a few recipes under ur belt would be cool, just don’t see why someone would continue past that point.
the issue is the internet is overloaded with free recipes
When I was 17, I requested my parents to start HelloFresh and told them I would cook all the meals every week. I wanted to learn cooking, with the comfort of not having to find recipes and do the grocery shopping. I think it's a great way to actually learn how to cook in a very convenient way.
That's a 5-head move.. bravo!
You drive bmw?
Well that is one way for learning to cook. I am more like this guy one the video and don´t use recipes. I might look what ingredience i need but after that i just make the food and if i think it might need some adjustments or have something i don´t like i just swap that thing to something else.
But anyway before you have such amount of experience for years of cooking things it´s not bad way to improve of cooking things and before you even notice, you don´t need recipes anymore. You will learn to buy base elements for your cooking like dry ingredients, spices and favourite veggies you like to use. Just remember to use good ingredients so the taste in the food is always so much better. Also learn to taste food as making and you´ll develope skill to add some more spices if needed.
Happy cooking!
Sorry if there are some mistakes on writing. Im a finnish dude so my english ain´t always perfectly right.
My 3 boys actually learned to cook by watching me.
@@jivettemoore8845 what's your point?
My main problem outside of the cost is the amount of waste. Yes, maybe they can reduce food waste, but everything they ship is plastic wrapped, down to spice servings, and then the whole thing comes in an insulated cooler box.
not to mention the ridiculous amount of packaging material and deliverie for just few meals. Repeated to the infinite, it wastes so much everything, it is ridiculous.
THIS. This is my biggest issue. Once plastic is created, it never goes away, only transformed into other things, or sits in a landfill or floats around our oceans.
I remember seeing a Canadian meal service that puts everything in a reusable bag with all the ingredients in one durable plastic container separated in squares. You just leave the container outdoor or give the container back to the courier and he gives you the next container with little trash produced from packaging.
Most of my HF ingredients came in plain paper bags or wrapping..
@@JFarinaSingsnothing just sits in a landfill. Before things go into the landfill area they get incinerated and turned either into very small pieces or ash. Also nothing wrong with recycled plastic. It’s those who willingly choose not to properly throw trash in the appropriate bins that are the problem. By the way, Hello Fresh has a less waste option.
The trick with Hello Fresh is just to order 1 week of food. If you cancel, they will offer you a deal to come back, usually it is 50% or more for the first week and then lower discounts for following weeks. If you just cancel after 1 week, you can always keep getting a 50% or more discount as long as you don't mind having a gap of a few days in between cancellations.
you fucking snake.... lol i like it ;)
yeah I just get the 4 cheap weeks and wait untill they call me again for another 4. I also get 5 meals a week so I pay even less per meal. (2 a week has a way higher price per meal)
You can go further if you mix companies. I cycle through Hello Fresh, Chef's Plate and either Goodfoods or Fresh Prep (the last two ARE more pricey, but they're also local so the quality of the veggies is MUCH higher). By the time I'm ready to pause one, the oldest site has contacted me with a discount =P
Cheap bastards..
I noticed this, but I had the opposite trend where I got an increasing discount stopping at like 60ish% off, but I also left when they were getting real popular\
Edit: I also never went back cause the app let me see recipes, and instructions without paying xd
Nobody ever taught me to cook. I subscribed to hello fresh after becoming a mom and wanted to be able to cool healthy, creative meals for my children. I loved having all the decisions taken from me and don't have to go shopping. I really learned to cook through hello fresh. I stopped getting the boxes now, but I have a big folder with over 100 recipes my family loves and real confidence that I can cook good dishes.
You mean to tell me that some guy knew you couldn't even feed your children yet he still decided to put his gravy in you? wow. Top-tier dude lol.
that’s amazing
@@masterpassword2 and here you go missing the point she's making😑
@@masterpassword2 The whole point is that she needed guidance and the internet may have been too vague
@@chanaaden8310 srlsly...how dumb can u be to not be able to do something from a cookbook or internet...jesus..1st world country problems :))
As soon as he said 61 dollars for two nights for two people, I said hell nah. 60 bucks can last multiple days for 2 people at regular groceries and butcher shops.
I night a whole weeks worth and the price only came up to $128. I usually pay about that much without excluding snacks, fruits, and desserts. Great value if you’re buying and using more than a few meals a week!
you are looking for some recipes very small portions like 300g and spending so much money when the main item is a very cheap item like potatoes, rice or pasta
is mad. the only thing you have to work out is the herbs and spices used in what dish and you can really do it all yourself. come on you still have to cook everything to make the meal.
I costed the meals I got from Gousto and did videos to back it up. these company make very good profits off each meal sold
Thats less than 2 people to eat OUT at a restaurant each night! thats a damn good deal for 2 people for 2 nights! and with leftovers !
Unless you’re me and you have no self control at the store and buy everything. It’s way cheaper for me. Plus, I don’t have the time to come up with recipes.
I'm kind of with you, for those prices I can just get takeout, at which point, why bother cooking? This might be more appealing to people who live in more expensive areas I guess.
my fiance and I used to get hello fresh all of the time, we always loved it. we don't really use it anymore BUT we saved all of the recipe cards and we go to the store and buy the things for our favorite recipes and just cook them up lol
now thats smart
@@天敵神手王 For sure. A side-benefit is if you do Hello Fresh (or any of these services) for a few months, you end up with basically a high-quality cookbook with a full breakdown of ingredients as well as step-by-step instructions with pictures for each step.
That's exactly what we do.
All the recipes are available on their website
lol for real??? I'm interested , I'ma screenshot them all!
I think you nailed the biggest benefit with "Not something I'd normally be cooking", it a great way to be exposed to flavors you'd never think of normally
100%. I have made things I’ve never even HEARD of, knowing it’s just one meal for my husband and me, and if we don’t love it, there’s no leftovers to wonder how to salvage.
But we have liked everything so far… the only things we don’t do is make tostadas because it’s too much extra work when I can just heat the tortillas and make tacos.
@@thaihigh0420 😂?
So does a restaurant 😘
Sure. But a quick poke around on the internet can yield the same thing. Just last week, I discovered a Bon Appetit (thanks, Claire Saffitz!) recipe for kimchi and scallion pancakes, something I'd never made before, and which takes like, 20 minutes, start-to-finish, and is delicious (it'll go into my permanent repertoire). But the reason I made this recipe is I'd never cooked with kimchi before (never _purchased_ kimchi before, actually), and I saw it in the store and it spoke to me (or something like that - I've always liked kimchi when I've gone to Korean restaurants, so I figured I'd get a Costco-sized jar of it). To me, new ingredients (which I buy on a whim, like I described here) and techniques (which I find on the internet, including on TH-cam cooking sites like this one) provide the inspiration. And while I followed the recipe verbatim the first time I did it, future attempts will absolutely be adapted to my own personal preferences.
Another example - pizza. I've made my own pizza for 20 years now (with from-scratch dough and sauce), but over the last couple years, I've substantially transformed my technique thanks to one Adam Ragusea, improving my pizza game by a LOT. That's a technique thing more than an ingredients thing, but still, the point stands. If you are getting bored of the same types of dishes and flavors in your life, it's not hard to find inspiration. I experiment a LOT in the kitchen (based mainly on things I've seen online), and I've been constantly surprised at how much variety you can get from ingredients with which you're familiar, just by altering your technique.
I think that there are three potential advantages Hello Fresh (and its competitors) give people. The first is they save you (some) time - time shopping (although unless you're getting food exclusively from such companies, you're still going to be shopping for all of your other meals), and time searching for inspiration on the internet. If you are exclusively using their services, it's probably at least 3 hours a week, while if you're still doing some of your own cooking (and thus going shopping anyway), it's maybe around 1 to 2 hours (depending on how many meal-delivery service kits you order). The second is an advantage exclusive to people who are not confident in their own skills in the kitchen - they do all the work (at least that's the pitch). And finally, the third advantage is that there is little chance of food waste. Everything comes portioned for the dishes you're making. You don't have to deal with an extra half-bag of carrots, or the rest of the bottle of chili flakes. For perishable products, this is certainly a benefit to meal-delivery kits, but for non-perishables like pasta and spices (which will last 2 or 3 years before starting to become noticeably worse), it's sometimes good to have these kicking around (and indeed, most people DO have these kicking around in their kitchens). For these advantages, you're paying a 50-80% premium on your meals (compared to their cost had you made them from scratch, buying all the ingredients).
So to me, the only thing that matters when deciding whether to sign up for such a kit is, is the trade-off worth it to you? Personally, I think that the time issue is overblown. Cooking can be a family activity - most people can spend a few hours on the weekend going shopping with the kids, and getting them to help you prepare a week's worth of suppers (perhaps 3 different dishes that are big enough that you can eat each of them for at least 2, and maybe even 3 days...I've always been a leftovers-loving person). Stir-fries are a great option here, but there are a lot of one-dish meals that are easy to make and delicious, things that can be made and frozen, and popped into the oven when you're ready to eat them. As for the potential skill issue, I don't see how there's a difference between following a recipe you found on the internet, and following a recipe that Hello Fresh sent you. If you're trying to develop your own creations, fine, skill is an issue, but merely reproducing other people's? That's far less of an issue. And regarding leftover ingredients, because these CAN serve as inspiration, and you can find recipes that use them up (or plan your meals so that you don't have leftover ingredients), this is also not such a big deal.
So...I don't think I will be getting such a service anytime soon. It just seems to me to be a waste of money that I could spend elsewhere.
Lot of people aren't adventurous culinary wise
My mom is, my dad wasnt unless he was traveling,my brother isnt....I can be when I'm tired of comfort choices
My mom made Teriyaki cows tongue and Shark fin soup and both were among the 1 time only dinners my Dad was ordering Pizza after my mom went to sleep😹
We were subscribers to Hello Fresh for about a year. It was great at first and I considered the additional cost worth it. The produce was very high quality. But over time the produce quality started going down and often times the kits were missing half the ingredients that were supposed to be in them. After a few complaints and continuing to see further decline in quality, we cancelled. But, we amassed a huge list of recipes that I often use to build the meal plan for the week. So, even though we had our issues, I think what we got out of it was well worth it, so I applaud Hello Fresh for that.
I got my first Hello Fresh box today and was amazed at the quality of the veggies. Hopefully it will continue. I’m using Hello Fresh as a way to learn to cook.
My first time ordering hello fresh I was missing cooking cards and half the ingredients. I don't know how to cook and relied on hello fresh to provide EVERYTHING and they didn't so half of it went to waste unfortunately.
same thing here, but with a delivery service that only served canada
used to have huge portions, and high quality ingredients, but after the 2nd year, they were almost consistently missing one or 2 ingredients, putting the wrong recipe cards or missing them entirely, and most importantly the portion and quality of the produce went down.
my guess is mostly because of the amount of people using the service grew, but they seemingly weren't able to scale accordingly so QA went down with it
Yeah, same here. Well, the quality is still good over here. But.. we are in Italy and as you probably all know, Italians are extremely picky with their food 😅 However, for example I refrain from getting recipes that contain chicken, because I don't like their suppliers (I prefer to buy my chicken from a local farm that produces things in a very controlled way without any antibiotics, hormones and all of that, whereas HelloFresh uses the mainstream producers that keep the chickens in cages, shitting all over themselves and things like that). What I do is I check the recipes every week, and when I see one or two that I might want to try, then I activate the week. I have a big collection of recipes that have become family favorites, and I keep making them over and over again. So, yeah, for me, if used in the correct way, it is a good resource. Also, I need to point out that here it costs waaaaay less than the US.
We experienced the same thing with HelloFresh, started off really well, but to be honest the recipes were all very similar after a while. A lot of them were quite spicy which didn´t suit us as my partner doesn´t like spicy food that much. If you wanted anything remotely fancy, salmon or steak that was at an additional cost. The quality of the ingredients definitely declined and things were missing, recipe cards were missing, so long story short we stopped our subscription and have a nice collection of recipes that we liked and started making ourselves at a much reduced cost!!
Been getting Hello Fresh for about a year now. I’m a competent cook but I live alone and am pretty disorganized, so HF has been a lifesaver for me. It saves me from having to plan and shop, and it has me cooking food again regularly instead of ordering out. The time and energy it saves me is worth the extra cost, at least for me
The people who enjoy meal prepping (whether it be for the prepping itself or for the end product) simply do not understand that not everyone likes prepping. Most people with enough disposable income and no interest in meal prepping would rather spend some of that disposable income on freeing up time from prepping and getting right to the cooking to strike the perfectly balance between time spent preparing meals for yourself and the health of those meals.
@@thelelanatorlol3978 it's also very helpful if you struggle with executive dysfunction, which people usually only associate with ADHD but is also prevalent with other disorders. I can cook but I struggle planning and balancing food/cooking along with everything else in my busy life. I don't personally use a service but having someone else plan for you sounds really helpful
@Minty A all of this. I cannot stand meal prepping because I ALWAYS forget something!
@@thelelanatorlol3978 it's not about the prepping, it's about the enormous extra cost with little to no benefit. With 60bucks I can provide meals for the week, not just 2 nights
@@ironbooze2937 They clearly see the benefit. To them, they simply have no interest in spending time planning for meal prep.
It's like how people will go to auto shops to get their car fixed instead of learning a how to fix a car yourself. For some people the time is more valuable than the money.
Hello fresh is just a gateway to home cooking. It’s like training wheels that gets people started and will inspire a good number to go on their own once they build up their confidence.
Thank you for that comment. It’s opened my eyes. I’m here thinking “my income and expenses don’t allow me to do this”
But on the flip side, is what you just mentioned. Thank you
@@raflim aww, thanks! 🥰
This is the exact mindset I had when choosing these guys glad I wasn’t wrong 😁😁
@@raflim i got them a few times , i get them with the discout and then cancel before the last week as the discount gets less every time. then a few months later they other the full discount and i do the same again, now i have the cards with all the info to make them at home and like the op said it will show you how easy cooking is.
@raflim Just use it for 3 to 6 months and keep the recipe cards. This will let you know how they are prepared and what you need. Then when you unsubscribe you can just make your own meals and plan grocery trips around these meals.
Just FYI: When looking at the menu listings for each week, many of the recipes WILL have a printer icon above them when you click on it to see the ingredients.
I print out LOTS of their recipes now that I have stopped delivery after the discounted deals went away. ($60 for 3 meals is insane...$28 for those same ones is more my speed)"
I have links for Hello Fresh, Every Pate and Blue Apron on my computer and now use the downloaded recipes and shop local to get the same thing. (And most of the spice blend recipes are ALSO online, so you can make them yourself for future use inexpensively)
Just got myself a deal of 5 meals for 30€ (33$) over here in Germany
Reddit has a great thread with all the recipes for the spice blends
@@pineapplegirl8078 Any chance you remember the name of the sub? Much appreciated if you could share :)
@@JayeEllisi wanna know too
@@hyeronymus docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mBxuVPRaky9eZabcQwzx_Yjp4jeaJqVkt6LLINrLIzY/edit#gid=0
My wife subscribed to this when we were both super stretched for time. We ended up getting one of our favorite meals, a Korean noodle bowl. We copied the recipe and it's actually a super easy and quick meal that you can make on your own in about 15 mins.
If anything, I think it's a great way for beginner home cooks to get ideas on how to put together solid meals with basic ingredients. It's one thing to read a recipe online and something totally different to get those materials on hand and put it together yourself.
Agree great for learning techniques too. The cons were: So much packaging, and you’re locked into cooking that meal within the next few days. Not too bad we tend to go in and out of these services.
Perfectly said, totally agree.
You are spot on. It's great to do a few times to try some stuff, and then you can just make it yourself better
That was my thought as well. For people new to cooking. Don't know how to buy groceries for the week, stuff like that. Makes it easy to learn how to cook, how much, and gives confidence to cook more
Send the recipe. . . . . Please?
I work a ton and have severe executive dysfuction. HF was literally the ONLY thing that snapped me out of unintentionally starving myself for years. I meal plan by myself now n buy groceries but i never would've gotten to this point without HF
Might be the comment that makes me get into it
Hello, executive dysfunction friend here. I buy ingredients for meals and then keep them in plastic shoe containers in my fridge separated by meal. Then I just pull the box out when it’s time to cook. I sort things into the boxes when I’m unpacking the groceries, so it’s pretty easy to just toss things in!
My go-to is smoothies!
thats super interesting bc i struggle with the same and am currently living off meal deals which isnt great... might try HF
Yeah it's similar for me. I'm disabled and generally re(dact)ed when it comes to meal planning etc., so HF has been a great help for me, eating more healthy, less out and especially losing a lot of weight. However I still mess up the planning sometimes and over-order.
I worked for Hello Fresh. They freeze their meat. We had to tell every customer that all food was fresh, never frozen. Not a big deal. I freeze meat at home all the time. I just don’t like working for liars.
The Meat was horrible in my opinion
As a considerable amount of chefs in Kitchen Nightmares used to say: "It's fresh frozen".
You're a terrible person smh
source: trust me bro
@@thegray0 Why would big company selling food lie about how fresh is their food? If we can't trust companies not to freeze meat so it doesn't go bad quickly then who we can trust?
I did hello fresh for a year when I was taking care of my 99 year old aunt who was an extraordinary cook. When she was no longer able to cook she was eating the frozen dinners (these were tasteless and full of starch so she would get a little sick)
Very shortly after going to her I began Hello Fresh. The first time she tasted it she looked startled then looked at me “This is DELICIOUS “. This is from an aunt who was my most persnickety aunt lol. The last year of her life was really enhanced by HF.
BTW we were like 20 miles from nowhere and 40 more miles from something so having everything I needed in the kit was very important. I usually had more spice left over that I saved.
Our favorite meal was the farmer’s casserole.
I bet the company would love to hear your story. But more importantly, I am so glad for you that you were able to have that time with your aunt and that you had the great idea to use their service which seemed to fit perfectly for a number of reasons. She knew that you cared about her enjoyment and prior standard of life. We all hope that someone will treat us with thoughtfulness when we are vulnerable or in need. Hope you're well.
Your post gave me goosebumps…what a beautiful gift you gave her!
That is such a heart warming story. Really happy that you dedicated that time to you elderly aunt. Can't imagine how nice she must have felt to be cared for.
Have an amazing day!
Such a sweet story. I can imagine the convenience and having the charm of a homecooked meal together is great in this case. Good on you for looking after your aunt, take care!
As a Chinese person, Hello Fresh helped me become more comfortable cooking western dishes. I also hate grocery shopping with a passion, so being able to skip that entirely is a huge plus for me. That being said, I only use it once in a while and only with discounts.
This is a very Chinese comment indeed. 😂
As an Asian, I concur.
Not Chinese but I liked cuz I hate shopping too
God shopping is the worst.
Yeah, the discounts are pretty good. The normal price is expensive. But with a rebate I can often pay about 2 euros or even less per portion. But the normal price is often about double which is a lot more expensive than the supermarket.
This comment is made me realize I need hello fresh for other cuisines.
As a beginner, Hello Fresh is a godsend.
Its teaching me how to cook. And im eating pretty damn nice meals. Sure its a bit costly, but im getting a huge variety of dinners. Food id never even heard of. And im minimising how much food I throw away at the end of the week.
Downsides for me is obviously the cost. Sometimes the portions arent that great for pasta and rice and meat. Theres a LOT of meat. And often theres not enough pasta or rice for the portions requested sometimes.
As far as I can tell that's on purpose. Part of their draw is that meals are supposed to be healthy so they cut back a little on carbs and put in more protein.
I had a friend who didn't know how to do weeknight cooking, so they ordered Hello Fresh for like a couple of months to improve their cooking abilities and develop their skills. It seemed to work pretty well. They cook for themself a lot more often now.
Oh, that's a good idea! Not like a lifetime thing, but just a kind of toturial. I might just try that...
yeah great way to get you use to handling different flavours and ingredients and you dont have to worry about portion sizes etc. i think they are also good value if you use one of the numorous codes going around from people they sponsered where you get it like 50% off or an extra meal for free etc.
probably also varies a bit on where you live. sometimes may work out cheaper because say where you live you have issues or will end up paying a huge premium for certain ingredients
That’s exactly what I’m doing. Literally never cooked in my life besides microwave meals & a friend gave us a code so we tried it out. We get 2 recipes a week and we’ve stopped ordering food out and have been recreating the meals we get because we love them so much. The more you make them, the faster it gets lol. I’m a picky eater and it’s made me try a bunch of different foods I wouldn’t have gotten to otherwise. The quality of food we get is always good, no complaints. I think it depends on which warehouse location you get tho.
There’s tons of codes online to use to reduce the price. $60 for 2 recipes with 2 portions each basically equals $15 per meal which isn’t too expensive. Basically what we spent eating out anyway. All of our recipes so far have been 10/10 and I can’t go back to eating bland food anymore lol
This is how I learned how to cook. I did the HelloFresh for about 8 months, got comfortable with the food and cooking. I cook a lot of food on my own now but still have dishes I refer to from hellofresh to make every once in a while.
@@michaela1528 I'm really glad that worked for you! And now you can take the techniques that you learned and try them with different ingredients and flavor profiles too. Don't be afraid to experiment!
I am a pretty good home cook. I initially signed up for hello fresh to get out of a food rut. For me, it takes away the stress of what will I make today. At least once a week the stress would win, and I ended up spending $50 on takeout. They throw discounts at you if you pause and reactivate, so I have never paid full price. I have saved so much money. We have all lost weight because the portions are not big. We are eating more veggies with no leftovers. I find the recipes super easy to follow. I usually get a box for 6 meals for 4 people for around $100-$150 per week with discounts. I can probably go cheaper at the grocery store, but for me, not defaulting to takeout means I have saved a lot of money overall.
That makes sense, but I personally enjoy the 'hunt'. Sometimes going in the store with no clue of what to make, but just looking at the produce and letting the ideas flow is often where the magic happens
@@tulgabois1250 I agree I have this fantastic mall like a block from my house that has a produce market that's super cheap, a butcher and also a grocery store and every month I find new and exciting things to try. Last month they imported a cactus fruit called shu Shu I'm told it's from Mexico and I pickled it and had it with everything it was so good. If you find you have left overs you don't know what to do with you just need a chest freezer they aren't expensive surprisingly and you need to start pickling things it's so rewarding.
ditto
@@tulgabois1250 I do agree. I prefer to choose my ingredients and the quality of them. Im not referencing calories or sugar contents. I want my food to be healthy and taste good. You have more control over how much you spend and what you buy if you do it yourself. I have commercial kitchen experience in cooking. Transitioning to home cooking isn't too easy because I am very used to the commercial kitchen equipment. However, I think it broadened my capabilities to shop and choose. I do sometimes go into stores with an idea and come out with something else. Then the question is where is the money being saved. Food is expensive in canada always. Our discount is comparable to full price in the US at times. Saving money is not always in the dollar itself. I will cook with the intent of left overs to cook fewer times a week because just like everyone. I get stress too. Sometimes the saved money is in the form of saved time and I rarely eat take out because you have to be conscious of whether you get take out or not. Does not just happen. When you buy from companies like hello fresh. They account for the food waste that you dont have, you pay for that. They do account for portioning, you would pay for that too. I have heard stories of the food lasting people at least a couple meals due to the sizes and I can see how that is a possibility. If you are big eater or not. I would bet that most of what you pay for in these delivery services, you pay more because convenience comes at a price. You pay for those workers to do the hard work for you. Most probably falls into shipping, at least in canada.
I'm a former chef and pretty good home cook. I was thinking as I watched that it might be worth it to me for a short stint to break out of a rut or for less food waste since I'm single. Other than that, it's too expensive but it does look yummy!
As someone who orders hello fresh in germany, it was super interesting to see the different packaging. A lot of the spices, etc. in germany are not in plastic but in some kind of paper
I think that the EU has a lot of regulations around single use plastic packaging that we don’t have here in the US. A paper wrapper sounds more efficient, but also probably more prone to getting wet/torn.
This is so interesting. In your opinion, how did you feel about how your produce and meats (if you did) were sent to you? Also how long does hello fresh take to get to you?
@@Sniperboy5551Apparantly this company does whatever they can get away with. Concern about overpackaging is what would keep me from using a meal service like this. They can accommodate Europe's realistic concerns, but feel free to engage in overpackaging pollution in the US.
@@evelynwaugh4053frankly IDGAF as long as things get here timely and not spoiled.
@@Nessal83 When there is overflowing trash and `recycleables' that can't be recycled economically in your back yard, because there's no more room for landfills, I expect that you will, frankly, gaf.
I signed up to one of these recipe boxes a few years ago during Covid as my mental health was in the toilet and I really wanted to learn how to cook because I was a complete novice. Literally, everything I cooked before then was just frozen processed, carb heavy stuff thrown into the oven for the designated time. Even initially following the recipes I was terrible, but as the years have gone on, I've become much more confident with cooking in general, and nowadays I barely even read the recipe cards (even for new recipes). They're a great way to give you a basic skill set and develop good habits for cooking.
I used Hello Fresh for about 3 months to aid in teaching my two teenagers to cook. I had already taught them some basics but the Hello Fresh meals made it easy for them to see how to make a more complex meal with side dishes. Once they became comfortable with using Hello Fresh we stopped the service and now they each make one dinner per week by picking a recipe, making themselves a grocery list and then putting it all together. I found Hello Fresh to be an excellent tool for teaching especially because I rarely cook by recipes anymore so when teaching them I kept saying just put a little in. That's not specific enough for a learner lol.
I have no kids but that is such a good idea. I'll pass it along to my sister for her kids. Thank you!
That's such a cool way to teach kids cooking skills
Good idea. I tried Green Chef to get my husband cooking. He liked it but still doesn't cook like your teens do. Good job boys! Thank your Mom for helping you learn a valuable skill!
Great idea!
Worked so well for my husband too. I'm happy to give him detailed recipes, but he was always asking me a million questions anyway and wasn't great at buying the ingredients either. Writing up several meals a week took me so long, since I'm well past the stage of needing a recipe for cooking. Plus, Cooking my recipes just got him too anxious about trying to exactly replicate the meals I made.
We got Dinnerly and now I'm not the authority to ask anymore and he's not trying to replicate something I've made. He happily cooks the meals on his own and doesn't need to shop for them, which is great.
The main issue with the "beginner cook" is that they don't want to buy 12 carrots, they just need enough to make that meal, because they will most likely waste the rest. I know that sounds odd to some, but that's the demographic these companies are shooting for. They are definitely geared towards having things ready to go, not having to think about it and giving you exactly what you need to get those meals on the table. Your description at the end was spot on.
Huh, where I'm from you can just buy a single carrot, they can come in packs but more often they don't and you can choose how many to buy.
I totally get that. If someone just wants to experiment with new recipes, they are a great option. I know what it's like to crave a certain meal that requires things like carrots, celery, etc, that you can't just buy one or two stalks of, lol! So you have to plan the rest of your week's cooking around that leftover produce so it doesn't go to waste.
@@MicukoFelton i can only buy stuff in bulk.. like it’s always at least a couple of carrots or 4-5 zucchini. Same with salad. It’s either not having it or eating it for days.
@@mmoboxs A couple of carrots doesn't seem like too much? Use 3 in a meal and the other 3 grind into a healthy salad. It's so easy to use them up. But even if you leave them in the fridge for a while it's not like they'll immediately spoil.
@@MicukoFelton I have two week old carrots that are still good. Not like they go bad the next day.
I feel the major value adds for Hello Fresh is not having to come up with two unique meals each week, but also not having to compare exactly what you have in your cabinets already with what you need to buy from the grocery store to make a new recipe you've never tried before. Both of those things combined make it worth it in my opinion.
So a recipe
@@spamjam6298 yes, the recipe. And meal planning, pantry organizing, grocery shopping.
The recipes by themselves wouldn't be worth it
Yeah, I hate having extra sauces and stuff from recipes I’ll only ever want to have once in a while.
@@spamjam6298 My self now retired I spend time cooking new stuff been learning chines cooking 60 dollers for 2 meals ouch
So basically you don't want to excercise and work your brain, and then people wonder why Americans are so stupid
The price is never the thing that draws me to meal kits. Less food waste, less mental energy to figure out dinners. They're never going to be cheaper than shopping for groceries
i'd prefer al ittle food waste instead of a bunch of money wasted, but then i'm poor
Less food waste, but significantly more plastic waste + the shipping energy.
If you're worried about the environment, meal kits aren't the move.
@@DearLilBunBunohh no it has plastic
@@Zeke-wn2fp Is a micro plastic connoisseur
@@DearLilBunBunplastic packaging is the last concern for me. If I have to choose between feeding myself or eating my neighbours dogs again, it’s an easy choice.
Hellofresh really got both my kids (11&14) into cooking. They can cook the recipes and have even started cooking other things because they feel more confident. I order them every other month to mix things up and help make dinner easier. I also have chronic illness and hellofresh is amazing when I'm not feeling well.
I used Hello Fresh for a little more than a year and ended up with a little short of 150 recipes from them. I kept all of the recipes and put them in a binder. Now I've been using them to plan out my weekly menu and grocery shopping. I'm able to select 4 or 5 recipes a week that all have overlapping ingredients and gives me 7 nights of meals, usually 3 or 4 lunches (including leftovers), and very little waste.
I figured out that I paid roughly a 25% premium for Hello Fresh. This premium is well worth it for people who have a difficult time planning out their meals and just want convenient, well planned, and easily made meals. Just remember to save the recipes you get (although Hello Fresh is very happy to send you replacements as long as you're still using their service) so you can make em later. Careful planning of the week's meals will almost certainly see a significant savings on groceries since you can work it out to have as little waste as possible.
The premium is well worth it for anyone who has the disposable income and no interest in spending free time (something way more valuable than a couple extra bucks for those with enough disposable income) on things they aren't interested in like meal planning.
I've printed recipe cards off their site for free. Unless they changed that policy.
I've never had the disposable income to purchase my own kit. Still, I'm glad you shared how you picked out meals! It gives me inspiration for how to search the sites to start trying new things!
I love that you organized everything by overlapping recipe ingredients! Something I’ve been meaning to do for my own favorite recipes in general! Inspired :)
_Pigs can sniff out truffles with their snouts._
Can you share me your recipe book?
We did Hello Fresh for a couple of years. When we lived in the Midwest, the portions were big, had good quality ingredients, and never missed an ingredient in our box. Moving to Central Florida, the quality went way down, portion sizes were tiny, and we were missing at least 1-2 ingredients per box. Absolutely terrible with the prices! We enjoyed the meals (and still make the recipes) but we buy our own ingredients and ignore the “please come back” mail.
My coworker had a coupon for a free hello fresh order. It was awesome i ordered my food and it was great except my mom used some of my ingredients lol i didnt like the quality of some of the produce though at the time I felt like the high price point wasnt worth it. Nevertheless it was a super cool experience and loved how everything was prepped so you just add all the food together so it was a plus
Yea. I think it depends on the area. With Everyplate, I noticed the quality of box deliveries (missing items, damage, etc. ) got worse over time... still saves us a bit of money. Now we have so many recipes, we have a portfolio folder that we organized by meal type. we skip some deliveries, pick 3-5 for that week, and just buy the ingredients at the store. We'll order a box if we see new meals we might like. FYI. Hello Fresh is the parent company for Everyplate.
@@jo5678 this is what did it in for me, I used these guys for a couple months. Less then fresh produce is what made me stop using them.
@@Magillion etc
@tim matthews lol. Typo
My big issue when I tried hello fresh was the portion sizes. Some items were fine others were a bit small. But the worst part is no leftovers! If I’m doing the work to cook I’d at least like lunch the next day
You could pick how many portions for the number of people you were cooking for, lets say 4. You can then turn those 4 portions into 4 days of meals. Now this is only coming from a single person that only had there own mouth to feed. I thought I saw a leftover option in an add but could be wrong.
Exactly! Up the portion amount when ordering. Cook once then have leftovers for a few days.@@andromedaloveless1120
Yeah, I felt that too when I tried it. I got enough for 2 people, me and my dad...it was some kind of pork tenderloin dish, we ate it and... felt hungry after. ^^;
Exactly!!! If I'm taking an HOUR to cook everything, why can't I have meals for my lunches too?!?
It's called efficiency.
@@andromedaloveless1120"you could pick..." *You can pay
I had tried blue apron quite a while ago. This was when I didn't know how to cook at all, and these boxes were fantastic in helping me practice my basics. I would credit these heavily for me starting to cook. During Covid my wife also started to cook thanks to the blue apron and she's much more confident making meals now. I don't think they are worth it in the long run, but fantastic way to get started with cooking and build confidence.
I had a very similar experience. Barely knew how to cook when I moved out on my own. Tried a few different meal kits and got comfortable with basic kitchen equipment and started experimenting with new ingredients. Nowadays I consider myself a good home cook and feel really comfortable in the kitchen.
My take is, if you subscribe to hellofresh, you should be skipping several weeks unless you really want to try something out.
That's about all they are good for. they are expensive, waste a lot in plastic packaging and are not good quality. Chicken in a watery bag? All the salt in those dried ingredients is bad for you. What you've done is the smartest way to use these services. Maybe use their recipes, but go out and buy the ingredients yourself. at least then you can pick the quality you can afford.
@@doraexplora9046 My rule is, even when I do get it from them, I never pay for the extra ingredient or substitute, I buy that myself
@@castleoffiction96 mmmm. Still not sure if I would bother. We get so many bargains by shopping in person. I don't think I could every substitute that experience. We regularly get things that are half price or on special, which Hello Nelly would never give you. Shopping personally does cost time. But the whole experience of preparing food should not be seen as a chore. But then again, I'm older and can afford the time to entertain those that visit with the finest.
I've actually worked at a Hello Fresh distribution center as a pick-packer before. Probably the highest praise that I can give Hello Fresh, having handled the products myself, is that working there made me want to start ordering the boxes for myself. The meals all look delicious and the produce is all fresh (it's packed by hand and all the produce is checked whilst being packed into meal kits, with lower quality stuff getting the toss). Worst thing I can really say is that because the packing process goes incredibly quickly (you've got at most 2-3 seconds to pick the ingredients you're responsible for and put them into the meal kit) sometimes you'll get a lot more of one or two ingredients than normal in a single meal kit. Sometimes less, but under stress it's a lot easier to pick up a few fingers worth of garlic than an individual clove, so it's usually more.
With that being said I ended up going with a pre-prepared meal service, because I was too lazy to cook. HAH!
So great to hear from what goes on at HF. That’s what I wondered about! Thankyou for sharing your information.
You didn't get to take the lower quality stuff with you at the end of the day as your own meal pack?
@@Jimmy_Jones No, we didn't get to take anything home with us. Not that we'd want to, because the "lower quality stuff" was usually damaged or rotting. Instant throw-away!
my problem with it was the small 30gram packets of cheddar and such which were sch a waste of plastic. I know they could help this if you could edit what you get in your kit to be more cost effective.
I’ve subscribed to Hello Fresh for my husband and me this past year for five meals a week. I LOVE them! No more trying to decide what to cook, food is always fresh, portions are perfect for each of us and I never have to waste food because I didn’t use it in time. I can say nothing bad about them.
I was choking on the prices - sixty bucks is my WHOLE grocery list for a week as a single guy. Per week, not for 4 meals. I guess looking a promotions and shopping in-season really makes the difference, or the online delivery service is just that more expensive (don't know about prices in the US).
Same! As a single gal I usually pay between 50 and 70 euros for about a week, +/- 2-3 days. Meal-kit deliveries are convenient so I get why people who can afford it go for that option.
I've got to imagine that part of this was him using an upmarket NYC grocery store. He was comparing Hello Fresh against very premium groceries.
Same for Russia
same! that's pretty much my household weekly food budget for both myself and my husband, breakfasts lunches and dinners. Maybe groceries are cheaper here in europe, or maybe we just make more frugal meals idk, but for me personally spending $60 on two meals for two is closer to the budget for eating out than it is a viable replacement for daily cooking. I get the feeling that Hello Fresh and similar programmes only really make sense for people who only cook sporadically and would otherwise waste the remaining ingredients (even though, like, freezers exist) and whose goal is to eat out less often.
$60 a week for one person feels high, but i've been getting hello fresh for over a year now, and it's $80 for 2 of us 4 meals a week, seems a substational part of the cost is the shipping and overhead.
I’m so glad the women in my life taught me to cook frugally, by feel, with ingredients on sale… After a month of Hello Fresh, my son and his wife have been spending time in my kitchen-learning.
As a single person who hates cooking I really like Hello Fresh as it has taught me to cook and I essentially get 4 meals (some times 5 depending on portions) out one box. It has given me a better appreciation for cooking and I've been eating better. I've had a few issues, but they are really good at crediting for a missing or bad item. My only complaint is when they send too much of a spice or noodle that you only need half of, my pantry is full of little half used spice baggies.
Get some small spice jars and put the packet spices in them. Then cut the labels off the packets and tape them to the jars. I buy and use Penzeys spices and they have sample size packets of some of their blends. They’re substantial enough to fill one of their 1/4c size jars about 2/3 full. I cut the names off and taped them, but then learned that if I cut off the top and bottom seals, they slide right over the jars like a sleeve.
Cooking does take practice.
These seem easy to follow.
I am in Germany and Hello Fresh exploded here, and sadly they were not able to follow through with quality control. I am a bit of an expert in QA for fruits and vegetables, and I was able to experience some stuff that told me "they are not ready yet".
I guess in the USA they are better than in Germany.
I just use all the spice.
I agree it's great for a single person. I do meal prep on the weekend for the week and put everything in the freezer and grab something on the way out the door for work. It keeps my I've also found some things that I would never had made before that were really awesome and some things that I liked a lot and was shocked by (the black bean soup is now one of my favorites!).
I've been doing it for 2 years, though, and I have found that the recipes tend to be insanely repetitive, and also there's shockingly little variety in the long term. For example, I've never seen a recipe for eggplant (which I don't eat, so I don't especially care), or lentils (which I would like to eat), or cauliflower (which I like) or celery in any form (salt, powder, fresh, whatever) but I'm about halloumi grilling cheese & zataar spiced out. The only turkey I've ever seen is ground, but I've never seen ground chicken. And they do not tell you which meat substitutes they provide, which for me is super important since Impossible contains an ingredient I have to avoid.
VERY lately (like in the past 2 weeks) I've seen some new things, but at the same time there are things I don't want to see them stop selling (the aforementioned black bean soup, for example). I have absolutely no idea how they are supposed to address everyone's "favorites" all at once. And honestly, I *can* cook and should stop being stupid and just make the soup myself. I have a similar recipe that I really like as well (not from Hello Fresh) that I don't make at home because it's not possible to make it without making 8 servings; I get bored after like, three, and I don't have a deep freezer where I could make an 8 serving recipe one week and a different 8 serving recipe the next week and just grab one out the freezer so I don't get bored. (I should probably get one, to be honest).
I do take objection to the single serving sized sour cream, creme fraiche and Greek yogurt, though. Those tiny little plastic containers are a pain in the ass to open and get all the contents out without making an enormous mess, and I myself would prefer to just be told "add 2 tablespoons of sour cream" or whatever.
I didn't know about Fresh Direct; I may check them out!
Thanks for the honest review; it's good to know I'm not being completely foolish with my finances. :)
Can we talk about garlic?! Lol I always have like 4 full bulbs of garlic and one that has maybe 2-3 cloves missing. Thank you for my endless supply of garlic HelloFresh. 😂
My wife and I are vegan in a very small town in Germany and before hello fresh we were eating pretty much the same things every day; we’ve been using Hello fresh for about 4 months now and I can say completely it is so worth it for us! We pay about €50 a week for 4-5 vegan meals and the variety, relief of stress on needing to go grocery shopping, having everything pre-portioned out, it’s wonderful :)
They have vegan options now?
@@EvidentlyThinking Hello Fresh Germany does at least!
How do vegans survive in the sausage capital of the world?
@@JackSilver1410 they make vegan sausage too haha, but just basic protein swaps :)
@@JackSilver1410 Germany actually has alot of vegan/vegetarian people and eco-conscious citizens. I live in a big German city (Munich) with tons of great vegan/vegetarian cafes, restaurants and grocery options. Plenty of vegan food in our supermarkets too. Fyi this is coming from a meat eater who likes using plant based meat sometimes and has switched normal milk for oat milk. All of this caters to mixed diet and curious people too
For me, the reason I started to use Hello Fresh was because I realized I often ended up with excess food I had to throw away because I didn't use it up fast enough. So while I think the observation that Hello Fresh is probably a tad more expensive than if you buy the groceries yourself, the fact I don't need to throw away as much food as I would do when I cooked everything myself. Also, I would often feel I needed to buy more groceries to fill in a gap in a dish I wanted to cook just to use up the excess and then something else would go to waste.
i used hellofresh when my partner and i were renting a place that only had space for what i think is the world's smallest fridge. because everything was just enough for the two of us, it all fit in the fridge, and meant that we only had 2 "fend for ourselves" days a week, one of which tended to be a cheap takeaway and the other being what little we could fit in the sorry excuse for a freezer compartment. now that we have actual fridge and freezer space, it doesn't make sense to do anymore, but for the time we did it, we really enjoyed it. still keep quite a few of the recipes in rotation too, just able to buy more food and have somewhere to store it!
A *tad* more expansive?! Maybe it depends on where you live and they'll "only" charge a premium.
Where I live, I can get organic (!!!) ingredients for around half (or even lower, depending on what they'd ship) then what those greedy scammers ask for conventional food.
If I threw away literally half the food I buy, I still wouldn't pay a dime more then what HelloFresh would cost me - and again, organic, not conventional food.
Just try to learn to cook and buy the right amount. It can be difficult, but it is doable. And maybe buy more "durable" Foods, I mean stuff that doesn't spoil quickly. Like the last Pumpkin I bough, I used that sucker up gradually in around 2 Month time.
Also: Keep the enviroment in mind. Yes, throwing away food is BAD (again, you can work on that), but throwing away a little bit here and there is NOTHING compared to this insanity. Just the motherfucking packaging on those things - it's beyond good or evil. This needs to be banned all together, Jesus Christ!
Oh, for the price, I almost forgot.... It is actually possible to eat out for what the Scammers ask. Yes, I can buy hot and ready to eat food for what Hello Fresh asks. Not because going out would be cheap, far from it, but because of those absolutely insane Prices that Hello Fresh wants.
Now the restaurant has to employ cooks and staff, rent is high AF, prices are high - while Hello Fresh has almost 0 costs in that regard.
What I'm trying to say: Don't shove Scammers Money up their Arses. Just don't, even if it is convenient.
@@sagichdirdochnicht4653 I agree that their packaging practices is bad and it's something I consider to be a huge downside. I do sort all my trash though, so I find it less of a problem.
And believe me, I've had pumpkins and other foods that don't spoil quickly go bad on me too because I just don't always have the motivation or the inspiration to cook a dish that requires a particular ingredient. But before I used Hello Fresh, I would find I often had my fridge full with food I am not even using up most of the time and I had to throw things out because it had gone bad.
I mean, who are you to say how I should lead my life with regards to that anyway? The argument may not be viable in your country or in your situation, but it is viable for me. I did a baseline calculation and given my propensity to want to cook with fresh ingredients and such, Hello Fresh is not necessarily cheaper than if I bought all the ingredients for myself. It all depends on the dish. So if I think I'm going at least even and it's worth it, it *is* worth it for me and you have to be honest no right to say otherwise. You can disagree based on *your* situation, but you certainly can't say I am wrong for my decisions as long as they're informed, which they are.
It's way more than a tad more expensive and what's wrong with eating leftovers?
In the past 7 years I tried Hellofresh purple and blue apron. They all had a few good meals here and there but nothing consistently good. Produce was often wilted, bruised or moldy. Lots of boxes included both extra items and missing items. Everytime sour cream was included, it was separated and curdled.
I've been ordering Hello Fresh for about 2 years. Started with every other week. Now just once a month. We do it more for variety, meaning things we don't normally cook. Their sauces really make the meal. Like you, I have duplicated some recipes on my own because they are quite simple.
I think that’s a good idea - I would say that HelloFresh is good for variety but if you are good at planning out your meals and shopping wisely, it isn’t cost effective.
That’s great because depending on what you are cooking, some spices and ingredients are hard to find in the store.
Hello Fresh's claim of saving money relates to fact that they send you only exactly what you need, and you don't have to worry about any excess ingredients. This is beneficial for those who struggle with using up ingredients before they spoil. (This is a thing that ADHDers struggle with, as well as others.) If you are someone who is good at using everything up, then these meal services are not economical. It just depends on a person's individual needs.
Thank you, well said. I got adhd, adult onset and have struggled with going from household full of young kids, that ate everything I made to now they got dietary restrictions, allergies but I'm still shopping how I used, a couple of decades ago. I am struggling making transition so this may actually help me out.
This is a amazing point.
I here your point, but I would prefer to get more for my money and have extra left over to use or not use. It's like buying something at costco vs other places, you pay 20% more for at least twice the volume. Having said that I'm always more worried about my bottom line then waste which is a bit selfish but it is what it is. I just mention in because your point said what's more economical. If you spend the same but one leaves you with leftovers and one doesn't, which is more economical? The biggest thing I got out of using hello fresh for months was the meal ideas, It taught me a lot of basic cooking things and flavors mixtures I would have otherwise never tried, unfortunately less then quality produce and sometimes missing stuff made me stop. Now I find it's definitely cheaper to buy this stuff and make it yourself
Oh yes, I'm not suggesting that meal kits are objectively more or less economical than purchasing your ingredients yourself. (As they like to imply.) I'm suggesting that what is more economical for each person is subjective. For those who are good at using the ingredients up, it's certainly not economical. On the other hand, if you pay a certain cost and have no leftovers, that's more economical than paying that same price and having leftovers which you then pay to refridgerate and ultimately trash. This is especially true as some people also have trash fees.
TL:DR - Different people have different needs, so there's no truly universal answer to "which style is more economical." It's going to depend on the individual, and that's valid. :)
@@bmartin2304 you’re also leaving out part of her point about management with ADHD.
We have been using HF for about 6 months. I’m a great cook, but my hubs and I are in our 60s, retired and I am SICK of deciding what to make for dinner. I love the meals and I hate wasting food so the fact that everything is portioned exactly avoids that. Price is about what it costs when we have take out. Very happy with it.
🎊 mate I have a (Mystery Box) package for you, Text the above username on telegram for acknowledgment.,
My situation exactly, except we're in our 70's. Wish they had an organic produce/pastured meat option.
How much did you sell this account for? Because this reads like corporate marketing BS. Same cadence as the rest of the top comments here. MLM scumlords.
Here's a tip to save money: When your promotional period ends switch to a different meal service and close the account to the 1st one. They'll lure you back with another promotional period. If you get the timing right you'll never pay regular price.
@@dannydaw59Thank you for helping us (SR’s)
I love cooking and grocery shopping so would never be a regular Hello Fresh customer. However, I used Hello Fresh when my mum came to stay with me for 3 weeks. Rather than trying to describe my dinner idea to her and have her question and debate it with me, it was easy to have her go through the hello fresh options and choose the ones she wanted to try. It really simplified cooking for her and we both enjoyed it all the meals.
being chronically ill and disabled, having the exact recipes and measurements is so helpful. Also, I can see Hello Fresh helping anyone who never learned to cook
.. having the recipes and measurements that you could easily access online, is the thing that's most helpful for a disabled person? Not.. the lack of shopping and having to run around??
im considering hello fresh as well for these factors, cant cook properly healthy meals and going out to the supermarket is a strugge each week or so. just have to see if its in the budget really
@@GlorifiedGremlin stop assuming everyone can access the internet and try things out just like you can. Disabilities affect people all kinds of different ways and it's not just laziness or lack of will.
@@MrLense *BRUH,* it's literally a service that requires the internet to use. And I never said any of that other stuff whatsoever. You're one of those who just has to get offended by something, ANYTHING, even if it's on behalf of other people huh? Make you feel like a good person?
Don't have to put the first sentence you already have an anime profile picture 🗿
As someone with a chronic illness that works full time, meal boxes are completely worth it because I literally don’t have the spoons to plan meals for months at a time sometimes. My favorite right now is Daily Harvest since it’s basically just frozen meals - but with healthier elevated ingredients than the alternatives.
amen sister, the spoons comment. though at times problematic these boxes have been a life saver
this! as someone who is going to move out from my parents house for the first time soon, knowing it takes me quite a few spoons to cook,,, hello fresh or something similar sounds ideal, especially to get my footing in preparing all my own meals
how do you possibly afford it though
Forgive the ignorance - but I've never heard this expression for 'spoons'. Does it mean time? Or just motivation?
@@rogink It's a "energy"-unit -> watch?v=b5u3PF-ym8A
My biggest issue with meal kit services is the amount of waste. As one person with ordering 6 servings per week, I was filling a 12 gallon garbage bin and 12 gallon recycle bin *every week* while using hello fresh. Also since I have a local grocery store, the cost difference vs buying my own ingredients is about 2x.
You can… you can order less food. You can put food away for the next day or something.
It just sounds like you’re throwing away good food honestly. You don’t have to get a kit every day, even just once a week could feed you, what, six times?
@@alteregobruh I don't mean food, I was eating all the food. I'm just talking about the packaging and ice packs. The amount of packaging I got on a typical week was more than shown in the video as well. This was only for 6 servings of food per week I will restate (1 box with 3 recipes). I need to prepare 9 servings of food per week, so this wasn't even fully covering my needs.
@@alteregobruh you didn't see the video did you? every gram of stuff has its own little packaging. Who cares, right? in the end is just natures problem.
@@fofopads4450 I’m sure you’re being sarcastic but some people actually seem to think that way and it’s bad
@@fofopads4450 It’s just natures problem until we want to eat meat and all the animals are sick and dying because of the way we’ve treated the world. It is NOT “just nature’s problem” when we rely on nature. Our meat is already fucked because of industry farms but if this continues, there won’t be any natural or healthy meat left. We want fish? Well too bad. We threw all our trash and plastic in the ocean until fish became a rarity.
Nature’s problems are our problems because we get our stuff from nature.
We get paper from trees. We get food from the ground and the animals. We get materials for homes from the ground, the trees.
If nature dies, what are we to do? We can’t continue as we are if nature dies because we don’t care.
I used Blue Apron during a stressful period in our lives. I thought it was very helpful, better than takeout. However; I liked the food better than my spouse. But he got hot meals so didn’t complain too much.
I loved all the little containers of spices and other seasonings. It was like playing house!
I’d use a delivery service like it again in similar circumstance.
Damn, that must be some good food if you liked it more than you like your hubby. 😂
Blue apron was the best definitely, they were also the first, but got absolutely taken over, I don't think they even exist anymore.
the slight extra cost is so worth it to me because the meal kit drastically reduces my food waste, makes me eat way healthier, reduces the need to get takeout or fast food, takes away the mental load of deciding what to make every night and finding everything needed, and on top of that, teaches this baby adult how to make things i would never have thought of on my own
Same. I was so proud of myself for making enchiladas for the first time. It tasted just like a restaurants.
"baby adult" enough said
@@YhurHurtdamn you really got them 😐
Wow, so before when you cooked you threw the leftover ingredients or something? Didn't think what to cook to reuse stuff and clear the fridge for the next grocery stock up? And you call it a 'mental load' to decide what to cook? 😂 you're absolutely pathetic...
@@YhurHurt L beta male
I tried Hello Fresh with my partner who's vegetarian and we ended up with a cupboard full of beans because we got sick of having beans and ended up using all the other ingredients to make something different. I wish vegetarian options like this weren't so cheap and unimaginative
Tbh Hello Fresh makes most of their money selling carbs, beans, broccoli and chicken. They usually break even with the other ingredients to maintain competitive prices and market share growth.
I hated the vegetarian options at hello fresh. I'm muslim so I can't order the meat option, just vegetarian and fish and they are sooo boring. The meat dishes always look so good and imaginative
To be honest, I think our pro home cook chose the meat options for a reason. It is easy to make a tasty recipe using meat and stock, as our body recognizes and uses those nutrients really well, hence it triggers the reward centres in our brain easily.
It is way harder to get the same result in a vegetarian meal, unless you fall back on the staples in cooking with a lot of savory taste like onion, mushrooms, cheese. Making a veggie stock is also great as a base for flavor. (or kombu if can find it somewhere)
Nonetheless, as a non-vegetarian, I find beans incredibly tasty. There are a lot of different kinds of beans and there is a big quality difference between cheap brands and the specialized organic ones. As MK ULTRA mentioned, HelloFresh is saving a lot of money on cheap ingredients, it is what makes these companies so profitable. If they used the stuff I buy for their meals, they would lose money on every box ;P
@@pinobluevogel6458 Yeah I agree, at the end of the day HF is a business and these ingredients must make sense for them. Although I wish there were more imaginative vegetarian options, I guess the real value add is for people who struggle with wasting food. But they could have at least thrown chickpeas or something in there once in a while, it was so much black bean! 😂😂
@@thefacebookhasser Wait Muslims can't eat meat? Not even chicken? Is it like a different practice but the same religion kind of thing? Because i have Muslim friends here in India and they eat a lot of meat and so do many others. I'm a hindu vegetarian so I'm not aware of the customs of muslims, sorry if you were offended.
I think you proved one of their biggest claims. That they reduce food waste. Once you buy all these ingredients for a meal, you're gonna have leftovers, and the average person isn't gonna find a use for them all. I think this really shows that hello fresh is a better option for people who just arent that into cooking or dont have the time to be thinking about the ingredients.
Food waste yes, packaging and plastic waste on the other hand...
Pay more and receive less, very much worth it
@@iridescent5455 I'm pretty sure big ass supermarkets also has a lot of plastic overhead, it's just not very visible in their logistic department before it hits the shelves
I have been using Hello Fresh for about 6 months now for a family of four. Our food wastage has gone down significantly. Hubby and I cleaned out the fridge and were surprised to have so little to throw out. It was from old dressings only. Our other thing we throw out is occasional bad apple or orange from a grocery bag full. I've liked Hello Fresh because I don't have to come up with something when I am tired.
@@MacMan2152 don’t fall for the sunken cost fallacy, it’s the same reason buying in bulk at stores like Costco doesn’t actually save you money
$61 dollar budget for dinner is crazy😂 I tried it and the first week I got two meals with 4 servings and ate then in 1 sitting. Was discounted with the promo but after week 1 there is a massive pay jump. So ended it after.
I am so happy to finally see a non-sponsored Hello Fresh video! (Now I want to see one for Bright Cellars) As far as Hello Fresh themselves, my own experience with them was pretty good on the whole as well. We did pay a little more for the convenience, but overall I didn't feel that it was outrageous. Where it fell short for me, and why I canceled it after just a month of dishes, was that I actually enjoy the process of finding recipes and menu creation, or going to the grocery store with your list but then being inspired by something you see in the meat case. I get that many people don't like those parts of cooking, or don't have the time, so Hello Fresh would be great for some people. It just wasn't my bag.
Yeah, Pro Home Cooks might find they chafe under the formality of everything. I mean, just look at the third set of meal(s) he made with all the groceries he bought! “I have a bunch X, and a bunch of Y, what can I make with it?” is a powerful inventive force, especially if that’s what you’re into!
A wine service sounds harder to screw up without breaking the bottle.
As a current EveryPlate subscriber, this has just shown me that HelloFresh is the same as any other meal kit delivery service (ingredients are the exact same, same packaging, same presentation) but more expensive. If anyone is considering HelloFresh I definitely recommend taking a look at EveryPlate or Dinnerly! The same delicious meals but a bit cheaper :)
HelloFresh and EveryPlate are the same company :) Same as GreenChef, they're all owned by the HelloFresh parent company.
@@rustyriley4 Wait whatttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt
@@rustyriley4 WAIT REALLY WTF LOL talk about monopoly
@@mannymannnn lemme have a monopoly on your heart
I LOOOVE Everyplate!
I use Hello Fresh during my busy season at work. I don’t have to think of recipes, make grocery lists, or go shopping. Plus, my food waste and restaurant costs are WAY down using it.
honestly a very well made video, I was considering using hello fresh but was somewhat scared of the quality of the products and other things but you let me know the pros and cons about it in actually home cooking so great job
We subscribed to Hello Fresh for about 6 months. Then, they started missing deliveries, putting in the wrong ingredients and finally almost dead vegetables. That was the last straw - we cancelled and that began the begging for us to reconsider. Friends have all had similar experiences. It was fun while it lasted, especially since it’s just the two of us and there was so little waste with their meals.
We had the same experience, great to start with then, dead carrots delivered, and then missed deliveries, and finally no deliveries at all. Goodbye Hello Fresh
This! Exactly. The last box was missing the chicken; box before had dead ginger. Not one “reward” has ever worked. Rare refunds for bad or missing ingredients are applied to a future box not actually refunded.
Exact same issue!
Same, and very first box was full of wilted and soft produce, and I sincerely felt that I could not trust anything else in that package. It all went into the trash, and had to go through several 'are you sure?' layers to fully cancel.
I use Chef's plate which is owned by hello fresh, and any time i've had so much as a missing pack of spices, i contact their support and I get a credit. Sometimes 10 dollar credit, sometimes 20 dollars (so the cost of one recipe with Chef's Plate), sometimes an entire free box (just for a couple rotting or missing items). I encourage everyone who has any issue with missing or bad items to contact the support. I didn't even have to ask for credits, they just gave them to me. I
I did the same comparison. I found this delivery service was more expensive than deliver from my local grocery store. The difference was $10 to $15. What I did appreciate from the meal service was the portion control. That’s something I’m learning now that my family is downsizing.
Sincerely wish you good luck with portion control! I know how hard that is and how tempting it is to make more than you need to be SUPERsatiated... all to well. I hope your family manages that with flying colors!! 🍀
the convenience of the portions is sometimes worth it in my opinion, at least in the beginning week or two when the discounts are still decent
My mom **really** needs to learn Portion control.
they are pricey but for someone like me that has issues with portion control, they are a godsent. i also love trying different cuisines but always end up wasting the specialized ingredients i get for specific dishes, so the pre portioned stuff def helps with that
Making everything in advance and like Mike does and using plastic containers to portion everything helps a lot.
I find that issues with portion control are double-pronged, bad for your health and for your wallet. You can avoid both stings with good shopping skills.
I haven't used Hello Fresh, but that's definitely something I've thought of. I've got spices in my cabinet from 4 years ago from a dish I made once, and I might use them one more time before I die.
@@HipposaurusRex Haha 4 year old spices might have lost their flavour already. I found some old, lost coriander seed powder that had got hidden at the back of a cupboard and it smelled of absolutely nothing!
My biggest reason for choosing hello fresh is simply I don't have to stress over planning recipes. It's all there for me on a nice print out!
thats just lazy, and by that you are producing alot of waste
@@ReadyF0RHeady wow wtf
@Scarlett Widdowson forget them I have adhd so it's hard for me to plan things so I'm with you on that. This will actually get me to cook so I only do take out. Or bake because its easy. Plus I struggle with if I do cook what do I make. I think that the hellofresh helps with all of the decision making easier worth it.
Sounds like you're one of those timeout everybody gets a trophy generations. Too lazy to put actual thought or effort into anything you do.
@@scarlettwiddowson4245good for you. Yes, let's destroy the environment because a few people are too lazy and too stupid to look up a recipe and write it down. Don't have kids.
Chef’s Plate (Canadian Hello Fresh) is definitely not cheaper than cooking meals with ingredients from the grocery store. But it IS cheaper than me saying “screw it, I’ll order pizza”. Every pizza I save myself from buying is money in the bank.
Yeah, I realised while watching this that it’s good for people who get takeaways because they are bored of what they usually eat. It’s a way of having something different and it could inspire you to create new dishes of your own too. I can definitely see its value to some people.
I avoid that particular problem by living in the ass end of nowhere that nobody in their right mind would deliver to. 🤣
Buy frozen pizzas from Trader Joe’s and Costco
You buy Pizza that's more than 15$ every time? (60, 2 people, 2 meals, 15/person)
You can get four pizzas for 20 bucks and feed 8 people for a third the price of these meal boxes.
Problem, is how unhealthy it is to eat like that.
@@asitallfallsdown5914 Chef's Plate is 43.55 USD for 3 meals for 2 people. (0.00 shipping) That's 7.25 per serving.
Meanwhile, getting a pizza from my favourite pizza place comes to about 24.00 USD for a large pizza after tax and tip. I get 3 meals out of a large pizza, so that's 8.00 per serving.
So it's actually more comparable price-wise than I thought, but Chef's Plate comes with health, variety, and tastier food, so it still wins. Heck, today my meal from Chef's Plate WAS a pizza. (A white sauce pizza with bacon, tomato and pesto that tasted better than my local place and was SOOO good... Ugh I just wanna eat it again...)
Been using Hello Fresh for about a year now. In Canada you have to get 3 meals per week. We get meals every other week. It's been super helpful. The nice thing is if you really like a meal, you have the recipe card and can then make it whenever you want. It's also great for people who are just starting out and don't have a huge pantry, they provide all the spice blends and everything other than white sugar, oil, salt and pepper. If you really like a certain spice/herb or sauce, then you can spend the money to invest in them.
They also don’t provide butter or milk (in Canada)
bro there's recipes online
@@itsdune079 - Thanks so much. I totally forgot that!
@@brettkeller Bro, so what?
I joined Hello Fresh off and on. I loved it!! I loved the organization, fresh ingredients, and outside the box recipes. I learned a lot. Delicious! It’s just too much food for me.
I've tried a few of these services and thought, "this is crazy I can make things myself so much cheaper". However, it's also nice three times a week to not have to come up with something for dinner. I get Everyplate, HelloFresh's cheaper company, and it's been working well for me even as someone who knows how and likes to cook. Love the comparison you did and that rosa pasta looks amazing!
Yeah as a proficient home cook, I can certainly make most “hello fresh” meals without even a recipe, and since I have a well stocked pantry, for the most part I can solidly say I can make the recipes for cheaper. However, after about 6 years of using the service on and off I find the value in how much of the “mental” load of cooking it removes. I don’t have to plan meals, source ingredients, organize meals to limit food waste. I barely have to measure, clean up is relatively easy, and a hot meal that my kids will eat is on the table in under an hour. Bonus that my partner, who isn’t as proficient a cook as I am, can also easily get a meal ready. There is real value in the service even if it isn’t monetary value like they try to claim.
@@JDStarr exactly! The convenience is worth it to me. It does remove stress & my boxes are only about $5/meal which is still pretty decent compared to take out. Plus I can be creative on other days I don’t make a meal kit so it works out.
It's an agenda to keep you boxed in. Go to the supermarket and socially interact with people in real life.
I use EveryPlate too. I love it.
@@klanzadumas2962 Ah yes, the supermarket... that bastion of socialization.
I don’t think you mentioned this, but hello fresh is perfect for vacations(if you’re staying in a rental/airbnb). Bringing a box with 4 meals or whatever and bringing it on vacation is a great money saver if you don’t wanna eat out everyday. Did this for my trip to the coast last year and it helps you avoid that grocery trip while on vacation, all you have to do is bring the box and put it away at your rental. The food is always delicious and it takes away a question of meal planning so you can focus on your vacation! I usually don’t get hello fresh when I’m just at home. I prefer meal kits that don’t give exact portions sk you can have leftovers or multiple meals in a week. Hungry root is a great example of this, instead of giving u 1 bun and 1 portion of tuna. They give you enough to make 4-5 sandwich’s throughout the week. I like this format because you only need the instructions the first time you make it, and then it’s a quick meal a few more times throughout the week. So you get 2-3 meals but in reality you get 5-6 meals while eating multiple of the same meal (which I do not mind)
That is a really great tip about using HF on holiday, thanks!
GREAT idea
That is a really genius idea. Unfortunately I’ve had a really bad experience with Hello Fresh - the ingredients have always been the OPPOSITE of fresh! I’m in Australia so maybe it’s different in your country?
Thank you for the tip!!!!!!❤
Oh my God that's such a good idea!
I order meal boxes...of course it's cheaper to do your own shopping sure but the meal box actually encourages me to cook and also gives me the opportunity to try things I wouldn't usually try and takes the energy draining part of cooking which is the planning. To me, that's worth the extra cost.
For more experienced home cooks the value of HelloFresh is that it inspires you to try out new things. I will order a box every now and then for that purpose (usually with a large discount). It has given me new recipe ideas. Pretty much what you experienced yourself
I use meal boxes, and for someone who wasn’t taught to cook at home, it’s was a great way to learn how to cook. The ingredients are there, it’s simple to follow, and it’s moved me to being more interested in cooking. I have started to buy spices I liked, and have started to looked up with a few recipes on my own.
On the weekend I made pancakes and berry compote from scratch, and this is something I wouldn’t have believed I could do it without building confidence with the boxes.😊
I've been using Hello Fresh for almost a year now, and I can tell you with assurity, all the recipes are bangers. For someone who loves cooking, but can't plan ahead or organize very well, this is heaven-sent.
This is it. You just save a ton of time as well and its worth the added price for me. The whole shopping odyssey is now a 5 minute deal where you chose you're favorite dishes for delivery. Plus the sheer pride, as someone that couldn't cook much more than pasta before, when cooking a challenging meal and it comes out delishes feels amazing
im not in north america so i cannot use hellofresh, but it really does sound incredibly convenient. i’m not very good at coming up with new things to cook but i looove cooking, this would be such a great tool. hope they expand to more countries still at accesible pricing!
At a certain point, wouldn't saving the recipes and buying the ingredients from a grocery store br cheaper?
They really aren't. They're very very basic, and they rotate the same ones often. I don't find the recipes interesting at all.
@@azul4904 Check if your country has another company for meal boxes. That's what I do - I use a local company and they are LEAPS and bounds better than HelloFresh! All organic ad much, much higher quality. We get the convenience of meal boxes, we don't need to plan meals, we get fresh ingredients, but without having to use Hellofresh and their disgusting low quality.
i've seen youtubers promote hello fresh before and it seems convenient, delicious, and like a good way to start leaning how to cook
my biggest hang ups are the price, the environmental impact (packaging), and i've heard they're lying about their meat being fresh which is not surprising
I wish I had something like this where I live. I could never imagine doing this long term, but to subscribe to something like this for 6 months and get enough recipe ideas and understanding of how to cook different things is where the real value lies. The biggest thing that turns me off trying a lot of new things is buying excessive amounts of ingredients for one dish without understanding where else I can use them. Getting correct portions and finding recipes that overlap the same ingredients would help me no end.
What you do is google "[ingredient] recipes". And the majority of recipes tells you how many it'll feed (very rare not to have it).
You can find the hello fresh recipes online. I used to use hellofresh but then it helped me become more comfortable cooking on my own. I still make a lot of their recipes
Check to see if there is, I've heard the UK has some subscriptions like hello fresh that are available. There maybe some available near you that you just haven't heard about.
I think the only reason I would get this subscription is for the same reason you mentioned, to get some recipe ideas. He ended up spending the same amount of money, but he got more portions with the grocery shopping, and some ingredients like spices he only has to buy once since he got large amounts that can be used for dozens and dozens of recipes.
@@Lightsaber360 Unfortunately I live in Laos, where even home delivery of cooked meals is a relatively new trend. There are these meal packs in neighboring Thailand but not here yet. I should probably go and discuss with some local restaurants to provide some and start myself a little side hustle 😁
man
i wish i had a kitchen large enough for an island like that
that's the only thing that really makes me jealous of cooking videos like this, just y'all have so much space to do things lol
It’s a studio!
I'll be honest here. For counter space, island spaces are amazing. But they are so overrated. Had mine for nearly two years and I've never sat at it. Getting rid of the stools is a nightmare because NO ONE wants them because they're so niche.
i wanna turn my old ass kitchen into one with a peninsula instead of the weird setup it currently has, i also hate the drop ceiling in there
@@RosenrotRtLiebchen87 oh wait! After googling it, that's actually what I have. 😂
Dude I feel you. I have one normal sized counter and the other one is where I have to house all my appliances - my kitchen is a kitchen in an old a55 house so it wasn’t meant for socializing in. I don’t even have a microwave bc I have nowhere to put it. It makes cooking such a huge hassle.
Chef's tip : put a lid on the potatoes while cooking. When they come to the boil, turn off the heat. Leave the potatoes for 10 to 20 minutes, check they are cooked with a fork, if the fork goes in easy without resistance, they are cooked. Use the cooking water for stocks or soups. Reduces energy costs.
works well with eggs too. just make sure the time is right for the level of cooked you want. less likely to get that nasty grey yolk too.
I find it beneficial to read the entire recipe before I start making it. That keeps me from doing things out of order.
Considering giving it a try not because I can't cook or am wasteful with ingredients (I've always been pretty efficient) but just after years of cooking for myself I'm just tired of having to come up with what to cook several times a week so removing that decision might make me feel a little less burnt out
I am vegetarian and have been using HelloFresh in the UK for 6 weeks now. 5 meals a week for 2. I have to say I am usually very happy with the quality and quantity of what we have been given. The meals follow a definite pattern for veggies though. rice or pasta base usually. A sauce. Roast some veggies & combine. But we have eaten no duds. Our food waste has dropped dramatically. We were forever forgetting about potatoes or eggs or something so from that point of view it is very good. BUT - we are going to have to either spend more money and adapt their recipes or eat less of their meals per week. Why? Protein. HelloFresh are guilty of only adding a tiny amount of protein to a lot of their veggie meals. Some are almost exclusively carbs. The nutrition stuff I have seen suggests a least 1/3rd of your meal should be protein for a balanced diet. HelloFresh gets no where near this for most of their veggie meals.
I used HelloFresh for a few months when I was getting used to cooking for myself at home and had a busy work schedule. It helped me come up with future meal ideas and kept me from eating a bunch of fast food. It's too expensive for me to do in the long term, but it helped me get a good foundation on what I liked to cook. I also love how they managed to time the recipes so everything gets done around the same time.
Thank you for the download! I just started receiving Hello Fresh and their recipes are delicious! I didn’t expect that but was pleasantly surprised! Loved your video!!!
I think the only thing that is holding Hello Fresh back is the amount of plastic and disposables packages that they use but I can’t think of another way to deliver pre portioned ingredients
There isn't, so it shouldn't be done.
there isn't cause scientists are busy making foldable phones and not a viable biodegradable substitute for plastic
@@goodshowmanythanks its not more than when you just buy it in the supermarket only you trow away less stuff that you didnt need. Cause you get the exact measurements.
@@simonlandkroon dude what do you mean, you get like ten sachets to one bottle, you're ending up with more plastic for the same amount of sauce.
@@goodshowmanythanks here in the Netherlands you get like 2 maby 3 small sachets for each recipe. Whats worse having 3 small sachets more (wich all get collected here and recycled). or trowing away half of your onions, fresh herbs and stuff like that.
I love what you’re saying about learning how to cook without recipes. That’s my goal for this year. I was using meal kits all throughout 2022 and I get so stuck on making sure I always follow every single line of the recipe correctly. It makes it hard to actually put any cooking knowledge to use. So yesterday you inspired me and I made one meal without any recipes whatsoever and it came out really good!
I’d love to see a series on meals that freeze and reheat well. I’m pregnant with my third baby and while I love freshly cooked food, I will be newly postpartum and not near any family. I’d love some solid recipes to feed me and my family.
My sister in law sent me a cookbook of freezer meals. There are several on Amazon, but I can't find the exact one she sent. It's a great thing to do for yourself. congrats on the little one!
I got one from a friend that i cooked , i think it came out well and i was pretty pleased, recipies are well seasoned and amply portioned, i'd say it was worth the money, the stuff is fresh too.
You cooked your friend? How did it taste? LMAO
My opinion, it’s cheaper to do your own shopping and cooking. Learning to buy and cook your own food can be a fun learning experience. Buying fresh fruits and vegetables by your seasons is very cost effective.
YOUR BETTER OF , AT LEAST YOU NO WHAT YOUR PAYING FOR. ITS NOT GOOD AS WE HAVE TRIED THERE SERVICE . ITS A CON
Is it cheaper though? Unless you use every ingredient before it spoils, you're losing money on wasted food. I know I dont use a whole stack of scallions or container of sour cream every meal. Most of it sits in the frig to inevitably spoil.
YOUR RIGHT DO YOUR OWN SHOPPING , DONT BUY IN BOX .
@@wilo1463
Try it without the CAPS. You'll look less insane.
@@gravityslave6277 You can just NOT buy the industrial sized package of an ingredient you rarely use, or become Slavic and put sour cream on everything if you insist on buying a 3 liter tub of ingredients that spoil fast.
I have gotten Hello Fresh before and I'm not a natural in the kitchen, so for me, I appreciated the step-by-step instructions and pictures with the proportioned ingredients. It's not inexpensive, but it is simple and helpful for me. Thank you for reviewing this and especially sharing your thoughts!
I'm glad it helps people. :)
My husband and I have been getting Hello Fresh for almost a year. With just the two of us, and we get 4-5 meals per week. The recipes have been great, especially because it’s easy to think of ways to alter/combine certain parts to create other meals with things from the grocery store. You’re right about the sizes of the packs of meat and veggies in the store is overwhelming when you’re only cooking for 2. So I get much less waste with Hello Fresh. And the recipes are so much faster than many I’ve made over the years. I’ve been really happy with it!
If the sizes are too big from the store for you, divide it up and freeze it. It actually saves you money buying in bulk. It's how I'm able to eat prime rib for less than $5/pound, because I buy it when it's on sale.
@@aewtx everyone knows buying in bulk saves you money, some people either just dont have the space to store it, or dont have the time to weigh it out/the eye for knowing what is the right size. its like telling someone in burger king to just get the double cheeseburger cause its only 20c more expensive, better value isn't always what people want.
Meal kits have been good for me as a disabled person who enjoys cooking but doesn't have the expendable energy or physical wellbeing to meal plan and shop on top of the actual cooking. It's a hell of a lot healthier and cheaper than eating out or having ready meals every day and it gives me something to do that's actually feasible for me. It's a'ight.
Ive never actually ordered from hello fresh but I often go to the homepage for recipe ideas.
Glad you cover the service from a non paid perspective since I'm always sceptic about the videos who are sponsored.
I looked at all these food things and they cost WAAAAAY more than just going to the store buying the stuff and making it all myself.
Of course it costs more. You are having to pay for someone else to do the picking, the packing and someone else to come up with the recipes. Plus someone else to deliver it. Also all of the little things, such as someone going through the fresh produce and discarding anything that might not even look in decent shape. A small task when you are shopping for yourself, but it is a task and more importantly they are paying for all that is discarded. Shops try to sell as much of that as they can quite often, as there are plenty enough people that will just take it ... unless it is really horrible ofc. I agree with you, it is not for me and I am fine doing all that for myself. But it clearly is going to cost more having all that done for you. And it is healthier food, than if you go to a lot of restaurants or especially fast food. Again not for me, but I am sure that will appeal to others and is worth the cost.
Very true. But HelloFresh gave me several recipes that I have kept and made again. The best part was my husband stopped saying he can't cook. He can, especially when there is a recipe, he just doesn't like to. But he will cook dinner every once in a while now.
i've heard these meal things are more cost effective in more urban areas
@@kevinfisher1345 but they all advertise as being super cheap. They are for those first few meals at the discounted rate, then become insane.
@@plantherum2365 as someone who lives in socal I can agree, especially with the inflation going up
I never realised that food was so expensive in the US. The $60 worth of groceries would cost me £10-£15 in Scotland
yep, pretty crazy stuff
Wow!! Can you tell me what a half k of mince cost
Tbf you could get the price down a lot by shopping generic brands instead of organic, as well as shopping in person instead of ordering online.
It also depends on what area of the US. I’m in a state that’s on the “affordable” end and that would probably run me around $40.
Are food prices pretty similar across the whole of Scotland?
Yes, that was my thought exactly! In Germany I would be able to get those things for 50% of the price of Hello Fresh (I think it is ridiculously expensive), in a good quality and for 4 persons per meal. And the examples here aren't even fancy choices. Ofcourse it is convenient, but I can not imagine how someone could afford to spend so much money on regular food, if you get every meal from there. 60-80€ is the budget for us, two adults, for 7 days - all meals, snacks, everything we eat and drink (without coffee), good, quality food.
Excellent video. I think getting inspiration from those companies is such a great idea and you’ll get way more for your buck with groceries.
I've recently subscribed to HelloFresh (in Canada) again and I couldn't be happier. I do fully acknowledge that in most cases doing groceries will yield a lot more meals for the amount of money spent, but as someone who lives alone it can be extremely wasteful to buy regular groceries because you can't always get small quantities of things you might need. HelloFresh allows me to not be wasteful by only getting the amount of ingredients I need, try up a whole lot of recipes (I like trying new things!) without having to sit here with no idea of how to plan new meals. It's certainly convenient and helps me maximize my time and forcing me to cook proper meals for myself. I've never been much of a cook but I can follow recipes and it definitely helps me not falling into too easy/cheap meals that end up not balanced and making me feel awful. The price point does feel a little high once you no longer have deals but those meal kits certainly retain value from other aspects.
I don't get the whole "wastefull because you can't get the quantities you need" Freezers do exist. And if it's stuff like 5Kgs of potatoes than can easily be stored for a few weeks.
This is exactly what I appreciate too. Not sure if you'll like the gochujang sauce? Try it out! Wasn't your thing? Well at least it was only a small pack to toss, NOT a whole jar you dropped 10 bucks for!
@@machintrucGaming Not everyone has a giant crate-size freezer to throw stuff in.
My parents did it for a little bit, their verdict was the meals were fine, but it didn’t cut down on prep work too much and it was much more expensive than they could normally eat, around $8/meal/person
Depending on the meal, almost everything you can cook yourself can save you money. Buying large quantities of stuff like potatoes, rice or other things that last long really adds up. $30 for a meal sounds like restaurant prices to me. $8 is a bit cheap, but it seems closer to what seems to be real pricing.
My 3 personal benefits: Hello fresh has made me a better cook. It’s a big time saver to have everything portioned out. It’s mentally refreshing to have someone make and present the plan.
I was gifted a Hello Fresh subscription for a year and I LOVED it! I am a single person who is rarely home for dinner. But at least I knew I had a couple nights a week where I would have real food, with lots of flavour, that was healthier than anything I would pick up. But as I said, I am seldom home early enough to have the energy to make ANY meal. My two meals would sometimes sit for almost a week before I got around to making them. Sounds bad, BUT, I shows why Hello Fresh is a better option for me than real food. I could barely eat these two meals before they went bad. If you change that to full size groceries from the grocery store, I’m not getting extra meals out of it. I’m throwing away extra meals, because they went bad before I got around to eating them. The flavorful, easy recipes, and the perfectly portioned sizes of each ingredient was what made this worth the extra price.
I'm a single mum with a teenage son and I'm sick and tired of grocery shopping and making dinner. The idea of just chucking in the delivered, pre-measured ingredients and ending up with a healthy meal for the boy is very tempting. He could do part of it, seeing as it all comes with instructions. Less food waste, too.
Great for him to start contributing by cooking, too.
make him make dinner! even if you don"t get a meal plan thing.
I am a widow with children and I work a full time job which requires overtime and on call. I take my children grocery shopping with me because they learn the value of a dollar (or in your case, a pound). That is invaluable. They will learn how to budget money, learn how to prepare meals, because they will learn what goes into planning the recipes in order to fit a budget, and they can appreciate that shopping isn't always fun. Then, they can help you prepare the meals, too. Having the food delivered to your doorstep takes all of those lessons away.
Get the boy cooking! 2 of my sons are now on their own, but they really started cooking with HelloFresh.
HelloFresh saved my family when my daughter was born. I had no time to shop for groceries, make menus, etc. Plus I've got a great collection of recipies so I can remake any time now.
I did hellofresh for about a year, and i still order a box every now and then. Thanks to them ive gotten a couple of cheap & easy staple meals that i eat almost weekly without ordering their boxes
🎊 mate I have a (Mystery Box) package for you, Text the above username on telegram for acknowledgment.
honestly for me I had trouble trying new food. This really got me out of a box and into a greater range of foods. Plus it got me making better meals to reheat at work rather than premade frozen meals
As someone who was taught to cook and bake my entire life, I guess I just assumed Hello Fresh was something geared toward people who wanted to learn how to cook.
I know how to budget and buy ingredients, including seasonings, herbs and spices, that will be used in many different meals. I don’t eat fast food, at restaurants and I don’t buy prepackaged meals (or soups or sides). I definitely don’t get food or groceries delivered to my house. All probably stemming from growing up in poverty.
Regardless, I can see a market for these meals. People who want to cook but don’t have much experience who can afford delivery services. Poor people and/or people who are experienced home cooks I don’t see benefiting from these meal kits in any way.
Exactly.....
Yes, you'll do well to steer clear of this company. I'm actually canceling my Hello Fresh subscription, after a package never arrived, and was shipped back to the company, because it was damaged. I've written to Hello Fresh, I've called them and have gotten no response. I never received a replacement or a refund. It was $75.00. I could have used that for gas in my car. It's not a huge amount of money, but it's almost a weeks worth of groceries for me, so I'd like it back.
The prices have also gone up considerably since I signed up a couple of years ago, with no warning.
This company will take your money and run, and their customer service is non-existent. Think twice before giving them your money.
All, Wellington Street West suite of products that are not even a little bit about the collector and now I'll probably get in touch with me on the video formats available I don't think we can change it on my cholesterol levels of eating Bread
yup. i spend $40-$60 a MONTH on groceries. if people dont want to, or cant cook, they should save their money and time and just eat out. these companies are a rip off.
@@RachelLWolfe That's the complete opposite to my experience with Hello Fresh. I had a box not turn up and I was able to call and speak to customer service even though my delivery comes on a Saturday. They offered me a full refund or just my next box free and also gave me a £20 additional credit for the inconvenience. Also when I've had any other issues like a missing ingredient or something was damaged/poor quality they have been generous with credits to my account and I have had no issues when reporting to customer services. I am in the UK so maybe that's the difference.
I got it for a few weeks, with discounts it is AMAZING. I found out I actually like foods that I always thought I despised and tried recipes I would have never put the effort into. The only flaws are the full prices and the repetition of the vegetarian recipes. With more variety and less expensive shipping I'd purchase it MUCH more frequently. If you haven't tried it yet DO IT. It's amazing
You should try EveryPlate. It's the same company as HelloFresh, but half the price. Plus, you can get the discount deal again to make it even more affordable.
I agree, I tried every plate (hello fresh’s cheaper version) for probably 2 months straight because I had gotten so tired of my regular meals. I needed something easy where I didn’t have to decide what I was going to eat or do all the shopping. I was mentally in a bad place foodwise because I love cooking but I was just so burnt out on recipes. Like they say in the sponsored videos “it takes the decision making out of dinner” and it really did. It gave me the break I needed and allowed me to find some new recipes I probably wouldn’t have tried on my own. I would definitely do it again in the future if I began to get tired of making food decisions again