My love/hate relationship with Hello Fresh, an honest review & why they're still worth a try!

     Hello Fresh is a meal/cooking delivery kit that I was excited to try. It's one of those boxes where they send you pre-portioned ingredients, with recipe cards and you cook it yourself. I love these types of boxes because they are fun, help you learn cooking skills, let you try new recipes and usually taste amazing! 

    So why the love/hate relationship? Well, first let me say this review though stated strongly will be my honest review including what is good, bad and ugly about this service. I actually have a lot of good things to say, which I think is why I sometimes feel like I hate them because some of their tactics and methods just have so much room for improvement that it makes it hard to continue a regularly monthly membership. They are more like a fling you try again every three months. 

    I have tried 3 separate subscription with them because over the years as I move houses they keep sending me discounts in the mail saying if I sign up again I'll get 15 meals for only $3.99 a meal! So I have used them enough to form a solid opinion. To be fair there is a lot I like about them and I will share that first for fairness.

    Each time I try them and I am honestly excited and love the taste of the meals I make. I feel awesome making them because it makes me feel like a pro in the kitchen and I don't typically have to go pulling things from all around my kitchen, planning out or searching for recipes, or thinking too hard. They tell you what kind/size of pans/bowls to use, the heat temperature, the time for cooking, even small things like heating up some veggies. They give you step-by-step info and clues of what to look out for like tenderness or golden brown color etc. The recipes are also full of flavor and yummy sauces. They taste great everytime and I always have leftovers because I just cook for myself. 

    Before I get to why I am so frustrated as to hate them at times, let me go over some downsides, which don't make me hate them, but are annoying. First, just the nature of the beast, because you are making this yummy complicated recipes with multiple ingredients there tends to be a lot of utensils and pans or bowls used. For 1 meal I typically have half a sink of dishes cleanup. It's way more than what I would have if I made my own meal at home because I usually make simple recipes that require one pan and then I just pour seasoning on top. Hello Fresh wants you to do things the correct way so you'll have a cutting board for the veggies, a plate to dry and season the meat before cooking, a pan for the veggies, clean that pan in between for the meat, another bowl to mix the sauces and a baking pan for the remainder of the cooking in a lot of meals. Plus they also use a lot of lemon and lime zest so you'll have a zester to clean and sometimes some veggies to peel and of course you'll likely want a meat thermometer. So all in all you are using a hefty amount of dishes and counter space for these meals. To me this is a huge problem because I rarely have time to cook for 45 minutes and then do dishes for another 20. I am an eat out 2-3 times a week, microwave dinners and simple cook one meat and one veggie type of gal. My life is busy and I hate taking time to cook or even eat food. That's why I like these meals kits because they get me out of my comfort zone to cook some nice things now and then, but I still don't appreciate the clean up. 

    The next annoying things besides the cleanup and use of so many different dishes is the meal choices and this leads up to the #1 I hate about Hello Fresh that just made me straight up cancel and move on. The meal choices seem at first to be ample, but it's a trick, practically a scam if you ask me. First if you want a specific meal option like a dairy free or gluten free or fish free etc. your options are going to be a lot more limited. They don't have like 20 keto options, 20 gluten free and 20 regular, they have like 3-5. 

    Next thing to note about the meal choices is that if you are wanting meals you can cook in under 30 minutes you will be hard pressed to find those. And even those that say 30 minutes cook time tend to take more like 45 minutes. All in all I typically need a full hour for most their meals. Unless you have a super perfect kitchen with tons of space and everything cleaned and prepared and ready to grab in seconds because you are just an avid cooker and then why are you even buying this kit? 

And we cannot forget this last issue I have with the meal choices. This is the worst thing about the meal choices and its the absolute reason why I hate Hello Fresh. Now to be fair, they are not the only meal kit company who does this, but I feel they are the worse. With their limited recipe options they actually further limit it with these random more expensive meals. Now I have seen this in other boxes where they have maybe 3-5 premium options per week that cost an additional per serving cost. This frustrates me already because they make it look like its an additional $10-20, but after you add it becomes clear its a per serving cost. Usually its something like you get shrimp AND steak or lobster in addition to the regular meal. I think these are way overpriced and almost never worth it, but I can just ignore them most the time. Not with Hello Fresh. You see other companies at least make these stand out a little better with some title or color that says "premium" and a clear additional cost, but Hello Fresh displays the cost under every meal and you don't really see that its extra until you add it to your meal kit. The meals also don't stand out in any way, shape or form and often make zero sense as to why they would cost more. For example I recently tried to order a lemon ricotta pancake type dish. It was actually a lot less food than the other meals and had no protein except for a tiny maybe tablespoon of chopped pecans and some cream topping. Now the topping Crème fraîche, so maybe that makes it a little more pricey, but still there was no meat of any kind and the whole meal was literally a pancake with some lemon zest, pecans and cream. Yet they charged an additional cost per serving. I believe it was somewhere around $4.99 ? So what is my actual $65 covering if the meal costs an additional $10 for being a fancy pancake? The other meal was not extra and was pork ribs with a side salad. So to me that meals that cost extra make zero sense. Some others that costed extra that through me off were chicken and waffles, shrimp and grits and cherry sauced pork. No clue why those cost more than any other meal that had some kind of meat, carb and veggie. Now the steak and lobster meal that cost extra, that made more sense, but it was $14.99 per serving extra and you have to get at least 2, so yeah then your $65 box becomes about $100 and you still only have two meals for two. 

    So that whole experience of the pricer meals really just made the entire experience unhappy. When I go to pick my meals I get excited as my eye is drawn to meals I like most. And 9/10 the meal I see that looks great will end up costing extra. It's really disheartening especially when its something I can make at home for $5 a serving or less (aka Chicken and waffles). I think you can filter those meals out possibly, didn't really try, but then you are left with a much sadder array of choices and sometimes I might want to splurge for a meal if it only costs $5 more/serving, but looks amazing. I just wish there was a way to tell which was which before adding, so I don't get excited and then upset. I also wish they would justify their additional costs to the consumer. If ricotta pancakes are extra because the Crème fraîche was imported from the Queen's castle, then let us know! But who on earth would ever expect to pay more to cook a pancake than a full meal with pork ribs? 

    Finally I have one more gripe with Hello Fresh, and again this is something all the meal kit places do so its really not just them, but that doesn't make it any better. It's the most sneaky advertising that they try to make things seem cheaper than they are, but in the most confusing way so you never really know what you are gonna pay until you are at the checkout. 

     Let me explain further. So they rope you in with this whole meals only $3.99 a piece deal and its all great your first box is $40 or so, but they tell you this extends to multiple boxes, but the way they split it up ends up being about 50% off your first box and 20% off subsequent boxes. Now that seems not too bad, but once you see the price, it's just insane. Even with 20% off you are going to pay $65 for just two meal choices! That's 4 servings, but only two separate meals. Each additional meal up to 4 you get a slight discount on them all, but it's still about $75 for 3 and $99 for 4. That's just way too much in my opinion. If you have a family of 2 spending $100/week on food to only feed them 4 times out of the 21 meals a week needed is just too much of the grocery budget! 

    But even if you are rich it would be better to just go to a restaurant for a little bit more money a couple times a week (depending on the restaurant) and not have to make anything or wash the dishes! Plus restaurants will have way more options! 

    In conclusion, would I get Hello Fresh again? Let's be honest, if they are going to keep sending me the first box for half off coupons then yeah I will probably sign up again in a year or so when they allow me to take that deal again. But I will likely cancel again after the first box or two. I will never become a full time member or a regular user of Hello Fresh because the cost and the frustration just is not worth it. You don't feel like a valued customer when you are constantly being tricked into spending more money than you intended. You don't feel like a cared about customer when things are not explained in a clear and easy to understand way. And you don't respect a companies decision making when they think that a pancake is $10 more valuable than steak or that two tiny side lobster tails side are worth $30. If you live anywhere near an ocean do yourself a favor and get a fishing license and go catch a lobster, it's not that hard, they crawl into cages for you. You just have to wake up a little early and wear a warm coat. My dad does it all the time so maybe I just don't appreciate lobster prices so much as I get them for free, but still $30 to cook it myself at home and it's just the tail? And it's a small lil tail at that? Nah dawg, dad's got me. 

That's all folks. Ironically I recommend you try Hello Fresh anyway if you are someone who is able to keep track and cancel a membership without forgetting. It's very easy to cancel, you just press a button that's easy to find on your account. So you may as well try if you can get one of the 50% off deals or a free box. It's still tasty and the whole frustration and overpricing is not an issue on your first box. If you agree with my assessment then just cancel after that, but of course you should try it for yourself and make up your own mind as well. Maybe you understand the subtleties of why chicken and waffles are a rarity worth paying extra for, or maybe you were born with gold teeth and a silver spoon and paying more than something is worth gets you hot. Either way they keep sending me these coupons. I don't think using them helps me in anyway, especially since I cancelled, but I may as well pass these on to you. 

All these seem to be one time use codes so first come first serve: 

Promo codes for free boxes of Hello Fresh: