Hello Fresh Review: the Pros, Cons, and How It Works
Let me start by saying, cooking is NOT my thing! I’m pescatarian and my family loves meat. Christian doesn’t like salmon, Graceson doesn’t like shrimp or rice. JT doesn’t like left overs and I’m totally over pizza. Dinner is never easy! I wrote a post about trying 5 Dinners, One Hour and I liked it, but started to get lazy about grocery shopping and planning ahead of time. I really hate going to the grocery store so I started buying ready to bake meals from Sprouts and easy meals at Trader Joe’s every day, but those got boring and repetitive. Then my friend gave me a discount code to Hello Fresh!
What I like about Hello Fresh is that I can plan my meals, pick from several each week, have lots of variety in our dinners, and I don’t have to go to the market! My family loves the food and dinner is no longer boring. There are always vegetarian and pescatarian options. I didn’t think I liked eating seafood at home, but it’s actually really good!
I signed up for 3 meals a week, each for 4 people. We are a family of 6, but not everyone is home every day. I usually can have one of the boys pick up an extra side protein to make our meals work for my big family. The first week I made my Hello Fresh meals I was not a fan. The food was delicious, BUT it took me over an hour to make each meal. I was used to grabbing something and just sticking it in the oven or picking up food at a restaurant.
The Hello Fresh meals come in a big cold box. Each meal is in it’s own bag inside the box so when you want to make a meal, all you have to do is grab the bag and the matching recipe card. It’s very convenient not having to search my sad pantry for spices that I don’t have or having to go to the grocery store to buy a bunch of spices I’ll only use once.
The problem started when I had to actually prepare the food. I had to wash all the vegetables and chop them. Yes, I’m 41, have 4 kids and I’m that sad in the kitchen. I hated cooking, but the food was GOOD! The following week I got smart! I asked my 12 year old if he wanted some Mommy – Jackson time! It’s hard to give each of my boys one on one time so Jackson jumped on the idea. We washed all the produce. I taught him to chop vegetables, he’s a lefty so I had to remember to reverse things.
Making dinner quickly became a time we looked forward to as quality mother-son time. We’ve been doing this for a couple months now and 3 meals a week is really pushing it for us. I would prefer 3 meals in 9 days, but we are doing it and the family is loving it. We have not had the same meal twice, which is huge for us! I don’t make the little ones eat everything, but they have to try everything. They are learning to like mushrooms and tomatoes!
There are lots of great things about Hello Fresh, but I think it’s only fair to go over the cons as well. There’s a $7.99 shipping fee for each box. For me, it’s not a deal breaker. I spend under $100 per week to get 3 dinners that feed about 4 people. That’s less than what I spent when I was heating Sprouts meals. But I know if you go grocery shopping regularly you can make dinner for a lot less. If you have strict dietary needs it’s not for you. You get several options each week and so far it’s worked for me! The biggest con for me is that you still have to chop and prep all the food. Dinner takes just under an hour most days. I’ll take that trade off since I don’t have to spend a lot of time looking up recipes and shopping for all the ingredients I don’t have, or searching my messy pantry. It’s really nice having the whole meal in a bag in my fridge ready to go!
All in all, I am loving doing Hello Fresh with my son. It gives us quality time and takes the stress off from meal planing and grocery shopping!
If you want to try Hello Fresh click this link for $70 off your first order!!!
8 Responses
I’m so touched by your review! I thought you were just going to write about how good or bad it tasted, but you even included how it’s a special bond you have with your son! Thank you so much for sharing <3
That risotto looks delicious!
That looks yummy!
Love it!
I’ve been curious about Hello Fresh ever since I saw it from the stories of IG influencers! it’s good to know from an honest perspective. Jackson is so cute!
Thanks again for this article. Love the review!
As someone who doesn’t like to do grocery shopping, I can totally relate 😂 Just ordered! Can’t wait to try it.
Been curious about Hello Fresh! Thanks for the blog.