HelloFresh Review: How Does It Work?

I bumped into a friend from my college days last week. She invited me to her place for dinner and a catch up.

I duly turned up not knowing what to expect. Lets just say cooking was not her forte when we were in college. She had the local pizza delivery on speed dial!

I was pleasantly surprised by the delicious Salmon I was served with a creamy Lemon Sauce and Couscous. I jokingly asked her where she had hidden the caterers!

She told me she had cooked it all herself, but admitted she had a little help from HelloFresh.

Now I had heard of this meal delivery company but had never been tempted to try it out. Having heard what my friend had to tell me about how easy and quick it was to cook their excellent meals, I decided to have a look into it.

After all, something that could help someone who had a phobia about even boiling a kettle turn out restaurant quality dishes had to be worth investigating.

Let’s look at what I found out.

The company was founded in Berlin, Germany in 2011. Dominik Richter and Thomas Griesel had big dreams. They wanted to change the way that people eat. They believe that everyone should have access to the best ingredients. They also want people to have the knowledge to cook them. They teamed up with Rocket Internet to try and make their dream reality.

Their first 10 bags of meals were delivered to family and friends. After a lot of hard work the number of meals they were delivering increased. The dream has become a success story. The company now operates in 9 countries including the US, Canada, the UK and Australia.

All the meat products used by this company are sourced domestically. Their meat and poultry is antibiotic and hormone free. Their pork comes from animals that are treated humanely and is hormone free.

Not all of the fresh produce used by them is organic. The company aims to focus on what produce looks and tastes best.

They use trusted, experienced, and sustainable business partners to make sure high quality, seasonal, and farm-sourced produce is delivered to their customers at peak freshness.

They source both wild-caught and farm-raised fish. They work with both the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch program. They also work with MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) for wild-caught fish and BAP (Best Aquaculture Practices) for farm-raised fish.

The company uses recyclable packaging.

The company wants to help people make those first steps towards cooking well-balanced meals at home. Their focus is on helping customers have a positive cooking experience in the kitchen which is fun. They aim:

To provide each and every household in its 9 markets with the opportunity to enjoy wholesome home-cooked meals with no planning, no shopping and no hassle required.

This company delivers quality fresh ingredients to your door.

You choose your meals from the many recipes they have on offer each week on their  website or via the dedicated telephone app. You pick how many meals you want and for how many people.

Your delivery will arrive in an insulated recyclable box, complete with ice packs. Each meal will be in its own separate box inside so no need to sort out individual ingredients.

Unpack your fresh ingredients and put them in your refrigerator until you are ready to cook them. The only extra things you may need are olive oil, salt and pepper.

You will also receive recipe cards with step by step instructions to help you cook your meal. They will also tell you how long your meal should take to cook.

All nutritional information for your ingredients can be found on the company website. Just look at the recipe you are cooking and all the details will be there.

If, like me, you like a glass of wine with your meal, the company also has a selection that can be delivered to your door.

There are a variety of red and white wines which you can select to accompany your meals. There are also online tasting notes with detailed flavor profiles to help you choose.

The company also has a range of  top quality kitchenware and utensils that you can choose from. This includes kits and individual products to help you cook amazing food.

You can choose to skip a week or more if you want. It’s easy, notify them from your account online by the cut off time of 11.59 PST 5 days before your next scheduled delivery.

All packaging is recyclable. There is useful information on the website to help you.

Let me highlight some of the features that sets this company apart from the others:

• Their team of chefs and dietitians have all completed their educations at accredited universities.
• They offer a specific plan for Vegetarians at a lower cost.
• All produce is locally sourced. This means fresher food for you.
• The meals are all separated into ingredients ready for you. You don’t have to waste time sorting out which ingredients go with which recipe.
• The recipe cards are easy to follow and give lots of useful information including cooking time, difficulty level, spice level and allergens.
• You have the option to order wine to be delivered to accompany your meal. No more carrying heavy boxes home.
• You can order the utensils that you don’t already have to help cook your meals.
• The telephone app makes it super easy to control your account when you are on the go. You can do anything on the app that you could do on your desktop.
• Online chat is available to answer any queries you may have.

The company offers three different meal plans:

• Classic Meal Plan: allows you to choose 3 or 4 recipes per week for 2 or 4 people. There are 8 recipes you can choose from.
• The Family Plan: allows you to choose 2 or 3 recipes per week for 4 people. There are 5 recipes you can choose from.
• The Veggie Plan: gives you 3 recipes per week for 2 or 4 people.

All the recipes give you details of their ingredients. Some are labelled:

• Gluten Free
• Dairy Free
• Nut Free

This way you are able to choose meals that are suitable for you should you have any special dietary requirements. They also give you a calorie count, great if you are watching your weight.

You can also customize your plans further to exclude or include:

• Beef-free
• Pork-free
• Fish/shellfish-free
• Fit – low calorie meals with a healthy balance
• Quick – meals that will take less time to cook.
• Variety

The team of dieticians closely checks the ingredients for the main allergens: wheat, dairy, soy, eggs, nuts, peanuts, fish, and shellfish. Should you be allergic to any of these you can make an informed decision about your meal plan.

There are many positive reviews about this company.

It has a 4* rating on Consumer Affairs.com based on 833 reviews in the last year.

It also has a 4* rating on Trustpilot with 94% of 8,284 reviews rating the company above average.

One of the many happy customers – Connie – writes:

I am already a pretty good cook, but I really have been enjoying my experience with HelloFresh. The convenience of having the meal ingredients delivered to my doorstep is definitely worthwhile. I also appreciate the clear and detailed recipes. One of the things that I most enjoy about the recipes are the sauces and glazes which are a part of almost every meal. Before HelloFresh I had never really prepared them and have become a great fan of how they elevate and complete just about every meal! It’s that extra little step that makes the meal shine.

There are many more comments in this vein highlighting the convenience this service provides. Many people find the recipes easy to follow and like that they are experiencing new culinary highs.

Worried that the portions won’t be enough to fill you up? Don’t! Many customers comment that the portion sizes are very good.

Christy has a family of four to feed and writes:

We decided to try HelloFresh because we are a very busy family and needed convenient, healthy meals. We got our box today and decided to try one of the meals for lunch. We are all VERY impressed! Our first meal was the Amazing Apricot Chicken. It was DELICIOUS and VERY FILLING! There was plenty of food for 4 people, the ingredients were fresh and it didn’t take me that long to cook the meal. We absolutely LOVED it! We will definitely keep ordering from them. I love the fact that all the ingredients are proportioned to what I need for that meal. All I have to do is follow the instructions on the recipe card and in 30-35 minutes we have a restaurant quality meal that is filling and healthy! We can’t wait to try more meals from them!

Many people have also commented that they now eat healthier as a result of having these meals delivered. Another thing that some people comment on is that there is no waste.

Susan is one such customer who was also very pleased with the level of customer service she received.

She reports:

I am very pleased with Hello Fresh. I had some questions when I first started and the customer service was wonderful. The selections are interesting and recipes are easy to follow. Portions are generous and healthier than what I was doing on my own. I love not having a lot of ingredients left over that I wouldn’t use before they spoiled.

It’s inevitable that sometimes things do go wrong.

Some people complain that the delivery service has let them down.

Some people have received food items that were not the quality they expected. Some people have suggested that better quality controls may be useful.

Megan writes:

I love the idea of HelloFresh. The meals are good, relatively healthy, and fairly quick and easy to prepare. That said, through my account and my fiance’s, we’ve had multiple issues with deliveries. We’ve had missing ingredients, unripe produce, and just plain messed up orders. It’s probably 1 in 4-5 weeks that we’ve had a mistake of some form or another. They’re great about giving us an account credit when we point out the mistake, but I don’t feel like they’re fixing the real problem, which is that someone needs to be checking orders more carefully because this continues to happen.

The company delivers to the whole of the US except Alaska and Hawaii.

This company delivers quality fresh produce direct to you at home. It takes the hassle out of shopping. It saves time searching for recipes to cook.

The easy to follow instructions may allow you to impress family and friends with your kitchen prowess.

The promise of unique recipes and fresh local ingredients with meals that are quick and easy to make sounds hard to resist. A company that has expanded into nine countries must be doing something right.

HomeFresh was able to turn my kitchen phobic friend into someone that could produce a restaurant quality meal. Maybe it could do the same for you. Visit their website now and take a look.