August 2019
Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Daily Harvest, Freshly, Butcher Box and Imperfect Produce
One of the “little” things on the list. Using a service like Hello Fresh isn’t going to change your life, but it MIGHT save you some money/time at the grocery store and it will expand your recipe book! It ALSO will help you feel a little more confident cooking dinner for a significant other that went to culinary school, just saying.
This was on my list for a while but I still was hesitant to sign up/commit to a company. And I know this sounds fake but I actually ordered my first Hello Fresh box on accident… I downloaded the app and clicked my way through a few things, looked at the different meal options, created an account (with my email spelt wrong) but never finalized everything. I stopped before it got all the way through, put the app down and just walked away. So one week later when a Hello Fresh Box was delivered to my door, I was shocked.
I guess you don’t have to get ALL the way to the end, if they have your address and credit card, YOU are in. But that first week (and many more to come) I enjoyed every one of the 4 meals (2 servings per meal).
What I loved about Hello Fresh.
- The App- it was really easy to change many different aspects of my account (going out of town-skip the week no problem! 4 meals too many? try 3 a week instead!)
- The options – every week there was so many different meals to choose from, at least 10+. Sure, we had our favorites and we ordered them when they came up, but for the most part we didn’t feel the food was repetitive the 6 months we consistently ordered Hello Fresh. (Some of the favorites above^^)
- The delivery- it came to my door and it was always still cold when I got home
- I wasted A LOT less produce and got “sample” sized speciality ingredients like jam or spices. Living alone I rarely got through a Trader Joe’s sized asparagus bundle before it would go bad. In the box there is exactly 2 servings worth, nothing gets wasted.
- It was easy- everything (less kitchen staples like salt and pepper) you needed to make the recipe was included. The recipes averaged around 6 steps a meal and ranged somewhere around 20-50 minutes to prep. As a working couple, we had delicious dinners ready for us on week nights with very little effort.
Why we stoped our subscription:
- I wasn’t budgeting: each serving averaged at $8.99 and sometimes we got the gourmet meals and that made it closer to $13, but for $20-$25 we got meals like sesame beef tacos, creamy lemon butter chicken with zucchini rounds and scallion couscous, and pork sausage gnocchi bake. I spent around $75 a week, ~300 a month on Hello Fresh. That isn’t terrible, but certainly would be cheaper to buy a bag of Costco chicken breast and make the chicken and pasta entrees.
- 6 months in we had tried all the entrees we wanted. There was a lot of broccoli entrees we didn’t order haha, but we were ready for something new
- Customer service was a little challenging to speak with (the chat was always disconnecting on me), BUT when you were able to successfully have a conversation with them, they fixed everything. My chicken came in a package with a hole in it? refund and credit to my account. One of the “extras” I ordered wasn’t in my box, refund is on the way etc.
- My significant other went to culinary school – we could do this on our own and there were other services we wanted to try.
Other services we subscribed to for a minute:
- Home Chef– this one we had a coupon to try for a super discounted rate and tried it while still subscribed to Hello Fresh. It was very similar concepts, just different food. The meals we ordered we liked, but we noticed that we liked the meals on Hello Fresh more than Home Chef’s menu. Maybe lasted 2-3 weeks?
- Freshly– this one I ordered while in busy season, the meals are fully prepared and just need to be reheated. And while extremely convenient for a busy schedule, I wasn’t wow’d. Lasted 2 weeks
- Daily harvest– I only tried the smoothies and the bites (😍 the hazelnut and chocolate bites 🙌🏼). It took up SO much of our freezer haha, so much space. But they were again really easy: just add liquid of your choice, pop in the blender and put it back in the portable cup it came with! It was a fast healthy breakfast option. Some ingredients I’d never tasted or heard of. After a couple of weeks and many texture fails, it wasn’t worth it for me to keep this subscription for the 1-2 smoothies and those delicious hazelnut bites.
What subscriptions do we use today?
- Butcher box– a monthly meat subscription box. Click here for $30 off. We signed up for butcher box during the 2020 Super Bowl because of their “free chicken wings for life of your membership” offer. And our timing COULD NOT HAVE BEEN BETTER. Our first box came the second week of March right when COVID-19 hit California and the US. You can sign up for a pre set box (chicken, beef and pork) or you can build a custom box from their list! We supplement the box usually with frozen chicken breast (Costco pack) and other frozen entrees that make solo dinners easier. The box usually lands around $200 for the month and an example of what we get in our box monthly is below:
- 3lbs of chicken wings (Free for life of our membership)
- 4 6oz top sirloin steaks
- 2 10oz NY strip steaks
- beef brisket ~2.75lbs
- Bone in chicken thighs 3lbs
- Bone in pork butt 5.5lbs
- St. Louis ribs 2.8lbs
- Pulled pork (special)
- Burger, hot dog and chicken breast bundle (special)
- Imperfect Foods > produce and surplus food subscription. Get $10 off. This subscription also came right before COVID-19, so when the shutdowns started we were lucky to already have set ourselves up to stay in more. The box gives you produce that is irregular in size or is in a surplus state. The produce changes every week (with some of your staple fruits and veggies that stay consistent). The two major downfalls are 1) the leafy greens didn’t stay fresh long at all (easy to avoid) and 2) often (almost every other week) we saw that some of the items we’d put in our box were out of stock and therefore not delivered.
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