HelloFresh Review 2023: My Honest Experience Trying It Out

Overview

HelloFresh is among the most popular meal delivery services in the country. I had to try it for myself to see if it could live up to the hype. With so many competitors on the market, HelloFresh must be doing something right to stay on top!

This service’s biggest advantage is its massive menu. The 60+ weekly meal kits cater to a variety of dietary needs and taste preferences, including a number of vegetarian and vegan recipes. There’s also a marketplace with countless extras that you can add to any order.

It’s hard to find any major negatives with HelloFresh. It doesn’t cater to niche diets like keto, and it has limited support for people with severe allergies. It also wouldn’t be suitable if you’re looking for a fully plant-powered service.

Overall, I loved my experience with HelloFresh. The recipes were simple enough for me to make (without too much trouble, anyway), but they’re also delightfully creative with flavors that’ll keep you interested from week to week. Read on for my full, unfiltered experience.

What’s on the HelloFresh Menu

HelloFresh’s weekly menu offers 60+ meal kit recipes and is organized into 6 categories, making it easy to choose recipes that suit your taste and lifestyle.

Meal Options

The 6 categories you can choose from include:

• Meat & Veggies

• Veggie

• Family Friendly

• Fit & Wholesome

• Quick and Easy

• Pescatarian

You’ll also be able to choose from extras and sides in the Marketplace once you’ve confirmed your order size and plan category and entered your payment information. HelloFresh only provides dinners and a few meals called 10-Minute Lunches. You won’t find any breakfasts on the menu.

HelloFresh initially selects recipes for you based on your chosen plan(s). And if you forget to choose your own meals one week, HelloFresh will do it for you so you don’t miss your weekly delivery. Otherwise, the plan categories are more like menu organizers than they are limitations on what meals you can choose. You can mix and match between plans in any way you like.

HelloFresh has continually expanded its meatless offerings since it started. When HelloFresh first started, the vegetarian options were pretty limited. I ordered from the Veggie and Pescatarian plans and didn’t find much variety. Now, however, I’m much happier with the extended vegetarian and pescatarian recipes on the menu.

You can order between 2 and 6 recipes per week for either 2 or 4 people, regardless of the plan you choose. This is more or less on par with other mainstream meal delivery services. The prep time is noted on the main menu under each meal image and if you click on an image you’ll see the recipes marked as “Easy”, “Medium”, or “Hard.”

HelloFresh is a great choice for families with young children. The company makes a point of providing balanced yet crowd-pleasing comfort food dishes that will suit pickier eaters. The One-Pan Easy Cheesy Chicken Quesadillas, for example, would be popular with kids and grown-ups alike. Plus, the option to pick up to 6 meals per week is ideal for larger orders.

Customization

With the HelloCustom option, you can swap out certain proteins or sides on a number of dishes. When I first ordered from HelloFresh, this feature wasn’t available. However, I find it super convenient since customizing the proteins and sides in my meals gives me more variety.

For example, the Meat & Veggies plan can be customized to omit beef, pork, or seafood. Home Chef has had this swapping feature for a while on its menu, so it’s great to see HelloFresh catching up!

However, HelloFresh doesn’t cater particularly well to certain diets, despite the customization options. If you have allergies or dietary restrictions, or you’re looking for keto, gluten-free, or plant-based meals, other services such as Green Chef could work better for you. 

Plus, swapping proteins and sides adds an extra charge and isn’t available for all recipes. Swapping charges range from $0.99 – $3.49 per portion, depending on the ingredient you’re swapping.

Swapping also depends on ingredient availability. This means that while you might be able to swap chicken for salmon in a dish on the menu one week, you might not be able to the next time that dish is on the menu.

HelloFresh has taken steps to help people with intolerances or other food aversions. While you can’t swap particular ingredients you might be allergic to, dishes containing major allergens (like nuts, dairy, or soy) are clearly marked on the recipe cards.

One downside of HelloFresh’s extensive menu is that there aren’t menu filters. You have to browse recipes by eye and read each recipe card to determine which recipes might suit you. This can be annoying if you need to avoid particular ingredients, or are trying to stick to a certain diet.

Once you’ve entered your payment information, browsing the menu is easier. You can select a plan, which serves as a type of filter based on the plan category. However, you still can’t browse by allergen or ingredient.

Unboxing

Overall, all of my ingredients arrived perfectly fresh, despite the ice packs in my HelloFresh box being almost melted when it arrived just after noon. They were still cold, but things were starting to feel a little… moist.

Ingredients for each dish were contained within their own paper bag. This made storage easy and there was no guessing what goes with what. I’ve tried other meal kits where all the ingredients are simply dumped in the box, which was inconvenient and sometimes confusing. So, this was a massive plus for me!

Underneath, you’ll find the chilled proteins, which HelloFresh recommends freezing until a few hours before you want to cook them. Any other fresh ingredients should, of course, be kept in the refrigerator.

HelloFresh does a pretty good job of using recyclable packaging where possible. While the individually packaged ingredients and recipes are convenient, I often feel guilty about the extra use of paper and plastic.

I discovered that HelloFresh purchases carbon offsets for 100% of its deliveries. I try to be an eco-friendly consumer, so this fact makes it much more likely that I’ll order from HelloFresh again.

The recipe cards are big, bright, and easy to follow. I love recipe cards as I hate following instructions on my phone or computer while I’m cooking. Plus, these are perfect for saving and referring back to later on in case I want to try and remake a dish!

In addition to the written recipe, each card also contains full-color photos of every step, a complete list of the required utensils and pantry ingredients, and all prep and cooking time information.

The vegetables looked better than what I often see at the grocery store! Even though HelloFresh doesn’t offer many organic ingredients like its more expensive competitors do (e.g., Green Chef, which we wrote a full review about), the produce, proteins, and other ingredients looked high quality.

Cooking (and Eating) with HelloFresh

HelloFresh claims that it tests each recipe 200 times before putting it on the menu. After trying these dishes for myself, I might just believe it! I was impressed by each dish I tested in terms of prep and flavor.

The recipes come in 3 difficulty levels – easy, medium, and hard. Hard recipes are practically non-existent, though, and the majority of the menu is labeled as easy. My order only included easy recipes, though 1 was a lot more involved than the others.

Shortlist of My Favorite Meals

Pork Katsu

HelloFresh’s “Better Than Takeout” Pork Katsu was the first dinner I cooked from my order. I found it to be a reasonably easy recipe to make, too. While it was fairly simple, everything came together in a delicious way.

Most of the prep was chopping the carrots and scallions. From there, I just had to bread and fry the pork while the carrots roasted in the oven. In my experience, recipes almost always take longer than advertised. In this case, dinner was on the table within a reasonable 45 minutes.

Thoughtful, flavorful touches set this recipe apart. For example, HelloFresh had me add ginger to the rice and sesame seeds to the carrots. These aromatic elements complemented the shallow-fried pork cutlets, which were nice and juicy when cooked just right.

Even though it wasn’t exactly a showstopper, this dish was darn tasty. While I wish it took a little less time to prep and clean up, I’d definitely make it again. And I’m going to start adding sesame seeds to my roasted carrots a lot more often, too.

Mushroom French Dip Sandwiches

Sauteed mushrooms and red onions were a magical combination, but the real hero here was the jus (aka, the dipping sauce). This umami-bomb was made with mushroom stock instead of beef to keep it vegan, and it was super tasty soaked into the toasty baguette. 

High-quality produce is an absolute must for plant-based cooking. I’m pleased to say HelloFresh easily met these standards. Vegetarian recipes often feel like an afterthought with more meat-focused meal delivery services, so HelloFresh gets major props here.

From start to finish, I spent about 40 minutes making this meal. That means the time estimate on the recipe card was actually accurate! The cleanup was also the easiest of the week, so this was definitely an all-around winner.

Street Cart-Style Chickpea Bowls

The recipe card estimated just 10 minutes of prep and 30 minutes of cooking time. I wasn’t keeping close track of time, but I definitely spent over an hour fiddling about in the kitchen. You have to slice multiple veggies for the salad, and the rice is a whole thing too.

I had to do a lot of multitasking and dirty a lot of dishes to make this. Every component was tasty and went well together, but there were many discrete elements that all had to be prepared individually. Still, it was worth it.

This HelloFresh Hall of Fame dish was also a good example of how HelloCustom works. I got the vegan version of the dish, which was centered around chickpeas. However, you can get the same street cart-style dish with diced chicken or ground turkey.

Recipes Summary

Prices

HelloFresh’s pricing keeps it pretty square in the middle of the pack. Going with a more expensive service, like Green Chef, allows you to choose meals personalized to your diet, while cheaper services offer more basic recipes with fewer ingredients.

Because of the way the price adjusts, the breakdown of costs can vary quite a bit. The lowest price per serving you’ll find is $3.32, but you’ll only pay that if you sign up to receive at least 6 meals per week for 4 people. The price per serving goes up for smaller orders.

Meal kits are often comparable in cost to buying your dinners from the supermarket. For reference, the average weekly grocery budget for a family of 4 each week is around $200. This does vary by location, but it’s a good comparison benchmark.

There are a number of ways you can save on costs, too. First and foremost, you can check out this coupon for your first order: 18 free meals + first box ships free + 3 surprise gifts with code DR18HF. Students are also eligible for a pretty hefty discount. Depending on your eligibility, HelloFresh offers a student discount of 15% off every order for a full year.

Shipping & Delivery

HelloFresh delivers anywhere in the continental United States. (Sorry, Alaska and Hawaii).

HelloFresh lets you choose your delivery day, which isn’t something every service allows. Doing so is one of the last steps you complete when you sign up, but I’ll walk you through the entire process later in the How to Sign Up section. You can also update your delivery day week by week if your schedule or preference changes.

There’s no way to specify a time, though, so just pick the day that works best for you. HelloFresh delivers anytime between 8 am and 8 pm. I work from home, so I just went with Monday. Even if you’re not in, the box is insulated enough so it can be left outside all day.

I was notified by email when my order had shipped. I expected a text message too – like I got when I tested Home Chef – but didn’t receive one. Still, I check my email often enough that it didn’t make a difference.

My order ended up arriving just after noon, despite the broad delivery window. Unfortunately, I didn’t know the box had arrived until I checked the tracking information on my computer. I’ve since learned that HelloFresh has an app, which makes it much easier to monitor your deliveries and I’ll use that next time.

If that’s not your thing, you can also set yourself up to receive text notifications directly from the courier service. HelloFresh uses FedEx, UPS, and some regional services. The courier service changes depending on where you live. Once you confirm your order, you’ll receive an email detailing your courier and tracking information.

It also turned out my package wasn’t left outside my door but at the entry of my apartment building. Not the end of the world, but also not super convenient as the box was a bit heavy!

Rescheduling or changing your delivery is easy through the app or through live chat. You just need to ensure you submit delivery change requests before the change deadline.

Changes for all orders need to be made by 11.59 pm PST 5 days prior to your next scheduled delivery.

To change anything for your first order, you’ll need to contact customer service. While this might seem like an inconvenience, this shouldn’t be a problem since HelloFresh has 24/7 live chat.

How HelloFresh Works

HelloFresh makes it super easy to sign up, but it’s also possible to see the menu first without inputting your credit card information – just click on Our Menus on HelloFresh’s home page.

How to Sign Up for HelloFresh

1. Click on Our Plans: This is where you select the plan you want (Veggie, Family Friendly, Quick and Easy, etc) and pick how many recipes you want to receive each week for either 2 or 4 people. Then click Select This Plan.

2. Create an account: Before you go any further, you’ll need to create your account. I just used my email address, but you can streamline the process by signing up through Google, Apple, or Facebook.

4. Add your address: This will give you the opportunity to see your available delivery days.

5. Input payment information: Once you’ve entered your credit card or other payment information, you’ll be officially signed up!

Remember, HelloFresh automatically chooses meals for you when you select a plan. You can easily go in and swap these out for recipes of your own choosing. If you want to have a say in the dishes you receive, I recommend making these changes right away so you don’t forget!

Managing Your Subscription

HelloFresh makes it easier than most companies to skip weeks, cancel your subscription, or make other changes to your order.

The change request deadline is 11:59 pm PST, 5 days before your next scheduled order. You can pause, cancel, customize recipes, adjust your delivery day, or any other order details as long as you meet this deadline.

You can skip a week or pause your subscription with the touch of a button. Pausing your subscription is as easy as logging into your account and opening up your settings menu.

This page is also where you can select your meals. If you don’t choose your own meals (or pause your subscription) by the 5-day cutoff, HelloFresh will send you a selection of meals based on your chosen meal plan.

Customer Service

I had a very positive experience with customer service. HelloFresh’s customer support features include 24/7 live chat, an iOS- and Android-compatible app, a phone line, a chatbot, and an extensive and easily searchable FAQ section.

I was connected to a HelloFresh live chat agent within about 1 to 2 minutes every time I reached out. You can even contact the live customer support chat via the app on your mobile device, so a live agent is always just a few taps away.

HelloFresh also has a phone line available from 11 am to 7 pm EST, 7 days per week. This is also a useful way to connect with live customer support, but I still found 24/7 live chat the easiest way to resolve my order issues and get my questions answered.

There’s also a shortcut to easily report an issue with your shipment, such as a missing or damaged ingredient.

When I tried the live chat, it was immediately clear that I was chatting with a real person called Kyla. I’d received a coupon by email after I had ordered (typical, right?), so I reached out via online chat to see if I could apply it to an order that I had already placed.

I don't think I've ever had such good customer service. While Kyla couldn't give me the full discount, she did give me back some of my money and added the rest to my account. Honestly, I could hardly believe it.

The FAQ section is easy to use. You’ll find Action Buttons to Help Yourself, which can help you solve common queries like updating your account or changing your order. Below that, you’ll find a robust set of Help Articles, which you can search using keywords.

The FAQ section from HelloFresh is straightforward and gets right to the point. For example, I was curious about how to recycle the packaging. A quick search using the word "recycle" gave me all the info I needed.

Additionally, I discovered that HelloFresh has an extensive recycling program and even provides a dedicated page to help you properly dispose of your packaging.

How HelloFresh Compares to Other Meal Delivery Services

HelloFresh vs. Green Chef

Green Chef is the best organic meal kit service out there right now. All its ingredients are non-GMO, and the produce is CCOF- and USDA-certified. Prices are higher than HelloFresh’s, starting at $5.99 per serving. However, you’ll find more diet-friendly options like the Keto, Gluten-Free, Plant Based, and Protein Plus plans.

HelloFresh isn’t great for keto, gluten-free, or high-protein eaters, and it doesn’t prioritize ingredient quality as much, so Green Chef may be a better option for you if the price is right.

HelloFresh vs. Home Chef

Home Chef is one of the most popular meal kit delivery services in the industry. It’s a bit more expensive since prices start at $7.99 per serving and vary by dish. Dietary plans are less varied than HelloFresh and only include Carb-Conscious and Calorie-Conscious.

Home Chef has a smaller menu than HelloFresh with around 30 recipes each week. However, it offers a unique range of low-prep meal kits, including 15-minute kits, oven-ready kits, and microwavable options.

HelloFresh vs. Blue Apron

Blue Apron is a gourmet meal delivery service for those who want to get a little fancy. However, it doesn’t offer nearly as many options every week as HelloFresh. HelloFresh also offers several unique plan options like carb smart, calorie smart, vegetarian, pescatarian, high protein, family-friendly, and more.

The Bottom Line: Is HelloFresh Worth It?

I think HelloFresh is totally worth it, especially if you’ll be ordering enough to pay the lowest price per serving.

In my experience, the recipes were well outlined and resulted in tasty meals. Plus, the customer service I received was hands-down outstanding.

I think most people eating mainstream diets will be happy with HelloFresh meals. If you don’t eat meat or fish or have allergies, or you’re trying to stick to a certain type of health diet, you’ll probably feel like your choices are a tad limited.

HelloFresh continues to expand its diet and customization options, but it’s still not as accommodating as some more specialized meal delivery services. Of course, no company is ever perfect (and I can always find something to complain about).

If you’re still not sure that HelloFresh is right for you, you can see how it stacks up with other top meal kit services. Elsewhere, we’ve researched the leading companies and shortlisted the best meal delivery services out there.

FAQ

What is HelloFresh?

HelloFresh is a meal delivery service offering family-friendly meal kits that you can cook in the comfort of your own home. When I tried it out, I found the recipes fairly easy to put together. Offerings range from one-pot wonders to craft burgers and globally-inspired gourmet dishes.

Which HelloFresh plan is best?

HelloFresh has 6 plans to choose from, and different plans work better for different people. Families with young children or picky eaters will love the Family Friendly plan, while folks with busy lifestyles will find the Quick and Easy plan a lifesaver. You can browse all of the plans each week, and mix and match dishes.

Are HelloFresh portions small?

There are no single-serving options. During checkout you can choose to receive 2 to 6 portions per recipe for 2 or 4 people each week, so you can choose how much you want to receive from each recipe.

Are HelloFresh and EveryPlate the same company?

EveryPlate is owned by HelloFresh, which also owns organic meal kit service Green Chef. At EveryPlate, you’ll find a weekly menu and hearty portions but the meals are simpler to reflect the lower price.  HelloFresh isn’t too expensive though, and you'll have plenty of meal choices each week.