I’ve been listening to a ton more podcasts since working from home, and with more podcasts comes more ads! It seems like almost all of them have an ad for HelloFresh, and while I was always curious about it, I didn’t want to get locked into a subscription. My sister has been using it and gifted me a free box and I am here to give my 2 cents on it.

Picking the box is easy enough-you get to pick between 2 or 4 people, any preferences for meals (veggie, meat, quick), and the number of meals you want each week. After you’ve confirmed your subscription, you can pick between a select number of recipes each week-a few veggie, a few quick and a bunch of meat meals. Once the box arrives, all the meals are packaged into individual paper bags that include the important ingredients needed (most of the time the additional ingredients you provide are olive oil, butter, salt and pepper).

What I immediately noticed when I opened my first meal bag was that there was going to be a lot of waste. Spices are packaged in small plastic bags, as opposed to regular cooking where you’d just use spices out of a larger container. They even send tiny bottles of extra virgin olive oil, as if that’s not a common thing most people have?!

The instructions were fairly straight forward and easy to follow, although they definitely want you to use more pots and pans than necessary. After cooking, the meals were pretty good, but taste like something you’d get at a chain restaurant-nothing too extreme one way or the other so it appeals to a mass audience.

To answer the question: will I be renewing after my trial? (The cost after my free box was $63 per week for 3 meals for 2 people) It’s an easy no for me. I don’t think Tony and I are the target market for this subscription service. We like trying new recipes and are very particular about the things we do/don’t add (never onions and always extra cheese), which doesn’t work with a set recipe and ingredients. It’s also far more expensive than buying ingredients at the grocery store. While I think this is aimed at busy people or families who don’t have time to plan their weekly meals, I order groceries online and have an arsenal of go-to recipes saved on Pinterest, so I never spend that much time thinking about my meals for the week. For now, I’m going to stick with finding and trying recipes on Pinterest, so check out this board if you want to follow along!