Home Delivery Meal Kits? Any Opinion on What's the Best?

I did Hello Fresh for a month or so. It was fine, but a little more work than I wanted to do for meal prep and it got a little pricey once the new customer promotions went away.

Don't do it. I've now done 3 of them and I promise you won't find it worth it, especially during this pandemic. Check out the subreddit /r/mealkits. Everyone is receiving spoiled food, missing food, not receiving food at all, late food, etc. These kits are delivered via FedEx, and FedEx is drowning right now.

Everyone on earth decided to order these meal kits during this pandemic because they're afraid to go to the store.

I did HomeChef the past month because I got a hell of a deal. Two weeks' worth for $36 total, which ended up being 3 weeks for $36 and then one week I paid in full.

My box was a day late two weeks in a row, borderline not cold enough anymore. Multiple meals were missing items. One meal was missing 3 of them, so I had to just make up an entirely different meal with it.

During the pandemic, most of these services aren't taking new customers.

No comment on how they're doing right now, but in general we found it to be a fair value and decent products (not a scam or poor quality or anything)...but ultimately just not something to do for more than a few weeks.

If you're just getting into cooking at home I think it's a good way to open yourself up to various techniques/ingredients/concepts/recipes, but you'll probably get bored with it (we did). But it "forces" you to cook and it's a decent starting point.

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ultimately just not something to do for more than a few weeks

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Same. Of the ones I've done, HelloFresh was my favorite. SunBasket was okay, but the only way to cancel is to call and talk to a human that is Cox/Comcast level of trying to make you stay. No excuse for that in 2020.

HomeChef that I just finished up was just okay. The recipes were very elementary, and often times everything came already chopped. Pre-chopping vegetables makes them spoil easily when they're shipped in melting ice. Had to throw away several items the past month and fortunately had other vegetables to substitute in.

If you plan to keep the meals relatively healthy/low cal, you'll be limited to the "protein + veggie" type of meals a lot of the time, so keep that in mind. As mentioned, it is okay for a few weeks but it gets old. The portions are hit or miss across the board. You'll want to keep vegetables or salad on hand for times when the portions are small.

The economy brands are Dinnerly and EveryPlate. Supposedly, EveryPlate is much better but both will sometimes ship really small portions since it is significantly cheaper than the other brands.

We used Home Chef for close to a year 2 meals a week for our family of 4.

The most important thing with them was making sure you picked your meals. If you didn't then you would get some crap you didn't like almost guaranteed.

Not sure now how good the service is as mentioned above.

When we used it, it was great. I enjoyed having all the ingredients there and good directions. The meals were great, not huge or necessarily a manly size, but the taste was there. Our teenage boys got to where they just didn't care for all the veggies, etc and so it was a waste for us to use it. After we empty the nest, we will probably go back to a few meals a week.

Tried Blue Apron several years ago and used a couple of my sister's Hello Fresh meals last week because she was out of town and forgot they were coming. We did Blue Apron for a few weeks before we decided the portions were too small because we both like to take leftovers to work. The Hello Fresh meals were good, but again not enough for leftovers. The one good thing already mentioned is they both gave us some new recipes and ingredients that we still use but just buy the stuff at Kroger

Publix here has those, but every time I've checked the bags, the meal doesn't sound very good.

I have done Hello Fresh and Blue Apron, preferred Hello Fresh. Both offered free kits to start and then 50% off for multiple weeks. Not sure I would sign up for them without these offers.

We had Hello Fresh in April and I did not notice a drop off in timing/quality due to Covid.

Hello Fresh does good tacos, burgers, bowls. Stick to those IMO.

I hear ya loud and clear on rural grocery shopping and limited options. I encourage you to look around for your local farmers market, farm stand, or other direct sales. If you do a bit more long term planning, you can make a “big shop” once a month and supplement with weekly trips for the perishables. Your freezer is your friend: stuff like salmon, shrimp, and specialty beef cuts freeze well. Buy in bulk and package in meal sized amounts.