#mealservice mealdelivery homechef hellofresh fooddelivery mealprep healthyoptions

[brie-haus]

My Honest (and unpaid) Review of Meal Delivery Service

Last year in January I was in the midst of trying to change my diet and implement health changes that would stick. My husband and I are pretty bad about eating out several times a week because that is convenient and cheap, which checks the two main boxes for us. A friend of ours told us about the meal service they use and we decided it would be a worth a shot for us. Being the OCD type that I am, I did a bit of research into the worth of meal service that is out there and was actually quite surprised by all that is available.

When we signed up for meal service, there were 3 main options available: a) services that deliver uncooked ingredients to your door once a week that you prepare using ingredient cards, b) services that prepare healthy food options for you and you pick them up once a week, and c) services that deliver pre-made individual meals to your door once a week. We knew for sure that we wanted fresh ingredients that we would be preparing ourselves so that we could control ingredients going into meals (I have lots of allergies and I also try to watch how much sodium I am eating). Of those options there was only one that delivered to Mebane and was within our budget and that was HomeChef.

               With HomeChef, you create an online profile where you establish your taste buds (spicy, protein preferences, etc), any dietary restrictions, and any food options that may be a deal breaker for you such as bone in meat options. From there, HomeChef displays their offerings for that week and you pick the three (minimum for free shipping) or more meals you want delivered for that upcoming week. You can also set preferences for what day of the week you wish to take delivery, etc. I recommend going in and selecting your meal options and saving them several weeks in advance as meal options lock at noon central time ever Friday.

               We absolutely love HomeChef. Their first box to you will include a binder to store your recipe cards in and each recipe cards comes hole punched to go easily into the binder. That is a service that no other meal service we have looked into includes. They have a great variety of options that include “safe” options for my picky taste buds as well as a variety of new things that have kept us satisfied for a full year. They offer HomeChef Express and Oven Ready options that are easy prep and quick turnaround for busy nights when you want a home cooked meal but you don’t have the full 30+ minutes to commit to cooking. Their customer service is amazing. On a few occasions our box has arrived with damaged produce (hello rough shipping journey) or an item missing. We contacted support with a description and photo of the issue and received quick response from support along with a credit on our account for the next shipment that more than covered the item we had to supplement ourselves.

               Purely just to mix things up and see what else the world has to offer, we decided to pause our HomeChef account and go with HelloFresh that recently started delivering to our area. We signed up under a promotion for $90 off. That’s my first tip, when you sign up for any of these services, hunt around for the best deal. They are always doing promotions and if you play your cards right, you can really save a lot of money. We received our first box on Tuesday of this week. I am pleased with how the first box arrived. Like HomeChef frequently does, they sent along a few free samples to try in addition to the ingredients for the meal. One thing I do like the HomeChef does is they seal all the meat in a Ziploc bag to prevent any juices from seafood, etc from getting into the food bags and contaminating ingredients. The meat items for HelloFresh were each individually sealed at the bottom of the box. The ingredients for each individual meal arrived in big, brown bags rather than the lower profile plastic bags from HomeChef but I do appreciate less plastic waste. All the food items were enclosed in a cardboard enclosure inside the box and all recipe cards and promotional material was on top of that, safe from any leaks from the ice pack.

               Preparation of the food is about the same across the board. The instruction cards are clear cut and easy to follow. The complexity level with each is pretty consistent and varies depending on the dishes you select. I do not see that HelloFresh offers “Oven Ready” or “Express” options that are quicker to prepare and require less prep work. The HelloFresh meals we have prepared so far (4 to date) have been overall a bit more flavorful than HomeChef is typically. HomeChef does provide larger ingredients and larger quantities than HelloFresh. We are still giving it a few weeks and may even try yet another meal service out to see how we like it.

               The flexibility that these meal services give us is great; it allows us to prepare things we would otherwise never cook for an affordable price. It’s super convenient and less trips to the grocery store is definitely a bonus for us with our very busy schedules. It has cut down substantially on our food waste and it allows me to plan on having healthier meals to go along with my goal for a better lifestyle.