At first, I thought I wouldn’t be keen on signing up to a weekly food delivery box. I thought I was happy about going to the supermarket, choosing my own meals, and cooking what I wanted whenever I wanted.

But in 2018 I gave it a shot after a number of years of fighting off friends and families recommendations to try signing up for a month. But now I’m a convert and have a few years of recipes from a number of different subscription box services sitting in my pantry.

I enjoy the variety of meals I get to cook, I love knowing that they are healthy, and finishing work and knowing that everything I need to prepare dinner is already at home and in the pantry is one less thing I need to worry about. 

In this post, I’ll review HelloFresh to help you determine if it’s something you’d be keen to try or not. If you decide it is something you’d like to give a shot, click here to use our promo code – it’ll get you $30 of your first delivery!

What is HelloFresh?

HelloFresh is a food box (Also known as a meal delivery service) that couriers fresh ingredients and a selection of recipes to your door every week. Many Kiwis are more familiar with MyFoodBag as it was the original food box service in New Zealand, but HelloFresh is now here and Kiwis are loving it. Meal delivery services like HelloFresh deliver you healthy ingredients so that you always know you have a recipe, and everything needed to prepare it, ready and waiting for you at the end of the day. Some people love the convenience, others love that you get to try a wide variety of meals, and others say they love that the meals are fresh and healthy and help them stick to a diet.

When did HelloFresh open?

HelloFresh was founded in 2011 but came to New Zealand in late 2018. Although new to NZ, HelloFresh is one of the bigger global players in the food box industry with over 2 million households across 10 countries getting weekly deliveries from HelloFresh

Who founded HelloFresh

Answer here

Which areas does HelloFresh deliver too?

As at May 2019 HelloFresh delivers to the following areas:

• Auckland
• Cambridge
• Carterton
• Coromandel
• Dannevirke
• Dargaville
• Feilding
• Foxton
• Gisborne
• Hamilton
• Hastings
• Hawera
• Inglewood
• Kaikohe
• Kaitaia
• Kaiwaka
• Kerikeri
• Levin
• Lower Hutt
• Maramarua
• Masterton
• Napier
• New Plymouth
• Ohakune
• Opunake
• Otaki
• Otorohanga
• Paeroa
• Pahiatua
• Paihia
• Palmerston Nth
• Piopio
• Porirua
• Putaruru
• Rotorua
• Russell
• Stratford
• Taihape
• Taumarunui
• Taupo
• Tauranga
• Te Aroha
• Te Awamutu
• Te Kauwhata
• Te Kuiti
• Te Puke
• Thames
• Tirau
• Tokoroa
• Turangi
• Upper Hutt
• Waharoa
• Waiheke Island
• Waihi
• Waiouru
• Waipukurau
• Waitara
• Wanganui
• Warkworth
• Wellington
• Wellsford
• Whakatane
• Whangamata
• Whangarei
• Whitianga
• Woodville

How does HelloFresh work?

Signing up for HelloFresh is super easy! In a nutshell, you provide your email address, address, and payment information, and then you get to choose what type of food box you would like, how many people you would like to feed, and on what day of the week you want your ingredients delivered. If you are familiar with My Food Bag which has been around in New Zealand for much longer, than HelloFresh operates in pretty much the same way, and is simply a My Food Bag alternative.

HelloFresh box options

The great thing about food boxes is that you can scour a number of brands and all the different boxes they offer to find the perfect one for you. With HelloFresh, you have three options: The Classic, the Vege, or the Family plan. The HelloFresh classic plan features a variety of meals with meat and fish, whereas the Vege plan is curated specifically for vegetarians, and the family plan caters to keeping everyone (even the kids) of the family happy.

• Vegetarian – Will have the occasional dairy product but will be completely vegetarian
• Classic – Includes meals that feature meat and seafood regularly
• Family – Meals designed for four people, which also includes meat and seafood options

Why would you want HelloFresh?

There are so many reasons to try a food box subscription, but most people we speak to tell us they enjoy having everything prepared, being able to spend less time cooking great meals, and trying to flavours and learning new skills.

You will be 100% prepared

For anyone that works a 9-5, or in fact any sort of day job, it can be a bit of a bummer when you knock off work for the day and remember that you have to swing by the supermarket on the way home. The last place you want to be is fighting through the supermarket during the 5.30pm rush. With HelloFresh you know that you have all the ingredients ready for you at home. You’re also better prepared in the sense that the food box delivers exactly the ingredients you will need for that meal. If it needs two onions, then the box will have two onions. These ensures little food is wasted at the end of the week, as you only get delivered exactly what you need.

Better time management

Time management comes in many shapes and forms. Firstly, as mentioned above you don’t need to swing by the supermarket on the way home. You also don’t need to spend time thinking about what recipe you will cook tonight.

Most HelloFresh recipes take about 30 minutes to prepare, which for most families is a pretty quick turnaround for a healthy meal.

You will get to try new recipes and flavours

Before trying a meal delivery service such as HelloFresh, I unashamedly rotated between about 4 meals and a few takeaway places. Nachoes, steak and potatoes, stir fry, and carbonara were my go-to’s. McDonald’s, Hells Pizza, and Auckland night markets made up the remainder of my meals. I even did pasta with a side of hash-browns one night! 

With food boxes, I’ve got to try a whole new variety of foods. I still sometimes have to Google a few ingredients to find out exactly what they are, and why I’ve never heard of them before.

Who is HelloFresh good for?

Couples: Both the Classic Plan and the Vege plan come in boxes suited to two people, making it perfect for either a couple or two flatmates who want to go halves in sharing a HelloFresh box. If you’re a busy professional and have little time for planning your meals, but still want to eat healthy home cooked meals, then joining HelloFresh is an absolute no-brainer in my opinion. One thing I know some professionals do is rather than opting for five night a week option, go for the 3 nights a week option then if your working late one night and just want to pick up something on the way home, you can always postpone one of the meals to a night later in the week. This way, you’ll have no uncooked meals by the time your next delivery rolls around.

Families: HelloFresh is great for families . Families also get to enjoy cheaper per-serving boxes as you will see below. With larger boxes (eg 4 people, 5 nights a week), the delivery and administration costs get spread out over more meals, so instead of paying $15 per serving, families can pay as little as $7.99 per serving.

HelloFresh details and features

The most common questions we get asked are how many people can HelloFresh feed, how much does HelloFresh cost, and what kind of recipes will HelloFresh provide. Let’s tackle these one by one below…

How many people can HelloFresh feed?

HelloFresh plans cater to either two people or four people as can be seen in the pricing plans below. This doesn’t mean you have to abide by these rules though, a couple can get dinner boxes for four, and keep the leftovers for lunch the next day.

How much does HelloFresh cost?

HelloFresh prices vary depending on the number of people you plan to feed, and how many nights per week you want your meals delivered. Below are the HelloFresh prices as at May 2019. We’ll do our best to ensure these prices remain updates, but the best way to get the current prices is just to head directly to the HelloFresh website.

Vege Plan

• 2 people, 3 nights a week is $15.83 per serving
• 4 people, 3 nights a week is $10.83 per serving

Classic Plan

• 2 people, 3 nights a week is $15.83 per serving
• 2 people, 4 nights a week is $14.37 per serving
• 2 people, 5 nights a week is $13.00 per serving
• 4 people, 3 nights a week is $10.83 per serving
• 4 people, 4 nights a week is $10.00 per serving
• 4 people, 5 nights a week is $9.49 per serving

Family Plan

• 4 people, 4 nights a week is $9.06 per serving
• 4 people,5 nights a week is $7.99 per serving

What kind of recipes will HelloFresh provide?

HelloFresh recipes offer huge variety across a range of flavours. Some of my favourite HelloFresh recipes have been the Italian Lamb Ragu & Gnocchi, Chicken Tikka & Garlic Rice, Thyme & Rosemary Crusted Chicken, and the American Prok Burgers with Rainbow Slaw. 

If you are worried about the HelloFresh recipes and whether you or your family will enjoy them, you can always check them out on the HelloFresh website before signing up. Take a look at a few weeks worth, and keep an open mind. I was worried about the recipes in my first subscription box (My Food Bag) before I signed up, but after trying them I found they were all delicious – only a few were outside my comfort zone (I’m not a huge fan of kumara or mushrooms!).

I’ve taken a sample of HelloFresh recipes from May 18th 2019 and put them below for a quick glance. The HelloFresh website is actually really good and you can browse past recipes as well which lets you get more confidence that the type of food they provide is something you would like to eat.

Classic Plan

For this particular week, the HelloFresh recipes for the Classic plan included two chicken meals, one lamb, one pork, one beef, and one fish recipe. Pretty good variety if you ask me! All the meals took between 25 minutes and 35 minutes to prepare and serve which is pretty speedy for healthy home cooked meals of this quality.

Family Plan

The Family plan included two chicken, two pork, and one beef meal this week. All the meals are good portion sizes and pretty hearty!

Vege Plan

I’m not a vegetarian, but the Spaghetti Bolognese below looks pretty good. Below is what the HelloFresh Vege box subscribers enjoyed this week.

Pros & Cons

There will always be some pros and cons when signing up for a service such as HelloFresh. Only you can tell whether a food delivery service is right for you and your family. Below are the pros and cons I’ve found from my own experience with HelloFresh.

One of the cons is that some ingredients lack a little detail, but I feel this might be because I am (was?) a complete amateur cook. Just a few years ago I literally lived of McDonald’s, and when I did cook it was putting some pre-cut fries on some baking paper into the oven. But these days if the HelloFresh recipe is lacking some details I just assume what I am meant to be doing, and it works out right 99% of the time.

If you follow the entire recipe, getting one little detail wrong halfway through the meal is no big deal!

HelloFresh reviews

Word-of-mouth is often what encourages someone to try a food box, so we have scoured the web for some HelloFresh reviews and shared them below. We’ve done our best to avoid paid promotions and get some legit reviews here. We’ve also asked a few friends and family for their HelloFresh reviews and added them below too. If you’ve tried HelloFresh, and would like to share your review, please do it in the comments at the bottom of this page!

I’m paying for the convenience of having a healthy meal plan put together and ingredients delivered to my door. Most weeks I do all the work myself but sometimes it’s really nice to open my door to a beautiful Hello Fresh box stocked with delicious food. That, to me, is worth every penny. As a busy working mom I have no problem getting help when I need it. Especially, if that means healthier food and less stress for my family.

There’s no denying it is FUN to get this box and make great tasting meals that are put together for you. It’s like the cooking shows where all the ingredients are prepped for you.

Hello Fresh lets us try new things…without me having to search on Pinterest for hours, experiment with untested recipes or come up with something unique.

These HelloFresh reviews are taken from real people. In order of how they appear:

• Tammy from organizeyourselfskinny.com
• Jami from anoregoncottage.com
• Rosemarie from busybudgeter.com

HelloFresh coupons, vouchers, and promo codes.

We are super keen on getting our hands on some HelloFresh discount vouchers to share. At the moment we have no HelloFresh coupons available to our readers, although if you have one you would like to share please email us at hello@smartfood.co.nz

Summary

HelloFresh is a great option for people looking for a food box from a reputable, trustworthy company. Thanks to their size and large international presence they have operations fine-tuned, moreso than you could expect from a small 3 or 4 man local team. They are also one of the best My Food Bag alternatives for those who don’t live in My Food Bag delivery areas, or just want to try something new.

You don’t need to be a chef to be able to cook the HelloFresh recipes, you just need to be able to follow some straightforward instructions. It’s a great way to learn how to cook and expose yourself to a number of new ingredients and meals. Even if you don’t plan to use HelloFresh long-term, the new skills and recipes you learn in just a few months will set you up well to continue eating healthily.

A little added bonus is that you keep the recipe cards each week so you can make them again in the future by buying the ingredients yourself. We like to mark our favourite recipes with a star after each meal so we know which ones were our favourites in the future. 

Have you tried HelloFresh? Let us know in the comments below what you thought of it and help other New Zealanders decide which food box is best for them to try.

The post HelloFresh review – Why I tried HelloFresh (and loved it!) appeared first on Smartfood.co.nz.

• Go to our food box delivery service guide
• Go to our prepared meal delivery service guide

In a nutshell, food box services will deliver a bunch of fresh ingredients on your doorstep each week along with corresponding recipes. It is your job to prepare the ingredients, and cook the meal. With prepared meal delivery services, your meal is ready in just a few minutes with minor preparation (often just throwing it in the microwave).

Food box delivery services

A food box delivery service provides a number of recipes, and all the ingredients required to prepare those recipes, in a handy box delivered on your doorstep once a week. It is your job to actually prepare the meals.

A food box is for those people who have the time to cook and enjoy cooking but want to lose a little bit of the admin involved in cooking. Food boxes mean you don’t have to flick through your cookbook to choose a recipe, which can take a while if you are lacking inspiration or just a bit indecisive. Food boxes also keep you away from the supermarket so you can go straight home after work and know that you have all the ingredients required to cook a healthy home cooked meal.

There are a few things you need to know before committing to a food box:

• You’ll need to have all the typical pantry essentials such as salt, sugar, butter, oil, milk etc. Sometimes you might get caught short halfway through cooking a meal if you don’t regularly check your staples are in the pantry. To make sure you aren’t caught short your first delivery from any food box will typically have a small intro pack that states which staples you are expected to provide yourself.
• With most food boxes you can see the coming weeks recipes in advance, but often you can’t change them out if you don’t like the look of a recipe. So if there is a kumara mash in next weeks meal, you’ll have to chuck it in the bin (sorry, I hate it!) and make something else.
• There has been a bit of a fuss here in New Zealand about the amount of packaging used in food boxes, but times have moved on a little and many of the boxes are recycled or re-used, with local brand Woop putting a lot of effort into sustainability.

There are a number of food box delivery services available in New Zealand:

Brand	Description
	Berlin-based HelloFresh came to New Zealand in September 2018 and has a range of plans that have proved popular with Kiwis. Read full HelloFresh Review
	Woop currently has four food boxes available, including a gluten-free box. Woop currently delivers to Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Hamilton, Tauranga, Palmerston North, Rotorua. Read full Woop Review
	My Food Bag is New Zealand's own home-grown food box, co-founded by celebrity chef Nadia Lim. There are currently a number of boxes available, from classic, to low calorie, to bags for couples, and bags for families. Read full My Food Bag Review
	Bargain Box is bought to you by the team behind Myfoodbag. Bargain box lets you choose to feed two, four or six mouths, and either three or five meals per week. Read full Bargain Box Review

Yep

Prepared meal delivery services

Services such as Papagaio, JUK, plate up, EAT, FitFood, or Fed sell fully prepared meals. Your “prep” time drops dramatically from 20 to 40 minutes (as with the food boxes above) to just 2 or 3 minutes.

In many cases, ordering is as simple as choosing from the brand’s website which meals you want from their range, and the chilled meals will be delivered to your doorstep on your selected delivery date.

Check out some of the recipes provided by JUK below, and their prices, to get an idea of what these services provide. These recipes are taken from the JUK Frozen Meals menu…

There have been surveys completed showing that people who use these prepared meal delivery services actually consider them better value than using a food box service. Buying your meals from any of the services below is typically more expensive than buying the ingredients from the local supermarket, but you save in other areas; no time spent driving to the supermarket, no time spent preparing the meal, less petrol wasted swinging via the supermarket on the way home, and less worry about what to cook at nights. So if you’re a busy person and value your time then using these prepared meals is definitely worthwhile.

Brand	Description
	Berlin-based HelloFresh came to New Zealand in September 2018 and has a range of plans that have proved popular with Kiwis.
	Woop currently has four food boxes available, including a gluten-free box. Woop currently delivers to Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Hamilton, Tauranga, Palmerston North, Rotorua.
	My Food Bag is New Zealand's own home-grown food box, co-founded by celebrity chef Nadia Lim. There are currently a number of boxes available, from classic, to low calorie, to bags for couples, and bags for families.

Yep

One thing you might be asking yourself is “can’t I just by these prepared meals from the supermarket?” and you’re right, you can. They’ll be cheaper at the supermarket, but you’ll probably find there is less range and less hearty food. Take another look at the JUK menu items above…I don’t think you’ll find that quality of prepared meals in your local supermarket.

What’s the deal with UberEats?

UberEats is closer to the prepared meal delivery service than it is to a food box. With UberEats, a local Uber driver picks up a meal of your of choice from a nearby restaurant or takeaways and delivers it immediately to your door.

So you get one meal immediately. No recurring plans like a prepared meal delivery service.

How does UberEats work?

Once you’ve downloaded the app, entered your delivery address, and linked up to your payment information (typically your credit card), you can browse nearby eateries and choose what you would like delivered.

I live in Glenfield on Auckland’s North Shore, so when I browse the available food I see placed in Albany, Takapuna, Bayview, Northcote, and of course Glenfield. There are a number of independent stores, along with some well-known brands such as Subway, The Coffee Club, McDonald’s, Pita Pit, and Dunkin Donuts. I’m writing this UberEats review at 5.45am and right now every place is closed (as you’d expect) except for Night ‘n Day in Albany which is offering a bag of Doritos, Hot Dog with Sauce, Wedges, Ice Cream, and a number of other typical petrol station type food.

Listed as popular on my UberEats app for people living nearby is Thai Thai Takeaway, Kai Eatery, Pacific Ocean Choice, Kebab King, and The Smoothie Bowl.

Once I’ve decided what I want I add it to my cart just like any online store, and can leave some special instructions for the chefs in the kitchens if required. After the order is confirmed the nearest UberEats driver will pick up the meal and deliver it – normally within 20 minutes I’ve found.

You can expect a delivery charge of around $6 to $10 dollars – which is on par to what you would pay for a Hells Pizza or Dominos delivery.

Joining UberEats

Joining UberEats is easy. Head to the UberEats website and have your credit card handy to set up your account. You’ll be up and running and browsing your nearby options within about 3 minutes, with your first delivery not long after you choose what you want to eat.

Still struggling with what to choose?

If you still don’t know what is right for you, we suggest starting with a food box such as Hellofresh, My Food Bag, or Woop. We’ve written pretty extensive reviews of each of these brands which you can find below:

• HelloFresh review – Why I tried HelloFresh (and loved it!)

• My Food Bag review (a look back at 18 months of My Food Bag)

• Woop Review (Expectations VS Reality)

Food boxes are closer to what you are used too, I assume. Most couples, flatters, and families go to the supermarket and prepare their meals at home, so all a food box will do is cut out the trip to the supermarket. It’s not that big of a lifestyle change.

However, if you are currently living off fast food and takeaways, and want to keep your meals to literally 2 minutes preparation time, then it may pay to take a look at meal delivery services.

The post Food box VS meal delivery services: what’s the difference? appeared first on Smartfood.co.nz.