My Hello Fresh Experience

A few years ago when 2022 rolled around I was going to make an attempt to broaden my cooking skills. At this point in my life I was really just making a few dishes over and over again and wanted to expand my palette. So I signed up for Hello Fresh and awaited my first box of goodies. This is a recap of roughly a year of Hello Fresh with many weeks taken off due to travel, vacation and life - so probably 9 months of Hello Fresh over a year.

The first thing I noticed is these boxes generated a good deal of trash. These were pretty large heavy boxes full of bags of ingredients, proteins, ice blocks, insulation and protective sleeves to separate the frozen/wet chunks from the dry bags. I would quickly unpack the items into the fridge, break down the box and store the weird gel frozen stuff in a pile unaware of how to recycle them.

This is one of the big reasons I ended up cancelling the service as the amount of trash I generated became just so much. My recycling was full of cardboard and insulation and my trash was full of bags, packaging and more.

Generally pictured above can show the average amount of baggies and such I generated as trash for each meal. In the beginning this was alright as I didn't mind, but as weeks went on it just felt a bit annoying and trash heavy to continually have so many items of trash.

One part that itched at me was getting little baggies of things like mayo and hot sauce. Since I know the 1-2 ounces of hot sauce given to enhance the flavor was not going to work my palette of heat. I of course had plenty of hot sauce to sub in and it just felt weird to get a few ounces of something that I had bottles of in my fridge. Though I understand what weird support requests that might cause if people could request certain items excluded because they had them.

Other times the bag had an assortment of veggies/fruits that had to be diced or sliced and that was another odd thing that started degrading my excitement to cook a Hello Fresh meal. Every single meal had become the boring pattern of open bags, slice veggies, stove/oven a protein, prepare and eat. It sounds odd to complain about, but as I cooked my own meal and had to do that same exact stuff it didn't seem as boring or daunting.

Above pictures what became the norm - just chop and slice. If I had a larger cutting board it would have probably been easier, but as you can tell I had to carefully work within a space for each respective food item. This might be a skill you acquire with practice and age, but the amount of times it takes me to slice a tomato or onion is indeed embarrassing.

As the summer months arrived in Florida and the temperature and humidity hit the unfortunate levels I noticed the deliveries took a turn for the worse. I would arrive home to a box that was visibly wet and dripping. I wondered how the delivery drivers handled a box that might be dripping some form of coolant/condensation on other boxes. Yes, my video doorbell showed the box wet prior to being dropped off.

Anytime this arrived the unpacking and carrying box from front door to kitchen resulted in a mess. I never actually threw any of these meals away, because each and every time I got to the protein at the bottom - it was still frozen. I wanted to fault Hello Fresh for this, but who knows what happens when the box enters the delivery world - it may be stored/delayed in a warm area against their recommendation.

Now I started feeling this was Hello Fresh's fault when these issues happened and I opened the box to some new form of material/packing that seemed cheaper. Maybe this was a new initiative or newer technology, but when boxes arrived in a dampened state with some form of changes - I was upset. I had an inkling this was cheaper material because the cards with recipes went from this sturdy cardboard like paper to a piece of paper quality.

I couldn't really ever match the photos as elegant as they were pictured, but I sure attempted it. I enjoyed learning a new combination of flavors I could mix or how you could basically just add any sauce/veggie to rice and it was good. I'm no food snob so can't provide a lengthy review of the food as it was good from my standards once ready to be eaten, but everything else was so draining. As the credit card was charged and the quality went up/down - I found myself cancelling and never looking back.

I kept all the recipe cards in case I would remake the meals, but here I am almost 3 years later and I've never looked at those cards except to make this blog.

I can't forget Hello Fresh though because even 3 years later I continue to get a large amount of paper mail from them. Continually offering me insane deals that aren't actually that good - with misleading details to convince me to repurchase.

So my journey with Hello Fresh came to an end.