Convenience and variety of meals is the name of the game for Hello Fresh. The company is located in several countries now, including the U.S., Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. If you just want to get a feel for what the service is, I suggest you start at the U.S. version of the site, then move to your current country to see specifics on shipping, prices and meals.
Hello Fresh provides your fresh ingredients and recipes to make a new meal every day at home. The German site offers boxes with either 3 or 5 meals and provide enough food for either 2 or 4 people. You have the option between the original box (for omnivores) or the veggie box (for vegetarians). There is also an option to add a fruit (obst) box in addition to the regular meal box. If you would like to just try out the service, there is a trial box (Probierbox) that will send you one shipment.
I found the website easy to use. Each countries website mirrors the others, so you can use one to help guide you through the other. Most of the text translated well using Chrome as well. Adding my information to make an account and purchase the box was also a simple affair.
I live further out from a major city so I had three options available to me for delivery (Wednesday, Thursday or Friday between 0900-1200). If you live closer to one of their warehouses, you also have the option of an evening delivery (Tuesday 1730-2230). I chose the trial box because of the huge time window. Once you find out when your delivery time is, you can expect delivery within the same hour every time, barring weather and traffic problems.
Subscriptions are at least 2 deliveries, you can cancel anytime after those first two deliveries. Cancellation has to occur before Wednesday, or you’ll receive the next week’s shipment. It is also possible to put your subscription on hold when you go on holiday. There is an option to have to box delivered to your work, have UPS drop it off at a neighbors house, leave it on your doorstep or take it to the nearest UPS shop to you. You specify which delivery choice you would like when you order your box. My box was delivered at about 1130.
I was sent an email a few days prior to the delivery with information on what the meals would be for the week. This also included information on what pantry staples I would need on hand, like vegetable broth, olive oil, mustard, and vinegar.
The box was a reasonable size. My cat can serve as a size reference in the pictures. Most items were loose, but packed well in the box. the plastic bag held the cool pack and wool insulation for the cheese (I selected the Veggie box, so there was no meat). If you do sign up for the service, you will be provided with a shipping label to return the cooling packs and insulation that surrounds some of the ingredients every fifth delivery. The rest of the material can be recycled with paper or gelb.
The pictures show everything I received except for the cheeses. There was mozzarella, marscapone, white cheddar and feta. We also had a few spice packs for the fajitas and pasta. There were a few promotional coupons included with the three recipe cards. The cards also tell you the estimated amount of time to make the meal and relative difficulty. All of the vegetables were fresh at the time of delivery.
Don’t know German? The recipes are also on the Hello Fresh website in PDF format and can be copy-pasted into Google Translate. Anyone can see these recipes, so feel free to look in every week and get a feel for what the meals will be like before purchasing. We found cooking the meals and following the translated instructions fairly easy. There were a few places where words don’t translate directly so a little guess work is required. We did learn a few things, like making our own salad dressing and cooking lentils, but the meals were not difficult to make. Meals don’t repeat very often so the below pictures are just to show you what your box might be like. Excuse my terrible photography skills. A food blogger, I am not.
Pasta with tomato cream sauce and mozzarella
Spinach salad with roasted sweet potato, onions, lentils and feta
Veggie Fajitas with carrots, corn, onion, rice and cheese
We enjoyed the opportunity to try the Hello Fresh service. The food was good and pretty easy to make and I didn’t have to decide what was for dinner for three nights (plus a few lunches for leftovers). If you are interested in this concept, I highly suggest trying the Probierbox (trial box) to see how you like it.
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