Any experience with prepared meal services?

[Relix]

I'd have laughed at myself about this topic a year ago but me and my wife's lives are super hectic right now. I am senior lead at a startup and she's a senior consultant for a tax firm so now busy season is beginning for her. I also have side-clients I take care by freelancing during nights and weekends. Also, a podcast. Also, I want to do some gaming. Also, I have to have fun with my doggie. Also, social life knocks at our door especially with COVID winding down. Also, I want to write my book (one of these days...). What this means is that we absolutely have very little time, and that time is gone by doing house chores, laundry, and other "life" things and the remnants of that we want to spend relaxing, going out, or doing something fun.

We generally prep on Sundays, but we don't like doing a prep that extends beyond Wednesdays. Food gets mushy after a while? And of course, prep takes a bunch of time on Sundays so we don't like spending 4 hours cooking on a Sunday. We have fallen into the bad habit of DoorDashing food after we are done with eating the prep food, and not only is it expensive, usually it's less healthy. Even some local healthier options can feel "heavy", and honestly it's like $40 to have this stuff delivered per meal. We are considering a prepared meal service, maybe only for two or three days for both of us a week. Does anyone have a good experience with these? Anything they'd recommend? I don't care about the budget, I just want to have a better alternative during the week that allows us some extra wiggle room and some more "rest" time.

 

[Rookhelm]

Wife and I do purple carrot. It's vegan. We do 3 meals a week.

It comes with a recipe book and all the ingredients separated by meal. Take a bag out of the fridge, chop up the vegetables and make the meal

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

Check your local area, there are probably a few good services around. Caveat is that they'll be pretty pricey generally, but they are convenient. Watch out for some of the sodium contents, some might be "healthier" than ordering out, but that's not saying much if one meal holds almost 50% of your daily salt. Another thing you can try doing is ordering a tray of pre-made foods at a place like Whole Foods. Best combo of healthy and cheap I've seen in a pinch.

 

[Arjen]

We did Hello Fresh for a while, vegetarian 5 days a week.
Pros, Great recipes, easy to use and got some good inspiration for future dishes, also introduced us to new food.
Con, lots and lots of plastic waste because of all the smal packaging. Main reason we stopped.

 

[Sheiter]

Not sure why people are recommending you stuff you need to prepare. I'll throw in a recommendation for https://www.freshly.com/. I used them for a few months last year when work was really busy and i was otherwise getting delivery daily and I can say it did the job of not feeling fake/processed but being quick and easy meals.

 

[Relix]

Wife and I do purple carrot. It's vegan. We do 3 meals a week.

It comes with a recipe book and all the ingredients separated by meal. Take a bag out of the fridge, chop up the vegetables and make the meal

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We aren't vegan but I am not against trying it. I'll give this a look!

Check your local area, there are probably a few good services around. Caveat is that they'll be pretty pricey generally, but they are convenient. Watch out for some of the sodium contents, some might be "healthier" than ordering out, but that's not saying much if one meal holds almost 50% of your daily salt. Another thing you can try doing is ordering a tray of pre-made foods at a place like Whole Foods. Best combo of healthy and cheap I've seen in a pinch.

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Didn't consider local. I'll check out if there's anyone offering it. Also, thanks for the sodium tip. Will keep an eye out for that.

We did Hello Fresh for a while, vegetarian 5 days a week.
Pros, Great recipes, easy to use and got some good inspiration for future dishes, also introduced us to new food.
Con, lots and lots of plastic waste because of all the smal packaging. Main reason we stopped.

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I am super worried about the packaging. Don't want to overdo it with plastic containers and trash. I'll take a look at Hello Fresh.

 

[Kwigo]

We started doing Hello Fresh 3 weeks ago and couldn't be happier. Sure there's a bit of plastic waste, but it's not worse than if you bought stuff from your supermarket.
The recipes are insanely good, it's easy to make and most of the time your can even put your own spin on it (if you know what to do, that is).

 

[Menchin]

We don't have that in my country yet but from similar services in neighboring countries it just seems like a huge waste of money and plastic packaging

 

[EverythingShiny]

I did Hello Fresh for over a year during the pandemic and it was great. We did a mix of vegetarian and chicken meals and there was always a lot of variety. The meals themselves were always tasty. There is a ton of packaging though, but they've gotten better about using recyclable materials to keep the ingredients cool during shipping. We stopped a couple of weeks ago but might go back. I love cooking so the food prep didn't bother me at all, but some of the meals can take a while to prepare.

 

[Benzychenz]

Yep me and my gf do 3 meals a week for $80 I believe with Hello Fresh. It's a god send. Come home from work and just grab and recipe and ingredient bag out of the fridge and get to it. Meal on the table in 30 mins without having to turn your brain on.

Ingredients during covid haven't always been the best though. Carrots are always floppy and some of the meats smell off before their use by date which is an issue if we leave them until the end of the week.

 

[Mezentine]

I do Green Chef, which is also run by Hello Fresh I think, but has a better selection of gluten free, keto and vegetarian meals and I think they're a bit heavier on veggies overall, which is perfect for me. I keep telling myself I'll quit and go back to cooking on my own but its just so damn convenient, and after a couple months of experimentation I've figured out which types of meals I really like (pro tip: skip anything with a brioche bun)

$80 a week for three meals with two servings each sounded expensive when I started it, but honestly with how much groceries have been going up lately its not that bad anymore, and I feel better about not throwing out food I don't use in time

 

[Crossing Eden]

Cook Unity is well worth it imo. Good portions and great meal options. I get them delivered whenever I know a week is gonna be super busy. Absolutely co-signing the Hello Fresh recommendations too but that's not a prepared meal service since you have to do more than heat the food up.

 

[HeySeuss]

I've used hello fresh for about 3 months now. I get 4 dinners a week and my wife and I love them. They usually take about a half hour total to make and you can get some low calorie selections that are fairly healthy. I honestly haven't had a meal that I disliked and the sauces they have you make to go with the meal are usually really good.

The packaging like someone said is a lot of waste since everything is individually packaged by meal, each meal in its own bag and the vegetables and sauce in the bag. The protiens are outside of the bag near the cold pack in the shipping box.

I would recommend them though. If you want to try it, I always get an insert for someone to try a few week or something like that. It's not a pyramid scheme because I get nothing back out of it so they always just go in the trash.

The nice thing about it is they give you a big easy to read menu card showing the step by step directions and I really like not having to stand at the fridge and try to think of something to make on my own. I usually cook them since I get home first and there isn't anything that I haven't been able to do and I'm only a decent cook at best.

 

[J-Spot]

Last year I used Freshly. Their food ranged from mediocre to just okay. They'd usually have around 55 meals to choose from a week with one or two new ones replacing old ones each week. Anything I really liked tended to get rotated off the menu and I got to the point where I was ordering the same stuff every other week. Their customer service also fell off a cliff after they were aquired by Nestle. Recently I switched to Factor which I find has significantly better tasting meals and while they only offer around 30 meals per week they don't use the same menu each week like Freshly so you get better variety overall. Both services offer discounts for your first few deliveries so they're worth trying to see which you like. Use this link to get a better discount on Factor than their normal introductory offer.

 

[Nif]

Freshly is bland. Avoid.

Sun Basket is better, offers single serving meals if you're solo, or want a different meal than the rest of your household.

Omaha Steaks is the best tasting, but their menu doesn't change like the others. It's probably more expensive overall.

 

[Mass One]

!!!! Hey OP !!!

For the services where they send you ingredients:
I've used home chef and hello fresh I like home
chef more. The meals they had were easier for me and better tasting.

For the services where the meal is already made:
I used that doctor Phil program, Factor75, Freshly, and clean eatz. By far factory75 had the better tasting food. Maybe because they used more salt idk. They have keto plans too which was neat to try.

Also look on Google for a local meal prep company. I used the cleaneatz near me and I like the convenience of just picking all my meals for the week after work. The food was really good to meh, but they have a pick up and go menu so you can just buy individual meals to try.

*** personal note
Before covid in my weightlifting arc, I liked having every macro calculated for me. I went from 400 to 250.

 

[C.Mongler]

I've done Hello Fresh on a couple of occasions. Wife's vegetarian, so it limits the meals we can pick, but generally it has a pretty decent selection of options. Overall, it's alright. I wouldn't expect to really save money with it compared to eating out at a fast-casual-level restaurant, especially if you're not utilizing a new/returning customer discount, but if you feel like you're struggling trying to plan what to eat every week and get to the grocery store, it definitely makes that a breeze. I personally think it's best used as service to get a handle on a handful of new recipes and cooking techniques that you find you enjoy, but I wouldn't really recommend it in the long-term.

The issues kind of mount after a bit. For one, Hello Fresh uses way too much fucking plastic. Like they'll send you a single cucumber in its own plastic bag. It's asinine how a lot of the stuff they send you in what seems like wasteful plastic bags/packaging, despite harping on how good they are for reducing food waste. Two, my wife and I find that a lot of their recipes are real stringent; what I mean by that is when they say 2 portions they mean 2 portions. Most meals offer just enough to get full, and you will rarely ever have leftovers. Maybe not an issue for most, but if I'm dirtying up the dishes to make a meal I like to have the bonus of having lunch leftover the next day, which you'll need to pay for extra portions to achieve with Hello Fresh. Also a lot of the recipes just aren't that healthy. They use a lot of dairy, oils, and butter. They do have specific low-calorie options, but those are also generally the least exciting meals; like we had cauliflower rice with a small pile of sweet and spicy cauliflower on top. Woo.

Ultimately what I ended up cancelling over was the ingredient quality started to become kinda shit. I received rotten ingredients on multiple occasions, or even just the ingredients were missing entirely, which for a service like this, ruins the entire meal unless you happen to have a spare on hand. The first couple times you can easily request a refund on their website when you get a rotten ingredient, but after a couple easy refunds you need to call them to receive one. I get it, they don't want people just lying and getting refunds on every order, but when you're legitimately having issues week after week, having to call a CSR every time gets annoying fast. Decided it was time to get back to the grocery store after that.

 

[Fatoy]

I'd have laughed at myself about this topic a year ago but me and my wife's lives are super hectic right now. I am senior lead at a startup and she's a senior consultant for a tax firm so now busy season is beginning for her. I also have side-clients I take care by freelancing during nights and weekends. Also, a podcast. Also, I want to do some gaming. Also, I have to have fun with my doggie. Also, social life knocks at our door especially with COVID winding down. Also, I want to write my book (one of these days...). What this means is that we absolutely have very little time, and that time is gone by doing house chores, laundry, and other "life" things and the remnants of that we want to spend relaxing, going out, or doing something fun.

We generally prep on Sundays, but we don't like doing a prep that extends beyond Wednesdays. Food gets mushy after a while? And of course, prep takes a bunch of time on Sundays so we don't like spending 4 hours cooking on a Sunday. We have fallen into the bad habit of DoorDashing food after we are done with eating the prep food, and not only is it expensive, usually it's less healthy. Even some local healthier options can feel "heavy", and honestly it's like $40 to have this stuff delivered per meal. We are considering a prepared meal service, maybe only for two or three days for both of us a week. Does anyone have a good experience with these? Anything they'd recommend? I don't care about the budget, I just want to have a better alternative during the week that allows us some extra wiggle room and some more "rest" time.

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I don't currently use any of these services, but I wanted to say you're not alone in having undergone the transition from "that's some yuppie nonsense" to "actually, yeah, I could really use some of my time back".

I'd previously never have even considered hiring a cleaner, or having someone else wash the car, or getting pre-prepared meals, but when you and your partner work 15+ hours every day running two businesses, and have two kids, then you notice your car's dirty, it's very tempting to say "the hell with it, I'll just get it valeted". Same logic here: if it's a choice between eating well and not eating well, I'm probably going to choose to pay a bit more to eat well since the other variable - having the time to go shopping and to prepare meals from scratch - isn't going to change.

 

[Fiction]

I tries Hello Fresh, but after the third time of getting rotten food in the box or the entirely wrong order and them saying "We'll credit your account with credit you can't use until your promotion is over" We'll. I was feeding five people so each box for me was like 250. Felt like a huge scam and a ripoff after that. If they can't assure me they'll fix shir when it goes wrong I'm not wasting money on them.

 

[FliX]

We had a Purple Carrot trial. the food was good, great even, but it's just too expensive for us.

 

[EYEL1NER]

I liked Factor quite a bit; I did their 8 meal/$100-ish plan for quite a bit of last year. Several of the meals were really good, like anything spicy or any of the dishes that were things like poblano bowls, enchilada bowls, tostada bowls, etc. I only stopped because it is a tad expensive and I wanted to take a break so they could offer me a good promo to come back.

 

[MrKlaw]

We started doing Hello Fresh 3 weeks ago and couldn't be happier. Sure there's a bit of plastic waste, but it's not worse than if you bought stuff from your supermarket.
The recipes are insanely good, it's easy to make and most of the time your can even put your own spin on it (if you know what to do, that is).

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Hello fresh was great for us as it also got our kids cookign from curiousity. And after we cancelled we still kept the recipe cards in strong rotation as they're relatively easy to do and instead of little sachets of spices etc you can just buy jars which means less waste.

depending on your income you could get a cleaner too which woudl free up some time?

 

[Marshall]

We did Hello Fresh for a while, vegetarian 5 days a week.
Pros, Great recipes, easy to use and got some good inspiration for future dishes, also introduced us to new food.
Con, lots and lots of plastic waste because of all the smal packaging. Main reason we stopped.

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Same. These services are terrible for the environment.

 

[Kwigo]

Hello fresh was great for us as it also got our kids cookign from curiousity. And after we cancelled we still kept the recipe cards in strong rotation as they're relatively easy to do and instead of little sachets of spices etc you can just buy jars which means less waste.

depending on your income you could get a cleaner too which woudl free up some time?

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Keeping HF for some time to collect the cards and then buy the ingredients ourselves is the plan as well! I think almost everyone does this tbh haha

 

[MrKlaw]

Keeping HF for some time to collect the cards and then buy the ingredients ourselves is the plan as well! I think almost everyone does this tbh haha

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Heck in the UK they published a cook book so they probably realise that too. Although we had to annotate the instructions with weights and measures as they're designed aroudn the ingredients being pre-prepared for you.

 

[lt519]

When we were in the thick of it with newborn twins we did one to save time. I can't remember the name of the one we did (probably Hello Fresh), you still had to prepare the meal once the ingredients arrived and the ingredients were generally poor and/or sometimes missing. Lots of packaging waste and it was a tad expensive.

In the end we switched to just having Instacart deliveries from Wegmans with their to-go meals along with other groceries we needed anyway.

It ultimately doesn't replace a grocery shopping trip and unless you are getting the completely prepared meals I wouldn't do it again.

One nice thing from doing it for a short run is it gives you ideas and shows you how to prepare some easy meals. We've taken away a couple recipes from it and have them in our rotation now.

 

[Relix]

Thanks for the suggestions. Didn't go with Hello Fresh because we didn't want to cook at all haha. We did go with Factor though. Should arrive in two weeks. Will leave a review of how that goes.