Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

What Is HelloFresh and How Does It Work?

By
hellofresh meal kit delivery.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Whether inspired by the culinary legends on Food Network or with world-renowned restaurants, or on a mission to eat healthier and feel better, more and more people are trying their hands in the kitchen and cooking seemingly gourmet, yet nutritious, meals these days with the help of meal delivery kits. HelloFresh offers subscribers an easy, curated way to discover, cook, and enjoy new recipes without having to look up recipes, find and buy individual ingredients, and measure out each ingredient every step of the way. Instead, all the ingredients for a given recipe are pre-portioned and sent in a chilled box that arrives at the customer’s house on planned days.

While there is an ever-increasing number of meal kit delivery services, HelloFresh has been—and remains—one of the most popular. If you’re trying to decide if a meal-delivery kit might be something fun you’d like to take on, or if you’ve been a subscriber to another meal kit subscription and are looking to change things up, keep reading to learn about HelloFresh, including how it works and what options there are.

Recommended Videos

What Is HelloFresh?

HelloFresh is a meal kit delivery subscription box service that delivers weekly boxes filled with pre-portioned ingredients for rotating recipes to customers across the United States. Customers can choose to receive ingredients for either two or four servings of chef-created receipts to make at home each week, and each box comes packaged with freezer packs and all the ingredients necessary to make the recipes along with the instructions and nutrition information.

Related

What Are the Benefits of HelloFresh?

HelloFresh is an efficient way to handle meal planning and preparation because it eliminates the need to research recipes and spend time meal planning. Everything you need arrives refrigerated and ready to go, without the need to go out and shop for ingredients. Since the ingredients are sent in pre-portioned amounts according to the exact needs of the recipe, there is less food waste. Lastly, HelloFresh is a fun way to build your skills as a home cook and try new recipes and cooking techniques that you may otherwise be unexposed to.

What Meal Plans Does HelloFresh Offer?

HelloFresh offers a variety of meal plans based on dietary preferences. Customers can choose to get two or four servings of each recipe in whatever plan they prefer, and enough ingredients for anywhere from two to six recipes each week.

What Kind of Meals Can I Make With HelloFresh?

HelloFresh recipes change each week. The Classic meal plan has over 50 chef-created recipes to choose from each week. More restrictive plans offer fewer choices, but still plenty of options each week. Examples include Firecracker Meatballs, Apricot and Chickpea Tagine with Almonds, and Chicken and Tex-Mex Stuffed Peppers. Most recipes take under 30 minutes and can be done by home cooks of any level. That said, when selecting your recipes, you can filter by difficulty and total time. Level 1 recipes are quite basic and usually only take 1-2 pots or pans and minimal time, Level 2 recipes are more involved and may introduce more advanced skills, and Level 3 recipes are for more experienced or adventurous home cooks looking to challenge themselves or make something more gourmet.

Is HelloFresh Healthy?

HelloFresh offers healthy options, and they post the nutritional information for each recipe to better help you meet your dietary needs. The Calorie Smart meals are specifically designed for those watching their caloric intake and are created in collaboration with dietitians. That said, HelloFresh does not cater to specific dietary needs like gluten-free, vegan, keto, or paleo. Customers have to review the recipes themselves and adjust them as necessary.

How Much Does HelloFresh Cost?

HelloFresh boxes work out to $9 per serving plus a $10 shipping fee but can be as low as $7.49 per serving for larger plans. There is no membership fee. New customers can usually get a promotion with up to 14 free meals.

Can You Change Your HelloFresh Subscription?

Subscribers can change the plan they are on at any time on their customer page, or pause or cancel delivery.

Editors’ Recommendations

Amber Sayer
Amber Sayer
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Amber Sayer is a fitness, nutrition, and wellness writer and editor, and was previously a Fitness Editor at Byrdie. She…
How to Cancel Blue Apron
Blue Apron box next to food on table.

Fresh meal kit delivery services, like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh, are a convenient and fun way to tackle the job of weekly menu planning and meal preparation. They cut down on food waste by delivering only what you need, down to the measured spices, and they can introduce you to dishes you have never even tasted. That said, Blue Apron is a subscription service, which means you aren’t buying single boxes at a time, but rather opting into an ongoing delivery plan.
But, what happens if your needs change or you’re no longer interested in cooking meals at home? Can you cancel or change your Blue Apron subscription? If so, how? Keep reading to find out.
Related Guides

Best Meal Kit Delivery Services
Best Vegan Meal Kit Delivery Services

Read more
What Is SideChef and How Does It Work?
healthy meal kit delivery.

There are numerous home meal kit delivery services such as Blue Apron and HelloFresh, but these kits not only have high shipping fees and generate packaging waste, they also only offer a limited number of recipes to choose from each week. Enter SideChef.
SideChef is a multi-platform all-in-one home cooking service that provides thousands of recipes, cooking instructions, food education, meal planning features, and one-click stoppable recipes for an easy, affordable, educational home-cooking experience. SideChef takes the premise of a meal kit box and makes it more affordable, customizable, and interactive. Keep reading to find out how SideChef works.

What Is SideChef?
SideChef
is an all-in-one home cooking platform that enables users to easily filter and find curated recipes for anything from easy appetizers to gourmet and international main dishes, or simple cookies to satisfy your sweet tooth to fancy baked desserts that can rival something you’ve seen in the tent on The Great British Baking Show. SideChef can be downloaded as an app for Apple iOS or Android devices, or accessed from any internet browser on a computer. From any of these access points, users can search through over 18,000 recipes based on their preferences, needs, reviews, and experience level. Each recipe also shows the cost for the ingredients if sourced at your local Walmart, both overall and per serving as well as the nutrition information per serving.

Read more
HelloFresh vs Home Chef
hello fresh vs home chef versus

HelloFresh and Home Chef are two of the biggest players in the home meal kit delivery game. They're both highly rated services, and both make claims of being the top meal kit delivery service in one way or another. So how do you choose between the two?

When it comes to choosing a meal kit delivery service, the thing that makes choosing one over the other so hard is understanding what exactly you're getting. HelloFresh and Home Chef are very similar in many criteria. In our experience, what makes someone choose one over the other is how the brands break down their offerings.

Read more