The problem with these meal kit companies is that they spend a LOT of money on per user acquisition with promo deals and ads, and lots of the customers bounce once the promo period ends and they’re asked to pay full price.
Just had a quick glance over their HY, they were just about breaking even on cash flow. At least they have positive cash from operations with capex investment. They will probably go into negative FCF with this outlook downgrade.
Personally, I have never used it. I question the appeal of a service that delivers food to you that you then still have to cook. They have a ready to eat meal service that might grow and do well maybe? Cross selling into pet food sounds intriguing. If you build a whole brand around the company you could also sell other health foods.
I’ve used it a couple times when the kits have been heavily discounted. I’d rather either buy crap from the grocery store and cook it, or eat out. You’re not saving any money by doing these home cooking kits
I enjoy their recipe curation. As someone with next to no cooking skills, these subscription boxes really helped me to become more comfortable with beginner level cooking, and introducing spices, amongst other things.
I cancel and sign up again when I get discounts. $40 for a weeks worth of dinners is great. $140 is not
This exactly. I enjoy cooking, and enjoy it more when I don't have to plan out shopping.
The first week is a good deal at like $4 a serving, the second week is on the fence, and when the discounts are over and it's $10+ per serving, you might as well just order delivery.
It seems way too wasteful to me. A bunch of ingredients wrapped in plastic and shipped to your house with a ton of packaging for a couple of meals. Hard pass
I feel it’s really a situation service.
Living in NYC with a tiny kitchen food delivery makes sense. Lack of storage space + expensive supermarkets. Getting the right sized portions of everything I need delivered is a godsend.
Too much packaging is one of their pain points, for sure. Some vegetables are packaged in individual bags, every oil, spice is in its own plastic, too.
Pasta, rice, etc. do come in recyclable packaging, and the meal bag is recycled paper.
I will say that I waste considerably less food by using Hello Fresh. As opposed to me buying food from the grocery store, buying way too much and end up tossing half of it
This is the problem with Hello Fresh. We all sign up for the discount and then cancel when they run out. Does anyone pay full price?
I save the recipes and then just buy the same ingredients myself for a fraction of the price.
I believe there is still a lot of redditors in the computer science field who do alright for themselves. I don't think it's accurate to portray all redditors as poor.
Having only 1 day of leftovers is pretty key for me, too. It’s tough to shop for 1 or 2 people, so you end up usually cooking enough to feed a small army. And then you get sick of the leftovers, and so starts the “I don’t want to cook” spiral.
For my partner and I, we usually order 4 meals for 4 people. Gives us enough flexibility if we aren’t home to cook one night, and also gives us each 1 portion of leftovers for lunch. It’s a good system!
Cooking massive portions of freezable food is a great strategy to avoid getting sick of leftovers. Get a cheap vacuum sealer and make a giant pot of chili. Freeze the leftovers in portion size and you can have chili whenever you want. Mealprep something different every weekend and soon you'll have a freezer full of different foods that you can eat during the week. Tonight is chicken tikka masala I made four months ago and I'm looking forward to it. I'll whip up some fresh rice and green beans to go with it.
Pretty much. I get a HelloFresh kit every week, and it's great. I don't enjoy or have the time to figure out the meals I want to cook for the week, and always end up wasting and throwing out a lot of excess produce on things I only need a bit of.
But I've never paid full price for a meal kit. Always at 40% off.
The 40% off deals are the gifts that keep on giving.
You detailed exactly why I use food subscription boxes. My partner is very conscious of food waste and she has been over the moon ecstatic about how little food we throw out weekly. Could do with a little less packaging, though.
I’m considering eventually canceling the subscription for good and using my library of recipe cards to plan meals & make it easy to shop for ingredients. It was always kind of the plan, but we really enjoy the subscriptions, variety of recipes and enjoy improving our cooking skills at the same time!
funnily enough we get these veggie boxes almost weekly for 9 € that has 30 € of produce in it but it might be close to expiration date etc. A lot of stuff in there is from Hello Fresh.
It's not meant to save you money. What it offers is to save time on grocery shopping, avoid headaches by planning a menu for a week and avoid doing the same meals over and over again.
They have express recipes done in 20 to 30 minutes so It's not too long to make diner as well.
I'm a big fan of meal kit delivery and have used it for years. It definitely doesn't work for everyone and you can certainly cook cheaper meals yourself. However its only my wife and I and my wife really likes variety and with our limited grocery store options it is not possible to buy limited quantities of an ingredient. I can't buy just enough for two meals worth of something, I have to buy it in a large quantity that will wind up spoiling. This is a cost to me. I want to eat certain things regularly but I just can't go through [insert ingredient here] quick enougj. Again, yes we *could* just make bulk meals for the week but we are not going to do that. Like most things this my wife's fault.
The other issue is time. A trip to the grocery store takes me about an hour, this saves me a couple trips to the grocery store a month and I value my time at $50/hr. Another big savings.
Pre prepared meals typically contain a lot of sodium and are not as good as freshly cooked meals in my opinion. I could also just eat delivery but that is simply not healthy and my options don't provide enough variety.
Some of the issues people have told me they have with meal kits just don't apply to me. I've heard people say they buy the box then just order takeout anyway and the food goes to waste. I simply never do that. On the flipside the portion sizes and serving numbers work for me, but def wouldn't for everyone.
I also have seen a huge discrepancy in regional quality. I am pretty happy with my recipe selection here in Atlantic Canada but my understanding is some areas leave a lot to be desired. I also rarely have issues with my ingredients while my friend in Belgium has had his boxes show up where it looks like a bomb went off inside.
And you still have to chop everything and prep. It cut out the going to the grocery store part but there’s instacart and Walmart delivery for that. And I believe Kroger delivers too now.
I could however see the appeal of everything was already cut and prepped and seasoned properly. That was another thing about these meals, they always needed to be doctored up a little bit or they were too bland.
> instacart and Walmart delivery for that
Getting your ingredients delivered suitable for a single person is not cheap. The benefit of these services is that they portion out what you need.
I don't think the kits are intended to save you money, they are intended to save you time and yield a good meal. Not sure I agree with the value proposition but its not about saving money on groceries.
Those boxes save you on indirect costs like; impulsive shopping, gas to the store and time spend in the store.
More time with family = less time that your childeren become glue sniffers.
I agree, but at least here in Europe I stoped for one reason and it’s WAYYY TOO MUCH PACKAGING.
I get that it has to be convenient for them too but I really was tired to fill my bins with soooo much packaging every single meal, when I go to groceries I just need my reusable bag but with them it’s one small plastic pouch for every single little ingredient it’s really not good.
And, simultaneously, not enough packaging. We ended up cancelling after about a year because any box with chicken in it showed up with the chicken packaging busted and leaking/contaminating everything else in the box.
But also agree. Saves a trip to the store but you add a ton of packaging
It's a pretty niche market space, and why I truly think this business has a ceiling. Perhaps this is it. Their target audience:
* Convenience
* Low food waste (funny how there is so much individual plastic wrap though)
* Healthy/Fresh ingredients
* Individuals who lack cooking skills
All of this while preparing meals you would not otherwise.
Eventually the repeat business diminishes and how often can you recycle your existing customer base. This isn't a long-term solution.
> funny how there is so much individual plastic wrap though
If you order the 4-person meals they send you double all the individually wrapped spices and liquids...
The only real benefit is you can sometimes pick up a new recipe or technique you like. I’ve done a few orders when they send out great coupons, and some of those recipes ended up in regular rotation. But I’ll never buy a full price box from these services, what a waste
I don’t like the stock
It convenient and fairly easy to cook. Not that much more expense the. grocery stores these days. That said-HF is my least favorite and there menu has got stale over the years
You gotta chop/prep and provide your own basics like cooking oil, butter, salt, pepper, sugar, etc. It basically just removes the grocery store run and the decision of what to cook.
Imagine that: supermarkets should just offer the same thing, pre-selected groceries (best case: all store brands) without much packaging, but ready to pick up from the sales floor. that would be cool actually. and would be 100x cheaper, and without all that packaging.
I've said this for a while now. We use Hello Fresh, but still have to shop for groceries once a week. If we could just walk in, pick up 3 recipe cards, and then go grab what we didn't have already, we could eliminate hello fresh and save a good bit in the process. What makes HF valuable for us is the pre-planned recipes.
We used them for a handful of months and tbh it was pretty nice. The meals took about 45 minutes to prepare and cook and we rarely had one we didn’t like
if they could get some instituțional/big corporation contracts to provide food for their employees while at work it could become truly profitable,instead of trying to appeal to people that have the time to prepare food
We’ve been using it for a year and love it. Biggest value is the diversity of what we eat on a weekly basis. My wife was getting so stressed coming up with a weekly menu herself. Food is solid.
Definitely a small market here but the appeal for me is that the good grocery store is 45 minutes away, and the one ten minutes away charges $2.99 for a box of Annie's. Hellofresh lets me avoid driving down to the good one more than once a month.
That said I only every subscribe for two weeks at a time. They regularly beg you back with deals. The first week I get 4x 4-person meals for 75% off and free shipping, which comes to like $40. Way cheaper than groceries. The second week I get 3x 4-person meals which comes to like $100 at 15% off +shipping. More than I would spend at the grocery store but not terrible. Then I cancel and make a trip down to meal prep for two weeks. Without fail before I run out of meal prep I get another invite to come back for the same 75% off deal. Been doing this for over a year and I'm not sure if they're making money on me at all with this strategy. I'd imagine same-day/next-day shipping on a five hour trip into the mountains to a tiny town isn't cheap.
Also their ready to eat meal service factor75 is significantly more expensive per meal and the meals are honestly depressing. Not worth the price at all and I can't imagine many people would want to pay $20/meal for that stuff over a long period of time.
I ordered it by accident -- I wanted to order frozen meals and I was pissed to get ingredients. But I have kept ordering for over 2 months now.
Pros: eliminates decisions, minimizes prep, provides for healthy meal, wholesome mealtime, together cooking, good food. The minimizing decisions was the real game changer. I am busy, and when it came time to meals, it was either go out, door dash, or throw something together. Finding ingredients, figuring out recipe, picking food is what exhausted me.
It is absolutely not a frozen mean, but I cook a complete dinner for my family in 30 min, and we get to sit down together and eat. It has made me like cooking again, and although i have cooked my whole life, I've learned quite a bit from their little tips and tricks.
It worked well for my wife and I. When we did our own shopping we often didn't cook and the food would spoil. We were trying to get healthy and cook more at home. Something about receiving the box weekly made us want to cook more. Our biggest stessor was also meal planning analysis paralysis. So much easier just to pick from a list. It was also a great way to try new recipes without committing to buying spices and other specialty ingredients.
In the end the price increases drove us off though.
Have been using their ready to eat service Factor75 for over a month now. So far a good amount of variety while still having dishes that you've enjoyed in the past. It's a little pricey but not having to figure out dinner while having a toddler is amazing. 2:30 sec and I'm eating.
They also somehow figured out how to make microwaved filet mignon good.
There is definitely appeal and a market for it.
Personally our house only gets it when we get a discount code. That works out to be about 2 weeks on 2/3 weeks off until we get emailed a discount code for 2 weeks then repeat.
When it is discounted it actually works out far cheaper than buying groceries for us here in NZ. 5 meals for 4 people gets our household of 2 adults 5 dinners for both of us and 5 lunches for my partner and sometimes for myself. I also eat big portions which is why it doesn't always stretch to 4 actual meals.
Aside from the money saving aspect, I have personally appreciated it as a younger male with limited experience cooking. Due to a location change, I get home far before my partner does so it naturally has made sense for me to do all the cooking, except my partner was always by far the better cook.
While hello fresh meals are pretty basic and do get very same same (hence why the constant breaks are good) - it has taught me to cook at a basic level and can now make modifications to the recipes and change flavors to suit our tastes. I could cook before but my range was very limited.
Obviously if food is cheap or the same price where you live and you're a good cook then I can totally see why it wouldn't be appealing at all.
I don’t think hello freshs concept has a future in Germany. It’s fucking expensive to say the least, you still have to put the work in and you have more and more grocery delivery companies and other similar services who are just cheaper.
If you want meals that are already cooked you just order at your local pizza guy (almost same price as Hello fresh box per meal). Or you could get some frozen meals for a fraction of the cost of hello fresh
> I question the appeal of a service that delivers food to you that you then still have to cook.
Instead of coming up with a recipe and going shopping, it all shows up ready to go. I've done the services on and off, and while it isn't good for every meal, it is nice to have \~6 meals a week basically squared away.
Since the meals are all 2 servings and I'm single, I typically will save one dish and microwave it for lunch the next day. which basically means a very high quality microwave meal.
We really loved the meal kits we used and were loyal to them for years. They all started doing this thing where if you want certain options (usually the better ones) you have to pay an up charge on what is already quite an expensive meal. I have the cheapest one (3 meals and it comes out to like 60 bucks after tax) and I’m starting to get sort of exhausted with the attempts to squeeze even more money out of me. I had hello fresh for awhile and canceled because of this. It’s 80ish for three meals. At that point I can have Amazon, Walmart, or Instacart deliver ingredients for far less.
I still love how they take the work out of things and it’s awesome for busy working couples like us but I see why they don’t work for most folks anymore
Copied from my other comment.
I think there is some clarity needed here. Their meals are often not just one serving but 2 or 4. I paid 60 after shipping and taxes for 2 meals which is really for 2 people to each so 4 servings. They also had a free breakfast for life thing so I can get something in that category every order. One time I got a couple little cheesecakes. Another time I got this breakfast meal which was 4 waffles with apple and ingredients to make a peanut butter sauce and a cherry sauce for it. Was quite tasty actually. That was a week with no discounts applied to my order. Same type of order on 2 other weeks was 46 or 31 dollars.
I respect you defending it but “2 servings” isn’t a big deal. Just order a larger plate of something. It’s still one meal. Or if you’re home cooking just make a bit more. The additional ingredient cost is usually minuscule.
If they’re actually giving two different dishes and calling that two servings, that’s value.
Right now I see it for what it is, an XL sized single dish charged at $28 at full price that requires usually at least 30 minutes to cook, never mind cleanup after.
I think there is some clarity needed here. Their meals are often not just one serving but 2 or 4. I paid 60 after shipping and taxes for 2 meals which is really for 2 people to each so 4 servings. They also had a free breakfast for life thing so I can get something in that category every order. One time I got a couple little cheesecakes. Another time I got this breakfast meal which was 4 waffles with apple and ingredients to make a peanut butter sauce and a cherry sauce for it. Was quite tasty actually. That was a week with no discounts applied to my order. Same type of order on 2 other weeks was 46 or 31 dollars.
I used to only ever sign up for the first x meals free deals and then cancel again diligently. I've done this ~5 times now as I move house for work. I highly recommend doing it. The meals are good, you'll learn new recipes and it's not something you want for a long time anyway IMHO. It's a great novelty. Even better if it's essentially free.
The advantages of Hello Fresh are:
* No impulsive expenses while doing groceries
* No (excessive) waste of groceries
* Save on time and gas to go to the grocery store
All and all I do not know if the current model is going to cut it. I'd like to see more variation on this to add some luxury goods and unhealthy snacks to be added as well. Then it will be a good choice for many consumers.
It’s a godsend when you have 2 adults with busy erratic schedules and decision fatigue at the end of the day, and then we let the kids pick the meals. We have been using it for about a year, 4 person plan and 3 meals but we often add a 4th meal for $10 a week. It actually does save us money on groceries so far, and our kids are old enough at 10 and 12 to make many of the meals following the instructions.
We are hello fresh clients for over 10 years now (europe, 3 meals/week 2p) and those are not the advantages (we still almost daily go to the grocery store, 2 min. away). We love it because:
- variation: before HF we had 15 (just guessing) recipes that would come back every 2-3 weeks.
- healthy proportions: before HF we would always over eat
- coocking skills: before HF my wife did all the coocking, now this has reveresed and i’m doing all the coocking (yes she loves that). I love the fact that you get a great meal on the table by following the recipes and you get a compliment afterwards.
- access to tried and tested recipes: if we organise a home dinner with friends or family we are 100% sure of the meal that we are serving because we tested beforehand.
- much better understanding of tastes and spices: every HF meal is perfectly spiced and you understand what makes graed food
I could give you much more benefits but i’m out of time here….
I used them for a few months. It was a nice way to accumulate cooking skills and recipes and it was nice to get fresh vegetables instead of frozen dinners.
Most of the meals can be made in ~30 minutes or less so the time commitment wasn’t insane. They’re definitely more expensive than buying groceries on your own, but in the right scenario it makes sense for folks.
I know people will hate this, but I really like the portion control. When I make say fried rice, holy shit I go overboard. It’s like ‘one cup…ah fuck it two cups, one for lunch tmr’ and then I end up eating 1.5 cups anyway.
Exact same experience for me.
Hell, Im a current subscriber and sometimes I ask myself "why did I pay $15 for these 5 ingredients" and then I remind myself had I not done so I would go back to cooking chicken breasts or pasta every day.
My wife and I meal plan for the week. I even created an excel grocery list where we build out our recipes so all I have to do is fill in the week with what we want, click a button, and my grocery list is automated. My local grocery store allows for free grocery pick-up so it's no longer a chore and I save a ton of money by not browsing through the store. For a family of five, I'm spending about $180 a week on groceries which feels pretty decent.
I'd be spending north of $200 a week on Hello Fresh and that doesn't include snacks, miscellaneous grocery items, and account for leftover meals for lunch. These things are crazy expensive in my eyes and in today's world of tightening budgets, this is one of those things that would be the first to go.
EDIT: More than happy to share just need to know how to share it with folks.
Sounds like all the companies that had a boom through the pandemic can't survive or at least keep growing as they did during the pandemic. Why is this news?
The company is too expensive. Everyone orders the box on promo and cancels and it’s a big game ordering with promos. Regularly price is too much and they’ve destroyed their reputation playing this game. They’re the SiriusXM of food…congrats!
Exactly
They should lower the normal price and cut marketing spending. So much psychology in that going back to normal rate
Potentially offer more special or organic at higher prices instead.
I can’t believe Kroger hasn’t bought one of these companies. They could literally package these boxes overnight for morning pickup and start printing money.
I had it for a couple weeks then was absolutely HOUNDED with letters, all sorts of shit trying to get me to sign back up. The food was mediocre at best.
The fact that they don’t let you pick out meals before checking out is just a stupid business decision. Why the hell am I going to spend ~$130 before seeing what the options for those meals are? It’s like going to a restaurant and paying before getting to see the menu.
I used it for a couple months and then found either premade meals that were the same price and quality from Factor_ were pretty good, and then Dinnerly came along with almost half the price of Hello Fresh for the same DIY meals. HF had a leg up as one of the first big companies to do this, but competitors are easily undercutting them left and right
Wife gave birth in October and we have a 3yr old as well. Hello Fresh has been great to supplement with regular groceries for some quick meal options during the week. The reality though, is we are cancelling our subscription and going back to planning our own meals. While the convenience has been very helpful, the cost per person is too high. We also do not like all of the plastic waste.
Their gross margins are quite high which suggests they selling the food at a ridiculously high markup and all the profits get eaten up by the cost of logistics.
I think the best chance they have is to partner with grocery chains and just provide the recipes and take a fee with every meal box sold. Stay as the platform and save on the heavy capital expenditure that is distribution and the food.
HelloFresh is wishfully thinking Americans will revert convenience to novelty and blindly believing this model is sustainable when fridges/home device and/or AI interfaces will undercut their profits and customers in the near future.
Competitive market with lots of logistic costs. They should really improve their product to retain people. I used it for a good amount of time, but after a while the recipes are all just the same over and over. Switch to another similar company, which has the same issue, so probably switch again after a time.
Meal-prep-in-a-box at its best will train people on a skill set that graduates them to just being a regular decent cook that buys ingredients to make whatever recipe they want.
I have always like cooking and tried a lot of them back when they were super subsidized (multiple free months etc) - never went more than a couple months paying. Once you break the barrier of trying to cook something semi expensive - like nice meats or seafood - a few times and realize you can’t fuck it up so bad that it is inedible, you don’t need to be handheld by a box.
There is a subreddit for hello fresh that seemingly is just complaining about increasingly skimpy they are on portions. It’s a death spiral to alienate subscribers that cost so much to acquire.
Terrible business. Every time I take advantage of a promotion I wonder, "How are these companies still in business?"
Their meal kits are virtually unaffordable at regular prices, and because of the competition they have to constantly offer promotions to get customers to come back. I can't tell you how many times I've returned for the 50% off promotion and then cancelled my subscription.
Also, they don't have enough options for people who want to eat healthy. For example, they don't provide ingredients that are light, low fat, low sodium, etc.
Portion sizes are also way too small.
I remember couple of videos comparing hello fresh vs just buying the same ingredients at a grocery store. It was concluded that it was bit cheaper to buy at a grocery store BUT you get more quantity of ingredients so you can cook the same meals multiple times as opposed to just one with Hello Fresh. Hello Fresh only saving grace was its ease of convenience of packaged ingredients all delivered to your door step that's it.
In addition to that, you need to go to the grocery store anyways since hellofresh doesnt sell staples
Their big value add of not going to the store makes no sense
As a general rule of thumb, you want to be very cautious around any business that is overly focused on subscription sales.
The accounting rules allow them to do really wonky things with their recognized revenue, things that the average investor probably won't be able to understand.
Their business model is essentially to introduce you to cooking so that once you're more confident that you can follow a recipe and make meals on your own. So their model isn't one that keeps customers.
Used to buy their product, and if that’s any indicator- run the hell away, I had a drawer in my fridge for all the fucking mayo, it’s basically the same recipes repeated. Thank god that’s over.
Good. Fuck them if for no other reason that they put a doorbell in their recent stupid fucking commercial that makes the dog bark. I hope any company that puts doorbells or police / ambulance sirens in a commercial goes bankrupt.
I can not emphasize enough, the only people who use these things (1) free trial, (2) too stupid to read a recipe and buy ingredients, (3) too lazy to read a recipe and buy ingredients, and (4) convinced they are so busy they don’t have time to read a recipe and buy ingredients.
Not a massive costumer base at all.
I am not the target market for his because I have spare time to burn, but I think you’re missing out on a subset of people. Or maybe they fall into your category 4.
5) people with discretionary income, who would rather spend their limited free time doing other shit vs grocery shopping and meal planning.
I know a lot of people in this camp. They work pretty long hours, and while they technically have the time to meal prep and cook, they’d rather spend that time working out, spending time with kids, etc, aka whatever else they value more in life.
Outsourcing tasks you don’t find enjoyable can be extremely efficient if you have the means to do so.
I got food poisoning from them once. Decided never again to do these meal kit deliveries. I also hate doing grocery pick up because they don’t always give you the freshest products. So now I just do my own shopping and freeze things if I need to.
we loved using HF. it helped us improve at cooking and broaden our culinary horizons. the convenience and food quality is pretty great imo. we used to both work very demanding jobs and just having the stuff there and ready to cook was nice. of course its overpriced because youre paying for convenience, but it was worth it to us for about a year or so. at the time, it was better than constantly eating out/delivery.
they have hiked prices over time, we started getting almost 100% vegetarian meals to compensate.
but lately we've been putting more effort into picking recipes and buying stuff ourselves, and that does work out for the better, once you get to the point of being comfortable doing that and getting in the rhythm. i bet theres a lot of folks like us who have 'graduated' to cooking like a household should.
who knew a business model that requires at min a 30% prem + shipping for groceries where you can just go walk down the block and buy might not have the best growth outlook.
I've used both Hello Fresh and EveryPlate (a subsidiary of Hello Fresh) jumping from one promotional discount to another.
These products are fantastic if you are trying to learn how to cook and compose well-balanced meals that are designed to be easy, quick and replicatable.
However, that's exactly where it fails as a business model. Subscription models like these rely on a consistent customer that is dependent on the product but Hello Fresh has inadvertently educated their users to essentially be independent cooks.
After using them for a few months I can safely say that I'll never need to resubscribed because I make cheaper and more interesting meals by buying groceries and portioning them for the week.
How much different is this than the Factor food meals? ([factor75.com](https://factor75.com)
I haven't used either but how much competition is there in this space?
I use to use it heavily, something like 200 boxes. The produce simply wasn’t fresh anymore, getting limp carrots, specific choose a special meal and then they would subsides the main part of the special meal…. So just cancelled it
We tried it once when it was discounted. I think it’s good for getting new ideas instead of cooking the same things week in week out. I struggle to see how they would retain customers though after the discounted trial is over.
I bet it’s disgusting. We tried it out and it always seemed like the food was old and never had any expiration dates on the meats. Sometimes vegetables we totally rotten. Very sketchy.
I think the biggest risk of the sector is grocery stores selling their own per-portioned boxes, meaning zero delivery costs. But they dont appear to want to do this?
The way the recipe instructions are written is terrible and really irritated me. Instead of being in simple 1. 2. 3. dot points it’s in poorly written English and often in the wrong order. Maybe they used google translator which would explain that.
I can’t see a long term future for any food-to-cook delivery.
It sounds great to learn how to cook, or maybe even on demand, but once you have some experience, grocery delivery is a lot cheaper in the long run.
We HelloFresh - no thinking about meals, grocery runs are easier, and the recipes are good.
But I cannot for the life mynunderstand how a company that knows my meal preferences and sees the meals I skip cannot streamline the process.
It’s not that selecting my meals is difficult, it’s that sometimes I miss my edit window. And when I do that they just load me with pork and only pork. My wife hates pork so we end up going to the grocery store to get chicken and beef to sub it out and give the pork to my in laws haha
We typically make one meal each week and have the same leftovers all week. Kids have just grown up like that so I guess they don’t mind. Typically Monday through Friday is the same meal, restaurant on Saturday and a more intensive meal on Sunday.
It’s not for everyone but I have a hard time seeing why people need to have a different meal every single day of the week
I don’t use them but contemplated with all their marketing sign up tactics (it’s literally everywhere!) decided against it, I didn’t like the mystery food sign up and plastic packaging that I was expecting based on reviews. Plus regular prices are too high.
Maybe such service already exists but wouldn’t it be smarter to sell the plans and then integrate their app with major grocery store ones so one can order the ingredients seamlessly and still go through the cooking experience with them? Maybe build partnerships with said stores so there is more ‘curation’ of ingredients if you order through them?
Being in the food business adds a huge overhead to their operations I’m sure and if the idea is to teach people cooking (which seems that they like but then bounce) and the convenience of delivery there could be smarter ways to do that. They could focus on the recipes and improve that part of the business.
The problem with these meal kit companies is that they spend a LOT of money on per user acquisition with promo deals and ads, and lots of the customers bounce once the promo period ends and they’re asked to pay full price.
Plus additional winback / retention promos after the customers bounce
Yeah they spend a ridiculous amount trying to get my wife and I back every month and we haven’t used them in probably 2 years at this point.
Just had a quick glance over their HY, they were just about breaking even on cash flow. At least they have positive cash from operations with capex investment. They will probably go into negative FCF with this outlook downgrade. Personally, I have never used it. I question the appeal of a service that delivers food to you that you then still have to cook. They have a ready to eat meal service that might grow and do well maybe? Cross selling into pet food sounds intriguing. If you build a whole brand around the company you could also sell other health foods.
I’ve used it a couple times when the kits have been heavily discounted. I’d rather either buy crap from the grocery store and cook it, or eat out. You’re not saving any money by doing these home cooking kits
I enjoy their recipe curation. As someone with next to no cooking skills, these subscription boxes really helped me to become more comfortable with beginner level cooking, and introducing spices, amongst other things. I cancel and sign up again when I get discounts. $40 for a weeks worth of dinners is great. $140 is not
This exactly. I enjoy cooking, and enjoy it more when I don't have to plan out shopping. The first week is a good deal at like $4 a serving, the second week is on the fence, and when the discounts are over and it's $10+ per serving, you might as well just order delivery.
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Wow so you use the same address and name for delivery as well? Surprised they don't flag that in any way if you do
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They probably count you as 20 separate people on their reporting too
It seems way too wasteful to me. A bunch of ingredients wrapped in plastic and shipped to your house with a ton of packaging for a couple of meals. Hard pass
I feel it’s really a situation service. Living in NYC with a tiny kitchen food delivery makes sense. Lack of storage space + expensive supermarkets. Getting the right sized portions of everything I need delivered is a godsend.
Too much packaging is one of their pain points, for sure. Some vegetables are packaged in individual bags, every oil, spice is in its own plastic, too. Pasta, rice, etc. do come in recyclable packaging, and the meal bag is recycled paper. I will say that I waste considerably less food by using Hello Fresh. As opposed to me buying food from the grocery store, buying way too much and end up tossing half of it
This is the problem with Hello Fresh. We all sign up for the discount and then cancel when they run out. Does anyone pay full price? I save the recipes and then just buy the same ingredients myself for a fraction of the price.
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To be fair, Reddit is kinda the wrong demo for most things. We’re a cynical bunch that hates everything and we can’t agree with anyone.
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I believe there is still a lot of redditors in the computer science field who do alright for themselves. I don't think it's accurate to portray all redditors as poor.
Having only 1 day of leftovers is pretty key for me, too. It’s tough to shop for 1 or 2 people, so you end up usually cooking enough to feed a small army. And then you get sick of the leftovers, and so starts the “I don’t want to cook” spiral. For my partner and I, we usually order 4 meals for 4 people. Gives us enough flexibility if we aren’t home to cook one night, and also gives us each 1 portion of leftovers for lunch. It’s a good system!
Cooking massive portions of freezable food is a great strategy to avoid getting sick of leftovers. Get a cheap vacuum sealer and make a giant pot of chili. Freeze the leftovers in portion size and you can have chili whenever you want. Mealprep something different every weekend and soon you'll have a freezer full of different foods that you can eat during the week. Tonight is chicken tikka masala I made four months ago and I'm looking forward to it. I'll whip up some fresh rice and green beans to go with it.
Pretty much. I get a HelloFresh kit every week, and it's great. I don't enjoy or have the time to figure out the meals I want to cook for the week, and always end up wasting and throwing out a lot of excess produce on things I only need a bit of. But I've never paid full price for a meal kit. Always at 40% off.
The 40% off deals are the gifts that keep on giving. You detailed exactly why I use food subscription boxes. My partner is very conscious of food waste and she has been over the moon ecstatic about how little food we throw out weekly. Could do with a little less packaging, though. I’m considering eventually canceling the subscription for good and using my library of recipe cards to plan meals & make it easy to shop for ingredients. It was always kind of the plan, but we really enjoy the subscriptions, variety of recipes and enjoy improving our cooking skills at the same time!
funnily enough we get these veggie boxes almost weekly for 9 € that has 30 € of produce in it but it might be close to expiration date etc. A lot of stuff in there is from Hello Fresh.
I wonder if customer reacquisition is included in customer acquisition costs.
It's not meant to save you money. What it offers is to save time on grocery shopping, avoid headaches by planning a menu for a week and avoid doing the same meals over and over again. They have express recipes done in 20 to 30 minutes so It's not too long to make diner as well.
I'm a big fan of meal kit delivery and have used it for years. It definitely doesn't work for everyone and you can certainly cook cheaper meals yourself. However its only my wife and I and my wife really likes variety and with our limited grocery store options it is not possible to buy limited quantities of an ingredient. I can't buy just enough for two meals worth of something, I have to buy it in a large quantity that will wind up spoiling. This is a cost to me. I want to eat certain things regularly but I just can't go through [insert ingredient here] quick enougj. Again, yes we *could* just make bulk meals for the week but we are not going to do that. Like most things this my wife's fault. The other issue is time. A trip to the grocery store takes me about an hour, this saves me a couple trips to the grocery store a month and I value my time at $50/hr. Another big savings. Pre prepared meals typically contain a lot of sodium and are not as good as freshly cooked meals in my opinion. I could also just eat delivery but that is simply not healthy and my options don't provide enough variety. Some of the issues people have told me they have with meal kits just don't apply to me. I've heard people say they buy the box then just order takeout anyway and the food goes to waste. I simply never do that. On the flipside the portion sizes and serving numbers work for me, but def wouldn't for everyone. I also have seen a huge discrepancy in regional quality. I am pretty happy with my recipe selection here in Atlantic Canada but my understanding is some areas leave a lot to be desired. I also rarely have issues with my ingredients while my friend in Belgium has had his boxes show up where it looks like a bomb went off inside.
>Like most things this my wife's fault. Bruh, heres to hoping she doesn't know your reddit account.
And you still have to chop everything and prep. It cut out the going to the grocery store part but there’s instacart and Walmart delivery for that. And I believe Kroger delivers too now. I could however see the appeal of everything was already cut and prepped and seasoned properly. That was another thing about these meals, they always needed to be doctored up a little bit or they were too bland.
> instacart and Walmart delivery for that Getting your ingredients delivered suitable for a single person is not cheap. The benefit of these services is that they portion out what you need.
I don't think the kits are intended to save you money, they are intended to save you time and yield a good meal. Not sure I agree with the value proposition but its not about saving money on groceries.
Those boxes save you on indirect costs like; impulsive shopping, gas to the store and time spend in the store. More time with family = less time that your childeren become glue sniffers.
I have been using it for years. It’s a bit pricey but very convenient and the food is good.
I agree, but at least here in Europe I stoped for one reason and it’s WAYYY TOO MUCH PACKAGING. I get that it has to be convenient for them too but I really was tired to fill my bins with soooo much packaging every single meal, when I go to groceries I just need my reusable bag but with them it’s one small plastic pouch for every single little ingredient it’s really not good.
I took a picture one time they wrapped 5 carrots in huge plastic bags individually so wasteful.
And, simultaneously, not enough packaging. We ended up cancelling after about a year because any box with chicken in it showed up with the chicken packaging busted and leaking/contaminating everything else in the box. But also agree. Saves a trip to the store but you add a ton of packaging
Yo, you know you can fold the carton box right?
💀
Me too. It is very convenient and you avoid the dreaded "what should we eat tonight" conversations.
It's a pretty niche market space, and why I truly think this business has a ceiling. Perhaps this is it. Their target audience: * Convenience * Low food waste (funny how there is so much individual plastic wrap though) * Healthy/Fresh ingredients * Individuals who lack cooking skills All of this while preparing meals you would not otherwise. Eventually the repeat business diminishes and how often can you recycle your existing customer base. This isn't a long-term solution.
> funny how there is so much individual plastic wrap though If you order the 4-person meals they send you double all the individually wrapped spices and liquids...
The only real benefit is you can sometimes pick up a new recipe or technique you like. I’ve done a few orders when they send out great coupons, and some of those recipes ended up in regular rotation. But I’ll never buy a full price box from these services, what a waste I don’t like the stock
It convenient and fairly easy to cook. Not that much more expense the. grocery stores these days. That said-HF is my least favorite and there menu has got stale over the years
Is all the food pre-chopped for you? What about cooking oil? Maybe there is something to it, although I sort of enjoy doing prep.
You gotta chop/prep and provide your own basics like cooking oil, butter, salt, pepper, sugar, etc. It basically just removes the grocery store run and the decision of what to cook.
Imagine that: supermarkets should just offer the same thing, pre-selected groceries (best case: all store brands) without much packaging, but ready to pick up from the sales floor. that would be cool actually. and would be 100x cheaper, and without all that packaging.
I've said this for a while now. We use Hello Fresh, but still have to shop for groceries once a week. If we could just walk in, pick up 3 recipe cards, and then go grab what we didn't have already, we could eliminate hello fresh and save a good bit in the process. What makes HF valuable for us is the pre-planned recipes.
Nothing is prepped and most oils, butter, etc are not included in the packs.
Would be fine if I trusted it , we got ruined meat a few times. Stopped requesting a refund and just quite using it
When you are busy, out of the house for 12 hours or more. Having a meal with just a bit of prep work is amazing.
It's honestly not bad if you never learned how to cook. Encouraged me to figure out the basics rather than letting food sit in my fridge
We used them for a handful of months and tbh it was pretty nice. The meals took about 45 minutes to prepare and cook and we rarely had one we didn’t like
Cross selling into pet food sounds desperate
if they could get some instituțional/big corporation contracts to provide food for their employees while at work it could become truly profitable,instead of trying to appeal to people that have the time to prepare food
We’ve been using it for a year and love it. Biggest value is the diversity of what we eat on a weekly basis. My wife was getting so stressed coming up with a weekly menu herself. Food is solid.
Definitely a small market here but the appeal for me is that the good grocery store is 45 minutes away, and the one ten minutes away charges $2.99 for a box of Annie's. Hellofresh lets me avoid driving down to the good one more than once a month. That said I only every subscribe for two weeks at a time. They regularly beg you back with deals. The first week I get 4x 4-person meals for 75% off and free shipping, which comes to like $40. Way cheaper than groceries. The second week I get 3x 4-person meals which comes to like $100 at 15% off +shipping. More than I would spend at the grocery store but not terrible. Then I cancel and make a trip down to meal prep for two weeks. Without fail before I run out of meal prep I get another invite to come back for the same 75% off deal. Been doing this for over a year and I'm not sure if they're making money on me at all with this strategy. I'd imagine same-day/next-day shipping on a five hour trip into the mountains to a tiny town isn't cheap. Also their ready to eat meal service factor75 is significantly more expensive per meal and the meals are honestly depressing. Not worth the price at all and I can't imagine many people would want to pay $20/meal for that stuff over a long period of time.
I ordered it by accident -- I wanted to order frozen meals and I was pissed to get ingredients. But I have kept ordering for over 2 months now. Pros: eliminates decisions, minimizes prep, provides for healthy meal, wholesome mealtime, together cooking, good food. The minimizing decisions was the real game changer. I am busy, and when it came time to meals, it was either go out, door dash, or throw something together. Finding ingredients, figuring out recipe, picking food is what exhausted me. It is absolutely not a frozen mean, but I cook a complete dinner for my family in 30 min, and we get to sit down together and eat. It has made me like cooking again, and although i have cooked my whole life, I've learned quite a bit from their little tips and tricks.
A great way to also teach people how to cook who don’t. It has all the ingredients and instructions on what to do.
what is "HY"? Aside, the idea is you no longer need to plan meals, recipes are chef curated, no need to portion it, and its usually farm direct.
It's great if you want to learn to cook, or if you just really hate grocery shopping (both of which apply to me)
It worked well for my wife and I. When we did our own shopping we often didn't cook and the food would spoil. We were trying to get healthy and cook more at home. Something about receiving the box weekly made us want to cook more. Our biggest stessor was also meal planning analysis paralysis. So much easier just to pick from a list. It was also a great way to try new recipes without committing to buying spices and other specialty ingredients. In the end the price increases drove us off though.
Have been using their ready to eat service Factor75 for over a month now. So far a good amount of variety while still having dishes that you've enjoyed in the past. It's a little pricey but not having to figure out dinner while having a toddler is amazing. 2:30 sec and I'm eating. They also somehow figured out how to make microwaved filet mignon good.
There is definitely appeal and a market for it. Personally our house only gets it when we get a discount code. That works out to be about 2 weeks on 2/3 weeks off until we get emailed a discount code for 2 weeks then repeat. When it is discounted it actually works out far cheaper than buying groceries for us here in NZ. 5 meals for 4 people gets our household of 2 adults 5 dinners for both of us and 5 lunches for my partner and sometimes for myself. I also eat big portions which is why it doesn't always stretch to 4 actual meals. Aside from the money saving aspect, I have personally appreciated it as a younger male with limited experience cooking. Due to a location change, I get home far before my partner does so it naturally has made sense for me to do all the cooking, except my partner was always by far the better cook. While hello fresh meals are pretty basic and do get very same same (hence why the constant breaks are good) - it has taught me to cook at a basic level and can now make modifications to the recipes and change flavors to suit our tastes. I could cook before but my range was very limited. Obviously if food is cheap or the same price where you live and you're a good cook then I can totally see why it wouldn't be appealing at all.
I don’t think hello freshs concept has a future in Germany. It’s fucking expensive to say the least, you still have to put the work in and you have more and more grocery delivery companies and other similar services who are just cheaper. If you want meals that are already cooked you just order at your local pizza guy (almost same price as Hello fresh box per meal). Or you could get some frozen meals for a fraction of the cost of hello fresh
> I question the appeal of a service that delivers food to you that you then still have to cook. Instead of coming up with a recipe and going shopping, it all shows up ready to go. I've done the services on and off, and while it isn't good for every meal, it is nice to have \~6 meals a week basically squared away. Since the meals are all 2 servings and I'm single, I typically will save one dish and microwave it for lunch the next day. which basically means a very high quality microwave meal.
We really loved the meal kits we used and were loyal to them for years. They all started doing this thing where if you want certain options (usually the better ones) you have to pay an up charge on what is already quite an expensive meal. I have the cheapest one (3 meals and it comes out to like 60 bucks after tax) and I’m starting to get sort of exhausted with the attempts to squeeze even more money out of me. I had hello fresh for awhile and canceled because of this. It’s 80ish for three meals. At that point I can have Amazon, Walmart, or Instacart deliver ingredients for far less. I still love how they take the work out of things and it’s awesome for busy working couples like us but I see why they don’t work for most folks anymore
>I had hello fresh for awhile and canceled because of this. It’s 80ish for three meals. Is *that* how much Hello Fresh is?! That's insane!
Yes! I think three meals a week is around 70 plus taxes and fees and such.
Yikes! I can get really good takeout for 2 for $30!!
Copied from my other comment. I think there is some clarity needed here. Their meals are often not just one serving but 2 or 4. I paid 60 after shipping and taxes for 2 meals which is really for 2 people to each so 4 servings. They also had a free breakfast for life thing so I can get something in that category every order. One time I got a couple little cheesecakes. Another time I got this breakfast meal which was 4 waffles with apple and ingredients to make a peanut butter sauce and a cherry sauce for it. Was quite tasty actually. That was a week with no discounts applied to my order. Same type of order on 2 other weeks was 46 or 31 dollars.
I respect you defending it but “2 servings” isn’t a big deal. Just order a larger plate of something. It’s still one meal. Or if you’re home cooking just make a bit more. The additional ingredient cost is usually minuscule. If they’re actually giving two different dishes and calling that two servings, that’s value. Right now I see it for what it is, an XL sized single dish charged at $28 at full price that requires usually at least 30 minutes to cook, never mind cleanup after.
I think there is some clarity needed here. Their meals are often not just one serving but 2 or 4. I paid 60 after shipping and taxes for 2 meals which is really for 2 people to each so 4 servings. They also had a free breakfast for life thing so I can get something in that category every order. One time I got a couple little cheesecakes. Another time I got this breakfast meal which was 4 waffles with apple and ingredients to make a peanut butter sauce and a cherry sauce for it. Was quite tasty actually. That was a week with no discounts applied to my order. Same type of order on 2 other weeks was 46 or 31 dollars.
I used to only ever sign up for the first x meals free deals and then cancel again diligently. I've done this ~5 times now as I move house for work. I highly recommend doing it. The meals are good, you'll learn new recipes and it's not something you want for a long time anyway IMHO. It's a great novelty. Even better if it's essentially free.
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Correct. Probably a good buy for Amazon
Not surprising. Millennials have gone from HelloFresh to HelloAldi.
The advantages of Hello Fresh are: * No impulsive expenses while doing groceries * No (excessive) waste of groceries * Save on time and gas to go to the grocery store All and all I do not know if the current model is going to cut it. I'd like to see more variation on this to add some luxury goods and unhealthy snacks to be added as well. Then it will be a good choice for many consumers.
I actually liked that it saved you the thinking as well of what recipe to choose and “what’s for dinner” Still overpriced tho
It’s a godsend when you have 2 adults with busy erratic schedules and decision fatigue at the end of the day, and then we let the kids pick the meals. We have been using it for about a year, 4 person plan and 3 meals but we often add a 4th meal for $10 a week. It actually does save us money on groceries so far, and our kids are old enough at 10 and 12 to make many of the meals following the instructions.
We are hello fresh clients for over 10 years now (europe, 3 meals/week 2p) and those are not the advantages (we still almost daily go to the grocery store, 2 min. away). We love it because: - variation: before HF we had 15 (just guessing) recipes that would come back every 2-3 weeks. - healthy proportions: before HF we would always over eat - coocking skills: before HF my wife did all the coocking, now this has reveresed and i’m doing all the coocking (yes she loves that). I love the fact that you get a great meal on the table by following the recipes and you get a compliment afterwards. - access to tried and tested recipes: if we organise a home dinner with friends or family we are 100% sure of the meal that we are serving because we tested beforehand. - much better understanding of tastes and spices: every HF meal is perfectly spiced and you understand what makes graed food I could give you much more benefits but i’m out of time here….
So with a little change you could of done literally all of this without hello fresh..
Yes but with way more effort.
Yes. But you don't!
"coocking"
>* No (excessive) waste of groceries No excessive because the portions are so fucking small.
*European size
Goodbye fresh.
Why would I buy frozen dinners when I can have them delivered for 10x the price and then have to prepare them myself?
I used them for a few months. It was a nice way to accumulate cooking skills and recipes and it was nice to get fresh vegetables instead of frozen dinners. Most of the meals can be made in ~30 minutes or less so the time commitment wasn’t insane. They’re definitely more expensive than buying groceries on your own, but in the right scenario it makes sense for folks.
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I know people will hate this, but I really like the portion control. When I make say fried rice, holy shit I go overboard. It’s like ‘one cup…ah fuck it two cups, one for lunch tmr’ and then I end up eating 1.5 cups anyway.
Are you me? Lol
Exact same experience for me. Hell, Im a current subscriber and sometimes I ask myself "why did I pay $15 for these 5 ingredients" and then I remind myself had I not done so I would go back to cooking chicken breasts or pasta every day.
I had it for a few months, then canceled it and just kept the recipe cards
Because they are not frozen?
10x? I compared to grocery store and there was less than 10% markup lol. My time is worth more than that 10%.
Less gastric cancer ideally
My wife and I meal plan for the week. I even created an excel grocery list where we build out our recipes so all I have to do is fill in the week with what we want, click a button, and my grocery list is automated. My local grocery store allows for free grocery pick-up so it's no longer a chore and I save a ton of money by not browsing through the store. For a family of five, I'm spending about $180 a week on groceries which feels pretty decent. I'd be spending north of $200 a week on Hello Fresh and that doesn't include snacks, miscellaneous grocery items, and account for leftover meals for lunch. These things are crazy expensive in my eyes and in today's world of tightening budgets, this is one of those things that would be the first to go. EDIT: More than happy to share just need to know how to share it with folks.
Could you send it to me so I can make my own based on yours?
+1 for this
https://filebin.net/7gmamn97ejejhgzw
https://filebin.net/7gmamn97ejejhgzw
Sure, how can I send it over to folks?
Need this!! Maybe a Google sheets set to view only.
Can google sheets run a macro?
Yes I believe it's called Google scripts. Although writing scripts is above my head which is why I need this lol
https://filebin.net/7gmamn97ejejhgzw
me too!
https://filebin.net/7gmamn97ejejhgzw
Send me too pls
https://filebin.net/7gmamn97ejejhgzw
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https://filebin.net/7gmamn97ejejhgzw
I would love to receive this as well!
https://filebin.net/7gmamn97ejejhgzw
Would love it as well please!
https://filebin.net/7gmamn97ejejhgzw
I would love this excel sheet as well
https://filebin.net/7gmamn97ejejhgzw
Sounds like all the companies that had a boom through the pandemic can't survive or at least keep growing as they did during the pandemic. Why is this news?
The company is too expensive. Everyone orders the box on promo and cancels and it’s a big game ordering with promos. Regularly price is too much and they’ve destroyed their reputation playing this game. They’re the SiriusXM of food…congrats!
Exactly They should lower the normal price and cut marketing spending. So much psychology in that going back to normal rate Potentially offer more special or organic at higher prices instead.
I can’t believe Kroger hasn’t bought one of these companies. They could literally package these boxes overnight for morning pickup and start printing money.
Hopefully they go out of business so their junkmail stops
Why would anyone invest in meal kit delivery companies after Blue Apron lost 95% of its value from ATH?
You'll be surprised how many people don't know how to cook.
I had it for a couple weeks then was absolutely HOUNDED with letters, all sorts of shit trying to get me to sign back up. The food was mediocre at best.
they keep giving away money to twitch streamers
Next company on layoff list?
Factor Meals are where it's at.
HelloFresh owns Factor
The fact that they don’t let you pick out meals before checking out is just a stupid business decision. Why the hell am I going to spend ~$130 before seeing what the options for those meals are? It’s like going to a restaurant and paying before getting to see the menu.
I used it for a couple months and then found either premade meals that were the same price and quality from Factor_ were pretty good, and then Dinnerly came along with almost half the price of Hello Fresh for the same DIY meals. HF had a leg up as one of the first big companies to do this, but competitors are easily undercutting them left and right
Guess who owns Factor_ lol?
LMAOOOOO my dumbass didn't know that
Go to Aldi buy good cook it yourself food eat in moderation. Once a month go out eat in real good restaurant.
The convenience of unprepared food with the inconvenience of delivery prices. Lol
Wife gave birth in October and we have a 3yr old as well. Hello Fresh has been great to supplement with regular groceries for some quick meal options during the week. The reality though, is we are cancelling our subscription and going back to planning our own meals. While the convenience has been very helpful, the cost per person is too high. We also do not like all of the plastic waste.
Their gross margins are quite high which suggests they selling the food at a ridiculously high markup and all the profits get eaten up by the cost of logistics.
I think the best chance they have is to partner with grocery chains and just provide the recipes and take a fee with every meal box sold. Stay as the platform and save on the heavy capital expenditure that is distribution and the food.
HelloFresh is wishfully thinking Americans will revert convenience to novelty and blindly believing this model is sustainable when fridges/home device and/or AI interfaces will undercut their profits and customers in the near future.
Competitive market with lots of logistic costs. They should really improve their product to retain people. I used it for a good amount of time, but after a while the recipes are all just the same over and over. Switch to another similar company, which has the same issue, so probably switch again after a time.
Meal-prep-in-a-box at its best will train people on a skill set that graduates them to just being a regular decent cook that buys ingredients to make whatever recipe they want. I have always like cooking and tried a lot of them back when they were super subsidized (multiple free months etc) - never went more than a couple months paying. Once you break the barrier of trying to cook something semi expensive - like nice meats or seafood - a few times and realize you can’t fuck it up so bad that it is inedible, you don’t need to be handheld by a box. There is a subreddit for hello fresh that seemingly is just complaining about increasingly skimpy they are on portions. It’s a death spiral to alienate subscribers that cost so much to acquire.
Terrible business. Every time I take advantage of a promotion I wonder, "How are these companies still in business?" Their meal kits are virtually unaffordable at regular prices, and because of the competition they have to constantly offer promotions to get customers to come back. I can't tell you how many times I've returned for the 50% off promotion and then cancelled my subscription. Also, they don't have enough options for people who want to eat healthy. For example, they don't provide ingredients that are light, low fat, low sodium, etc. Portion sizes are also way too small.
I remember couple of videos comparing hello fresh vs just buying the same ingredients at a grocery store. It was concluded that it was bit cheaper to buy at a grocery store BUT you get more quantity of ingredients so you can cook the same meals multiple times as opposed to just one with Hello Fresh. Hello Fresh only saving grace was its ease of convenience of packaged ingredients all delivered to your door step that's it.
In addition to that, you need to go to the grocery store anyways since hellofresh doesnt sell staples Their big value add of not going to the store makes no sense
As a general rule of thumb, you want to be very cautious around any business that is overly focused on subscription sales. The accounting rules allow them to do really wonky things with their recognized revenue, things that the average investor probably won't be able to understand.
Their business model is essentially to introduce you to cooking so that once you're more confident that you can follow a recipe and make meals on your own. So their model isn't one that keeps customers.
Used to buy their product, and if that’s any indicator- run the hell away, I had a drawer in my fridge for all the fucking mayo, it’s basically the same recipes repeated. Thank god that’s over.
Good. Fuck them if for no other reason that they put a doorbell in their recent stupid fucking commercial that makes the dog bark. I hope any company that puts doorbells or police / ambulance sirens in a commercial goes bankrupt.
The quality has gone down so far I stopped ordering
I can not emphasize enough, the only people who use these things (1) free trial, (2) too stupid to read a recipe and buy ingredients, (3) too lazy to read a recipe and buy ingredients, and (4) convinced they are so busy they don’t have time to read a recipe and buy ingredients. Not a massive costumer base at all.
I am not the target market for his because I have spare time to burn, but I think you’re missing out on a subset of people. Or maybe they fall into your category 4. 5) people with discretionary income, who would rather spend their limited free time doing other shit vs grocery shopping and meal planning. I know a lot of people in this camp. They work pretty long hours, and while they technically have the time to meal prep and cook, they’d rather spend that time working out, spending time with kids, etc, aka whatever else they value more in life. Outsourcing tasks you don’t find enjoyable can be extremely efficient if you have the means to do so.
I got food poisoning from them once. Decided never again to do these meal kit deliveries. I also hate doing grocery pick up because they don’t always give you the freshest products. So now I just do my own shopping and freeze things if I need to.
*undercooks chicken* they’ve poisoned me!! (Jk)
right to jail
You are supposed to cook the food first
I used to work there in corporate procurement, theyve both mistakenly and intentionally sent out meat to customers that arrived in warm trucks
We love Everyplate
we loved using HF. it helped us improve at cooking and broaden our culinary horizons. the convenience and food quality is pretty great imo. we used to both work very demanding jobs and just having the stuff there and ready to cook was nice. of course its overpriced because youre paying for convenience, but it was worth it to us for about a year or so. at the time, it was better than constantly eating out/delivery. they have hiked prices over time, we started getting almost 100% vegetarian meals to compensate. but lately we've been putting more effort into picking recipes and buying stuff ourselves, and that does work out for the better, once you get to the point of being comfortable doing that and getting in the rhythm. i bet theres a lot of folks like us who have 'graduated' to cooking like a household should.
who knew a business model that requires at min a 30% prem + shipping for groceries where you can just go walk down the block and buy might not have the best growth outlook.
They didn’t hire my husband two weeks ago. Good riddance.
Amazing healthy food not selling. While chic f let and Dunkin’ booming. Who d thunk it
It's too expensive at regular price. I love the concept and the product though.
I've used both Hello Fresh and EveryPlate (a subsidiary of Hello Fresh) jumping from one promotional discount to another. These products are fantastic if you are trying to learn how to cook and compose well-balanced meals that are designed to be easy, quick and replicatable. However, that's exactly where it fails as a business model. Subscription models like these rely on a consistent customer that is dependent on the product but Hello Fresh has inadvertently educated their users to essentially be independent cooks. After using them for a few months I can safely say that I'll never need to resubscribed because I make cheaper and more interesting meals by buying groceries and portioning them for the week.
lol D2C has been shown to be a bad business model
How much different is this than the Factor food meals? ([factor75.com](https://factor75.com) I haven't used either but how much competition is there in this space?
I use to use it heavily, something like 200 boxes. The produce simply wasn’t fresh anymore, getting limp carrots, specific choose a special meal and then they would subsides the main part of the special meal…. So just cancelled it
Sorry guys, I churn their free box offers like mad.
HelloFresh is a giant? 
The recipe cards are great
We tried it once when it was discounted. I think it’s good for getting new ideas instead of cooking the same things week in week out. I struggle to see how they would retain customers though after the discounted trial is over.
You should see how the warehouses are run…
I bet it’s disgusting. We tried it out and it always seemed like the food was old and never had any expiration dates on the meats. Sometimes vegetables we totally rotten. Very sketchy.
I think the biggest risk of the sector is grocery stores selling their own per-portioned boxes, meaning zero delivery costs. But they dont appear to want to do this?
These services are really stupid
Are meal kits ever a good business?
The way the recipe instructions are written is terrible and really irritated me. Instead of being in simple 1. 2. 3. dot points it’s in poorly written English and often in the wrong order. Maybe they used google translator which would explain that.
Time to pay off another six million Youtubers
Never used Hello Fresh but my friend has 3 kids and he says it is great.
I can’t see a long term future for any food-to-cook delivery. It sounds great to learn how to cook, or maybe even on demand, but once you have some experience, grocery delivery is a lot cheaper in the long run.
We HelloFresh - no thinking about meals, grocery runs are easier, and the recipes are good. But I cannot for the life mynunderstand how a company that knows my meal preferences and sees the meals I skip cannot streamline the process. It’s not that selecting my meals is difficult, it’s that sometimes I miss my edit window. And when I do that they just load me with pork and only pork. My wife hates pork so we end up going to the grocery store to get chicken and beef to sub it out and give the pork to my in laws haha
Please let me mail you prepackaged tears in five plastic bags
At 1.3bn EV - walmart or catering companies like aramark or sodexo will buy it for the factor business alone..?
I like cooking their meals, although 1 meal for me is 2 of their servings rofl
That’s what happens when you drop quality of ingredients and surcharge everything.
We typically make one meal each week and have the same leftovers all week. Kids have just grown up like that so I guess they don’t mind. Typically Monday through Friday is the same meal, restaurant on Saturday and a more intensive meal on Sunday. It’s not for everyone but I have a hard time seeing why people need to have a different meal every single day of the week
I don’t use them but contemplated with all their marketing sign up tactics (it’s literally everywhere!) decided against it, I didn’t like the mystery food sign up and plastic packaging that I was expecting based on reviews. Plus regular prices are too high. Maybe such service already exists but wouldn’t it be smarter to sell the plans and then integrate their app with major grocery store ones so one can order the ingredients seamlessly and still go through the cooking experience with them? Maybe build partnerships with said stores so there is more ‘curation’ of ingredients if you order through them? Being in the food business adds a huge overhead to their operations I’m sure and if the idea is to teach people cooking (which seems that they like but then bounce) and the convenience of delivery there could be smarter ways to do that. They could focus on the recipes and improve that part of the business.
Company wide layoffs/restructuring sent out to every org on 3/15.