Imagine delicious meals delivered to your door with fresh ingredients. Hello, Yes! No need to imagine anymore, because this is the new frontier for making dinners. It can be hard to plan meals with our ever increasing workloads, so it’s no wonder there is an innovative solution to an age old problem.

How does it work?

A box is delivered to your door full of fresh vegetables, seasonings, directions and, at your preference, even the meat. Inside the box the meals are separately packaged and labeled for your convenience. On the bottom, the carnivores will find a layer of ice to separate and keep the meat cold until relocating to their new temporary home in the refrigerator. Having the meals organized in individual boxes makes it simple at dinner time to pull out the desired box, match the meat and start cooking quickly and easily.

Eating Fresh

The fact is that not everyone has access to fresh vegetables and by using a network of local growers, Hello Fresh has provided a solution for getting fresh vegetables easily.

On occasion, Hello Fresh provides meals with seafood or other fresh ingredients that are naturally quick to expire, so it’s important that these ingredients are enjoyed while still fresh. Make sure to read the boxes and plan to make those meals first.

Eating Healthy

Eating fresh usually means eating healthy, so it’s helpful when someone has already done the work to plan fresh and healthy meals. For some people, eating healthy is not the first priority and for most others, it is more of a goal rather than the reality. Therefore, Hello Fresh is a great opportunity to enjoy great tasting food that is also healthy too.

No Shopping Required

With meals delivered to your door, you will realize quickly that your shopping trips are minimized, spending less time in line at the store and more time lining up other activities. A factor to remember when you consider the value of this service.

Reducing Waste

Almost everything in the box comes portioned with the necessary amount for the meal, with seasonings sometimes excepted from that rule to give you a bit extra, intentionally. This is very helpful for small households or amateur cooks because it can be hard to re-use extra ingredients for other meals. Consequently, meals are based around available ingredients rather than the other way around, which can prove a challenge for the inexperienced. A recipe might require a small amount of a given ingredient, but at the store, the only available amount might be more than plenty. As a result, the cost upfront is a bit much to buy a few $5-$10 seasonings to use only once or before losing flavor.

Learning Experience

One of the most important aspects of this service is the experience. People fall in a wide spectrum of cooking experience that ranges drastically from Chef Ramsey to Chef Boyardee or Julia Child to Marie Callender, so it’s just a matter of finding them somewhere in between. Surely, there must be something to learn from this service.

Cooking outside the box

There is a learning curve to becoming flexible in the kitchen. It can be easy to fall in rotation of commonly cooked dinners and often enough, this repetition can ruin the desire for once enjoyable dinners. The only solution to re-invigorate your taste buds is to seek an interesting recipe, obtain the sometimes alien ingredients, inform yourself on the preparation methods and then do it repetitively until comfortable. In the end, some just don’t have this experience to cook vastly new and diverse meals off the cuff. With Hello Fresh, preparing ingredients is enlightening to the true contents of the meal, a taste in complementing ingredients and after only a few boxes, experienced ideas will help to bring flavor back into mealtime.

The Economics

In a direct comparison of meals, the clear winner for saving the most money is home cooked meals, hands down. However, that clarity diminishes when you start consider other factors like availability of fresh foods and the gained cooking knowledge.

Nowadays, even a numbered meal from a fast food establishment is not too far off of the price point when considering cost. Remember when Subway foot longs used to be 5 dollars?

At $69 for a box of 3 dinners for two people, Hello Fresh costs $23 a meal, or $11.50 per person. Initially it sounds expensive. Yet if you peruse your local dining establishment menus you can see the starting price of some basic meals start at $7, $8 or even $9. Although for argument’s sake it’s important to note those are prepared meals.

Just like with most sales, when you buy more, you save more. So, if it’s an option, you can save more by getting the box of 5 dinners for two people and the price drops to $19.80 per meal, or $9.90 a person. A whole meal, with fresh ingredients, for under $10 dollars. Interest piqued?

The previous arguments are now strengthened even more if you factor in economics. When you go to the store less, reduce waste and spend less time planning dinners there is a soft savings that is at least worth considering.

Obviously the cost makes it difficult to replace dinners on a daily basis but as an occasional reward to the daily grind, why not enjoy this experience? Skip the fine dining out, sharpen your chef knife and spend a night at home with fresh ingredients and family members.

Who Should Use Hello Fresh?

If you are a seasoned chef, culinary arts major or if your toque blanche is just taller than the rest, then maybe this experience might not be anything new. Yet you should still download the Hello Fresh app, step down from your magnificent life of dining and check out the recipes that the rest of us peasants are aspiring to taste.

So, the question is obviously first and foremost, can I afford it? Then, the next consideration should be what experience am I seeking? The inexperienced will gain cooking insight and the proficients and professionals can explore, expand and possibly scrutinize the Hello Fresh process.

Think you’d like to try? Then head over to Hello Fresh and save $40 on your first box. Not without your fair warning that I save $20 on my next box if you use that link, so unless you want to spend more money and do extra work to type in the address yourself, you should just use that link.