Meal kit delivery services make it easy to cook healthy dinners by taking away meal prep, shopping, and prepping ingredients. But with so many meal kits out there, how do you know which one to choose?
That’s a tough task and one you’ll have to research, but HelloFresh Canada has operated throughout the country since 2016 and is one of the top services available.
In this HelloFresh Canada review, I found it’s one of the top meal kits for a reason – its recipe selection and quality ingredients are second to none. Here’s everything you should know if you’re thinking of signing up.
Meal Delivery Service
Get weekly meals delivered directly to your house with easy-to-follow instructions and pre-portioned ingredients. With a variety of recipes, including those with special dietary needs, HelloFresh makes cooking easy and enjoyable.
- No meal planning, shopping, or prepping of ingredients necessary.
- Huge selection of recipes that rotates every week.
- Less food waste
- More expensive than other meal kits
- Cooking time can take longer than expected, especially if you’re a beginner.
What Is HelloFresh Canada?
HelloFresh Canada is one of the top meal delivery services in the country. Since its inception in 2016, the company has succeeded in finding ways to deliver top-notch ingredients easily transformed into healthy, home-cooked meals.
HelloFresh Canada commits its brand to making its customers’ lives easier. Their goal is to take away the agony of meal prep and everything that goes with it (menu planning, grocery shopping, worry about nutritional information) and provide an easy-to-make dinner with healthy ingredients.
The meal kit delivery service has various plan options – you can choose three, four, or five recipes per week for two or four servings. In addition, HelloFresh Canada makes sure to cater to all dietary needs – there are family-friendly, vegetarian, and pescatarian options.
Features and Benefits
To make it easier for customers, HelloFresh Canada allows clients to choose from different plan options at a low cost. Here’s a breakdown of everything HelloFresh has to offer.
Recipe Options
When you start your plan, you can choose from various recipe options. Even though you pick one, you aren’t locked into it and can change it anytime.
- Mostly Meat
- Family Friendly
- Smart Meals
- Vegetarian
- Quick & Easy
- Pescatarian
- High Protein
- Flexitarian
Recipe Selection
Each week, you can pick from over 35 different meals and find the one to suit you and your family’s tastebuds. When making a selection, you’ll find a description of the overall meal, along with the expected prep time, calorie count, and difficulty rating. It’ll also give you a rundown of the ingredient list and nutritional value.
Here’s an example of just a few meals you can choose from
Pricing
While a meal delivery kit is certainly convenient, price is often one of the deciding factors in signing up. HelloFresh Canada gives its customers several options to choose from in the hopes that one of the pricing alternatives can fit within everyone’s budget.
How much the kits cost depends on the number of people in your household and how many recipes you need per week. Here’s a table showing the cost per serving and the total cost of various combinations.
| People Served | Recipes | Cost / Serving | Total Cost |
| 2 | 3 | $12.17 | $82.99 |
| 2 | 4 | $11.88 | $104.99 |
| 2 | 5 | $11.50 | $124.99 |
| 4 | 3 | $10.83 | $139.99 |
| 4 | 4 | $10.31 | $174.99 |
| 4 | 5 | $9.25 | $194.99 |
At first, spending this much money on a meal kit might seem frivolous. However, consider how much you’d spend on groceries to make the same meals.
While you might find better grocery deals and incur less expense, you’d still need to prep all your ingredients, a task that HelloFresh already does.
In addition, if you were making the recipe on your own, you’d probably have leftover ingredients that you wouldn’t use again, costing you money and generating unwanted food waste.
The bottom line is that HelloFresh is a solid fit for those looking to have a healthy home-cooked meal with little fuss.
HelloFresh makes it enticing to join by regularly offering promo and coupon codes. Check out their discount page if you’re unsure if the meal kits are right for you.
How It Works
Once you’ve decided to join the meal kit club, the next few steps are easy. First, you’ll want to go on their website and personalize your plan. This means choosing your preferences and setting up your plan size.
Next, you’ll set up an account and scroll through the available recipes. Recipes rotate, so you won’t have the same selection week after week.
You can cancel at any time, but most importantly, you’re free to pause or skip a week if you’re away or just don’t need a meal kit.
How Does Food Stay Fresh During Delivery?
One of the most common questions frequently asked is how food can stay fresh during delivery. According to HelloFresh, they pack meal kits in specially designed boxes with insulated liners and cooling packs.
Some boxes are packed with dry ice to ensure food stays at the optimum temperature throughout the delivery process.
You can always log into your account, so you’ll know when your kits are scheduled for delivery. Not at home during your drop-off time? No problem – because all food is adequately packed, your order will get delivered to your front door (or your otherwise specified location).
HelloFresh Vs Chefs Plate
One of the top meal kit delivery services in Canada, Chefs Plate is a division of HelloFresh Canada, so you’ll see many similarities between the two. However, Chefs Plate only delivers to Canadian customers.
With both Chefs Plate and HelloFresh, you can choose between a variety of meals each week. Both companies cater to different dietary needs, but a benefit to Chefs Plate is that they offer a meal kit for one, something not on HelloFresh’s agenda.
However, HelloFresh will offer a wider variety of recipe options each week, something to consider if you always like to try something new.
Chefs Plate is cheaper than HelloFresh. A comparison between each website shows the difference between three meal deliveries per week for two people. With HelloFresh, you’ll pay $73 plus $9.99 shipping, for a total of $82.99. The Chefs Plate price comes to $59.94, and you don’t need to pay any shipping costs.
However, if you do select the Chefs Plate meal kit of two recipes for two people, you will have to pay a $6 shipping fee. Otherwise, there are no shipping costs. For more in-depth information, check out the review I did between the two.
HelloFresh Vs Goodfood
Goodfood has different “basket” or meal kit options. For example, you can choose from a Family, Classic, or Easy Prep Basket. However, unlike HelloFresh, Goodfood offers something unique.
Based on your selected preferences, Goodfood will curate recipes for your weekly order. If you aren’t happy with those options, you can change them and customize your basket any way you’d like.
While Goodfood lets you customize your basket with meals or grocery items, HelloFresh still reigns supreme with more meal options.
Goodfood tends to be cheaper than HelloFresh, but since HelloFresh offers many promo and coupon codes, the cost isn’t much different in the end.
Customer Reviews
Right on the front of HelloFresh’s website, you’ll find gleaming reviews about the company. One customer raved about the quality of the ingredients and how easy it was to put the recipe together.
Over on Trustpilot, the majority of reviewers gave HelloFresh four or five stars, with most citing the large recipe selection and ingredient quality as positive factors.
As for pricing, most reviewers found it adequate considering how much they’d spend at the grocery store if they didn’t use the service. One commenter stated that although the prices could be high, HelloFresh provides many discounts to make it more affordable.
While most reviews are positive, the customers with complaints are mainly unhappy with portion sizes.
Several reviewers on the Trustpilot website lamented about how their two-portion meal kit wasn’t enough to feed both people. The reviewer went on to mention that to fill them up they needed to add more meat or vegetables for satiety.
Other complaints were associated with delivery issues, but from what I read, the criticism mostly came from those living within apartment communities. It seems their meal kits would either get stolen or were left in a common area, and food would thaw out before they retrieved them.
Both of these complaints regarding delivery could be mitigated by checking your account when you know an order is on the way or by giving alternate instructions for delivery.
What About HelloFresh’s Sustainability Efforts?
How does HelloFresh impact the planet? First, as discussed earlier, all the ingredients are already pre-measured, which helps avoid unwanted food waste. According to their numbers, HelloFresh estimates that customers reduce food waste by up to 36% at each meal.
Next, the company makes an effort to keep its packaging minimal and 100% recyclable or reusable.
All ingredients within your box are ordered directly from producers and shipped to your home. This saves transportation and storage costs and means less time going from one place to another.
These efforts not only make HelloFresh a good option for your weekly meals but also lessens our carbon footprint and cut down on unwanted food waste.
How Long Does It Take for Delivery?
Once you set up your account and pick your meals, you probably can’t wait to eat them, so just how long does delivery take? It isn’t long at all. You can pick your delivery date five days from the time you choose your meals.
For example, if you order your meal on a Thursday, you can expect delivery the following Tuesday. In addition, keep note that once your order ships, it will arrive that day between the hours of 8 am to 8 pm.
Final Thoughts
It’s easy to get in a rut, planning and cooking dinner week after week. HelloFresh’s goal is to make mealtime delicious without all the added stress.
You can pick your recipes for the week and have all the ingredients on hand when you’re ready to cook.
There’s no looking for recipes and scouring the grocery aisles, just all the pre-portioned ingredients you need and a delicious meal to eat in the end.
HelloFresh is perfect for the busy customer or novice cook – no matter your skill set, you’ll have a healthy home-cooked meal for you and your family. Ready to give it a try?
Click here to take advantage of HelloFresh’s new sign-up deal and get your first few meals for free!
