HelloFresh UK Review

UPDATED December 02. 2024.
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In 2011, HelloFresh began as a small startup created by two friends who wanted to come up with an easier way to get a healthy, delicious dinner on the table every day. Today, it is an international meal kit delivery service with legions of satisfied customers in all countries where its amazing recipe boxes are available, including the UK. If you are curious about this popular service’s offer for the UK market, keep reading this HelloFresh UK review and join us as we discover the wealth of options it provides.

What Is HelloFresh UK

HelloFresh UK is a subscription-based meal kit delivery service that provides simple recipes and fresh ingredients necessary to make the meals. Its recipes are suitable for omnivores, vegetarians, pescatarians, flexitarians, and little picky eaters.

With nearly 2 dozen recipes on the weekly menu, easy preparation that can take as little as 20 minutes, and pre-portioned ingredients that save time on measuring and eliminate food waste, HelloFresh UK makes dinnertime a breeze. Many of its recipes call for just 1 or 2 pots, thus significantly reducing the amount of mess you have to deal with after you are done cooking.

While its recipe boxes are best suited for households of 2-4, the service is surprisingly popular among singles as well. Its 2-serving kits are great for busy people looking for a 2-in-1 solution that lets them enjoy a delicious dinner and have something healthy to eat at work the next day.

HelloFresh UK primarily focuses on natural, seasonal ingredients that are delivered at peak freshness, so you do not have to rush to use them up in 2 days. With the exception of meats, which should last at least 3 days in the fridge, all ingredients you receive can last a whole week if properly stored, meaning that nothing ever wilts or goes to waste before you get the chance to enjoy it. This is a big deal, considering that many meal kit services promise freshness but actually bring you foods that are in suboptimal shape and need to be used up straight away.

As you can see, HelloFresh UK offers virtually everything a home cook hopes for when signing up for a boxed meal delivery. Thus, we gladly recommend it as one of the best meal kit services in the UK.

How Does HelloFresh UK Work

HelloFresh UK allows you to choose between the Classic, Rapid, and Family recipe boxes and cook 3, 4 or 5 times a week for 2, 3 or 4 people. You can order anything from the menu or opt for recipes particularly designed for the box type of your choice.

The weekly menu includes 21 distinct recipes and changes every week. The recipes are conveniently labeled in accordance with their suitability for families, home cooks who prefer quick recipes, and those who want to enjoy a balanced diet. Read more about the company’s meal options in the Meals And Recipes section of this HelloFresh UK review.

HelloFresh UK how work

As it is usually the case with top-tier meal kit services, subscriptions are flexible and allow you to adjust them to your needs, desires, and schedule. You can modify your order, skip a delivery or end your subscription whenever you see fit. However, all alterations need to be completed before the weekly cut-off, which is always on Wednesday at 11.59 pm.

With nearly 2 dozen recipes on the weekly menu, easy preparation that can take as little as 20 minutes, and pre-portioned ingredients that save time on measuring and eliminate food waste, HelloFresh UK makes dinnertime a breeze.

What Makes HelloFresh UK Different

HelloFresh UK is much more than a highly flexible and convenient service that makes home cooking easier than ever. Apart from its healthy recipes and high-quality, pre-measured ingredients, it also offers plenty of additional perks to its customers. Let us take a look at some of them.

First of all, the company has an excellent referral program. If you decide to recommend HelloFresh UK to your friends, you can join the program and the company will give your friends £20 off their first box and also reward you with £20 for every successful referral, allowing you to save cash on your next order.

If you like gifts, you are in luck because HelloFresh UK has another great treat for you. This service allows you to collect reward points simply by ordering its recipe boxes, referring friends, and collecting its special cooking badges that you receive after you have ordered 2, 5 or more boxes. These points can be exchanged for gorgeous cooking accessories available in the Rewards Shop. Once you collect enough points, you can choose the gift you want and if you order it before midnight on Wednesday, you receive the gift with your next delivery.

Finally, HelloFresh UK recipe boxes make for a great gift. You can surprise your foodie friends with HelloFresh UK gift cards and choose from gift boxes with 3, 4 or 5 meals for 2 people or 3 meals for 4 people.

HelloFresh UK Meals And Recipes

HelloFresh UK meal options
For Families
Gluten-Free
Vegetarian

We have mentioned before in this HelloFresh UK review that the service designs different recipes for different recipe boxes. Now we will focus on each box individually.

HelloFresh UK meal

With the Classic box, you can usually choose from 21 recipes on the weekly menu. You can opt for the standard or the vegetarian version of the Classic box. With the standard version, you can enjoy meat, seafood, and veggie dishes and decide whether you want to cook for 2, 3 or 4 people. If you are cooking for 2, you can order 3, 4 or 5 recipes. If you are cooking for 3 or 4, you can order 3 or 4 recipes. With the vegetarian version, you can order 3 veggie recipes per week for 2, 3 or 4 people.

The Rapid box brings you amazingly quick and delicious recipes for 2, 3 or 4 people. Like with the Classic box, you can order 3, 4 or 5 recipes for 2 people or 3-4 recipes for 3-4 people. You can choose from 4 rapid, 20-minute meal ideas or add any of the 21 menu items to your order.

The Family box used to be reserved for families of 4. Recently, the company has decided to redesign it so it follows the same ordering pattern as the previous 2 boxes. Thus, you can opt for the 2-person Family box including 3, 4 or 5 recipes, the 3-person Family box with 3 or 4 recipes or the 4-person Family box containing 3 or 4 recipes. You can normally choose from 20 meal ideas every week, including 4 options designed with kids in mind. Family recipes usually require the use of just 2 pots and take up to 30 minutes to prepare.

HelloFresh UK meals

While creative, the recipes are never too extravagant or exotic. Keeping in mind the different tastes of its customers, HelloFresh UK strives to provide recipes that nearly everyone will love. You can expect delicious, gourmet burgers, juicy chicken prepared in a variety of ways, with all kinds of nutrient-packed sides, hearty stews, easy-to-make, colorful stir-fry dishes, and more.

Unfortunately, there are no customization options when it comes to the ingredients. If you are allergic to an ingredient, you should take a look at the allergen information provided with each recipe and simply skip the recipes that contain the products you need to avoid.

How Much Does HelloFresh UK Cost

The prices of HelloFresh UK recipe boxes depend on the number of people you are cooking for and the number of meals you want to cook per week. They range from £3.44 to £5.00 per serving. The more food you order per week, the less you pay per serving.

HelloFresh UK meals plan price

The pricing is always the same, regardless of which recipe box you opt for. If you are ordering for 2 people, the price you pay per serving is £5.00 if you order 3 recipes, £4.37 if you order 4 recipes, and £4.20 if you order 5 recipes. With the 3-person option, the price per serving is  £4.67 for 3 recipes and £4.08 for 4 recipes. Finally, with the 4-person option, you pay £3.83 per serving if you order 3 recipes and £3.44 per serving if you get 4 recipes per week.

The great news is that shipping is always free, no matter how much food you order or where in the UK you live.

Where Does HelloFresh UK Deliver

HelloFresh UK delivers its recipe boxes to mainland UK, the Isle of Wight, Jersey, and Northern Ireland. Its delivery map does not include the Scottish Highlands and Islands. The company is continuously working on expanding its geographical coverage.

The full list of postal codes that are currently outside the service’s delivery map includes AB30, AB33-AB38, AB41-AB45, AB51-AB56, FK17-FK21, HS1-HS9, IM1-IM9, IM99, IV1-IV9, IV10-IV19, IV20-IV28, IV30-IV32, IV36, IV40-IV49, IV51-IV56, IV63, KA27, KA28, KW1-KW14, PA20-PA38, PA41-PA49, PA60-PA80, PH15-PH26, PH30-PH44, PH49-PH50, TR21-TR25, and ZE1-ZE3.

Boxes are delivered 6 days a week, between 8 am and 7 pm. Depending on your location, you may be able to choose the evening delivery option (from 5 pm to 9 pm) on Sunday or Monday, but keep in mind that this option comes with a small additional fee.

It is important to note that you do not have to be at home at the time of the delivery. All you need to do is provide instructions for a safe drop.

HelloFresh UK Pros And Cons

To make sure HelloFresh UK meets all your standards and expectations, it is important to know its biggest advantages and disadvantages. With a short overview of its pros and cons, you can easily decide if HelloFresh UK is the right meal kit service for you.

Pros
  • Quick and simple recipes
  • Fresh ingredients
  • Vegetarian recipes available
  • Flexible subscription
  • Free shipping on all orders
  • Rewards program
  • Referral program

Cons

  • Cannot be customized to exclude allergens

Sample Dishes

If you subscribe to HelloFresh UK, you can easily prepare culinary masterpieces using only the ingredients and recipes found in your meal kit box. You may not be a pro chef just yet, but with HelloFresh UK, you can easily make restaurant-grade meals. You don’t have to take our word for it – check out the images below to get a better idea of the types of dishes you can enjoy with HelloFresh UK.

Bottom Line

HelloFresh UK is driven by the belief that cooking healthy and tasty meals for yourself and your family should bring you joy and not cause additional stress. It provides great recipes for vegetarians, flexitarians, pescatarians, and meat lovers and allows you to quickly prepare meals that suit the tastes of the whole family. The prices are neither high nor low and shipping is free on all boxes. Unfortunately, it does not allow you to chuck out the ingredients you need to avoid, but that is the case with many meal kit deliveries out there. All in all, it is a good option for home cooks who want to take a break from recipe searching and grocery shopping and have more fun in the kitchen.


User Reviews (13)

HelloFresh UK is rated 4/5, based on 13 user reviews.

The HelloFresh UK reviews listed below reflect the opinions and experiences of real users and are in no way influenced by the service reviewed here. Before publishing each review, our team checks whether it was submitted by an actual user in an effort to prevent false or spammy reviews.

  1. | March 7, 2021

    Did the 4 week trial period. Every week there was an issue. Late deliveries, wrong recipe cards. On the last week, the delivery didn’t even show up and they sent me an email way after cutoff delivery time (night time) saying sorry but we won’t be delivering your box and can’t tell you when we will. What kind of service is that?
    The food itself was okay. Decent portions but I prefer having a more autonomous choice over my ingredients. Will not carry on with the subscription.

  2. | March 12, 2020

    I managed to collect over 100 pounds thanks to the referral program which I would have done anyway because I love hello fresh and I know my friends will love it too!

    • Samantha Grove | November 3, 2021

      We were very excited to receive our first box but it was all downhill from there. Recipe card was missing. Instructions were hard to understand from the ingredients to the method. Zero customer service, all you get is an automated service desk bot. Cancelled straight away.

  3. | March 5, 2020

    20 mins to prep and fresh ingredients delivery, say no more! I was in the moment I’ve heard and I haven’t regretted it since.

  4. | February 14, 2020

    I am on my 4th box now, my husband and I are back in the kitchen, prepping and cooking together, he is trying foods now that he would never have even tasted (and believe me he is picky, wont have sauce on anything), he has loved every meal so far – they are quick and easy to make and when we sit down, its really satisfying to realise that we have made it from scratch. so thank you Hello Fresh, we have gone from eating at least 3 take-aways a week to freshly prepared lovely tasty home cooked food (don’t miss the take-aways at all)

  5. | September 2, 2018

    Good service that lets me save a lot of time on cooking during the week, but I do wish there were more customization options!!!

  6. | August 22, 2018

    Rapid box fan here! I’m learning to cook, so I decided to try out HF a couple of months back. I love the service and I feel I’m getting better at cooking each time I prepare a meal. I do have one suggestion to make – HF should let us order food for the entire week, not just for 3 days.

  7. | July 29, 2018

    Hello Fresh is the absolute best meal kit delivery me and my family tried. We order for a family of 4, although there are 3 of us, but that’s because my husband has a hearty appetite and eats for 2 🙂 The recipes are always simple, which is important for me, and the quality of the ingredients is just amazing. My kid loves the food I put on the table, I don’t have to spend time on shopping and searching for recipes, and the price is more than fair.

  8. | July 26, 2018

    Charged me an extra £34.99!
    After cancelling my subscription they charged me for the next box. I contacted customer service who proceeded to call me by the wrong name which was a bastardized version of my last name which is a man’s name( I am a woman).
    Their response was to give me a cut and paste response which said I didn’t not contact them before the deadline which I did in fact do. They just took forever to get back to me about it!

  9. | June 15, 2018

    I received a promotional email from Hello Fresh with the following…
    “…With 30% off your next 2 boxes, there’s no better time to join us in the kitchen again!”
    I thought what a good deal and ordered 2 boxes however I didn’t receive a discount and when I realized I had been charged full price I was told that only new customers are entitled to 30% off. There email hadn’t made any reference to the fact the deal is only for New customers – very MISLEADING. Not happy with the customer service and there was no apology.
    Lots of time wasted trying to communicate with Hello Fresh.

  10. | April 9, 2018

    Used to be great but reliability of delivery and quality of contents has diminished over the last year as they’ve taken on too many customers too quickly. Rarely includes any healthy options and you invariably end up ordering at least one meal that you’re not so keen on. Think meat (or fish) and two veg and you’re pretty much there, but often with lots of fiddly preparation. If you’re single and ordering the box for two people and prefer to eat healthily, it’s easier and cheaper to go out and buy a few portions of lean meat or fish and some vegetables each week. I also find their aggressive marketing and constant badgering to recommend friends really jarring… [Speaking as someone who’s consumed 50 Hello Fresh boxes over the past two years and has just quit the service]

  11. | August 25, 2017

    Not too satisfied with the ingredients, not as good as I expected.

  12. | August 18, 2017

    Took my sisters advice and gave it a try, more than pleasantly surprised by the quality. The recipes are great and the kids keep asking for seconds, which rarely happened before.

  13. | July 12, 2017

    Flexible and convenient, but not the best out there.

  14. | June 22, 2017

    I’ve been a customer for 2 months now and I’m really satisfied with the service, especially with the taste of the food, amazing, like in a restaurant!

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