Has anyone tried a meal delivery service?

I’ve done Blue Apron and Hello Fresh. I liked them both fine and tried quite a few new recipes we all really loved. Cons for me...I work from home and always plan extra of dinner for lunch the next day. That isn’t possible with these meals unless someone else in the family isn’t home for dinner. I’m also currently doing WW and these meals aren’t WW friendly.

I have done a Hello Fresh box and just tonight cooked a Blue Apron meal. I wanted to give more than one a try.

My HF sub is 2 people/3 meals and the BA is 2 people/2 meals.

I really liked the HF meals. They were all tasty and I didn't think too fussy to make. The recipe cards that they send are really easy to follow. I would be happy ordering from them more often.

The BA tonight was OK. I liked it but it seems from the two meals in my first box the ingredients list is pretty light. Easy to make and satisfying. The next meal I am not so sure about. Tonight was steak, golden potatoes and broccoli. The next meal we will try is chicken tostadas with rice and black beans.

If it were just me eating, any of these meals would be fine. I am willing to try anything and like all veggies. DH is more of a hearty meal kind of guy and likes his starches. And is not adventurous with his veggies.

I felt like the HF was more worth the money than the BA.

There are a lot of threads about this very subject.

We bought three blue apron boxes + a free one for our daughter.

She loved it. She is 20, in college,, in an apartment.

We tried Hello ?Fresh, Blue Apron and Plated. By far our favorite was Hello Fresh. The portions were enough that with a 2 person meal I had enough left overs for my lunch the next day, none of the others had any left overs. I liked their recipes the best too.
Blue Apron had wackadoo directions, imho. For instance one of them was for some sort of taco and the very first thing they had you do was heat the tortillas, then essentially set them aside for 20 minutes while you cooked the actual dinner. Granted I read all the instructions first and realized how stupid that was, but it made following the recipe more difficult as I had to constantly jump around. All of them were like that during the week we tried.
We actually did plated twice because I forgot to cancel, and several of the recipes we tried were very similar to each other and they must be getting a deal on Chinese broccoli because I think every meal used that. The recipes were just ok to me, I don’t think I will use most of them again.

In any event it was fun to try them, but they are way too expensive for us to use on a regular basis. I cook a lot from scratch and we have a very reasonably priced produce market so we spend less then what one weekly box would cost and we get more meals and leftovers for both of us every day.

I bought a 2 week trial subscription through Groupon to Hello Fresh and it’s been quite good. My 15 year old son has made a few meals totally on his own. The directions are easy to follow. I’d like to try some of the others just for fun.

I asked this same question here a month ago. Two peas sent me a free week at Plated and Blue Apron. The recipes were delicious -- we really loved the food.
Pros: I really liked that everything was in the box and premeasured. The recipes were just different enough from what we normally eat that I felt we were getting out of the rut we were in. The instructions were very clear and very well tested. My meals looked exactly like the picture in the end. They were very generous portions for us -- pretty high in calories compared to what we would normally eat, but easily solved by not cleaning my plate . I liked that the meal had lots of vegetables -- about 3 servings per meal.
Cons: The packaging. I filled my big trash can, which is rare for us. It really is a waste, despite being able to recycle some of it. I had trouble with the quality of the produce in both boxes. Rotten pepper, slimy mushrooms, mushy corn, barely useable butternut squash, hard as a rock avocado, plus leaking pork chops that made a big mess. I replaced things with stuff from my fridge. If it wasn't free, I'd have complained to the company, but since I was trying them out I didn't bother. The meals took time -- when they said 45 minutes, you were busy running around the kitchen for 45 minutes. You didn't assemble for 15 minutes and cook for 30. The food was a bit more complex than what I usually make, and it had a lot of depth and flavor.

I can send you a free Hello Fresh invite!