Has anyone here tried Home Chef (or any other home meal delivery service)?

[CTyankee]

I'm getting ads from Home Chef on my email and wondered if it is cost effective for two elderly people?

[oldtime dfl_er]

1. following

Curious specifically about Purple Carrot.

[Upthevibe]

2. CTyankee........

When I was working with/for my friend in Dallas (her small business was in her home), we tried almost every home meal delivery service.

There are SO many options. Some come where you just need to put them in the oven or microwave and they're ready to go. Some you need to do some preparing but all the ingredients come with. Some are tastier than others. I don't know about the cost efficiency
(since she paid).

I'd say definitely give it a try. I just wouldn't sign up for anything long term unless and until you see it works for you.

[woodsprite]

3. We do HelloFresh.

We do 2 meals a week for 4 people. Last week it was Creamy Lemon Dill Trout with roasted broccoli and potato wedges for one meal and some awesome chicken sausage, totellini, and spinach soup with garlic bread and a salad for the 2nd meal. We added the salad as an option.

Skipping shipments is easy. We also get some odd grocery bits from Thrive Market, but it's not a meal service.

[Ninga]

4. We've tried 8 meals from Factor. Mr Ninga and I didn't care for 6 of them. Basically it's the

flavoring/spices. The chicken wasn’t dry, the beef was. A chicken thigh and pasta meal had me hunting for the chicken. I cancelled the plan. I will watch is space to see if someone likes their meal plan.

[MANative]

5. We used Home Chef during the height of the COVID pandemic when there were shortages of proteins...

... in the grocery store. Off and on, we used it for about a year. The cost wasn't crazy - about $20/meal for two, a little more if you wanted "premium" ingredients like scallops, better steaks - and there was no waste/leftover food, which was a plus. We did find that the quality of the product diminished substantially by the time we quit the service and that the options got repetitive. While it started out as a delivery of ingredients that you would then prep yourself (chopping, slicing, breading, etc) it shifted over time to things that were already prepped and you just did a super-quick assembly and popped it in the oven or saute pan. Since we both like the process of prepping meals, that was less satisfying, and again, the quality of ingredients suffered when everything was pre-chopped.

I think it's fine for people who aren't enamored of cooking and keep a fairly regular rotation of meals. I wouldn't go back to it again, though, unless I had challenges getting to a grocery store.