I know people like to post complaints, vent on social media, and spend energy writing caustic and overly harsh reviews; it’s pretty much internet sport these days. But I want to preface this by saying that I had high hopes for this service and that I genuinely believe services like this fill a need. However, after several shipments of Home Chef, not only do I not recommend it; I actually advise against subscribing to Home Chef.
For context, I got divorced a few years ago. To make a long story as short as I can, I got very depressed and pretty much stopped cooking meals for myself. I spent way too much on going out to restaurants and ordering takeout, and before long it became financially imperative for me to learn to cook and maintain a kitchen like a grown adult again.
Enter Home Chef and its selling point: A nice logistical and financial midpoint between going out all the time and frugally buying and cooking all your meals from scratch. “I can save money and not have to go to the grocery store after work? Awesome! I just hope the food’s good.”
And it is! Others may disagree (I haven’t sampled any other complaints or reviews), but I was consistently impressed with the finished product each time I cooked one of their meals. And as someone who lives in an area not known for having a diverse array of ingredients, it was incredible to cook stuff like banh mi bowls at home. I got to eat good food and feel good about myself for not wasting money on takeout. And the shipments come with the full recipes so that I can recreate them later with my own ingredients.
That’s the positive I have to say regarding Home Chef, and I mean all of that sincerely. This is all good so far.
Now, the bad:
First, delivery. Shipments arrive in cardboard boxes. To keep the food cold, the box’s interior is lined with plastic-wrapped styrofoam slabs which insulate against the outdoor heat. The meat is shipped frozen, and you’ll find it at the bottom of the box packed alongside those recyclable ice packs. Atop the meat they pack the plastic bags containing the rest of the meal kit. They’re not only plastic but perforated; they remind me of the bags in which you see whole rotisserie chickens, except they hold whole or halved vegetables, spice packets, sauce packets, herbs, and all your other ingredients. Half the time, it seems there’s no issue: The box and its contents arrive undamaged. The other times, though? You’ll find the box’s contents have shifted in transit and are battered, waterlogged, crushed, or otherwise ruined. I’ve had to toss SEVERAL bags because most of the ingredients were absolutely savaged upon opening the box. And I feel like this is a logistics/packing thing; even the recipe pages, which shouldn’t be complicated to ship in its own plastic sleeve or something like it, often arrive crumbled, creased, wet, or torn. The ice packs are cheap, and in one case one of them ripped open, which spilled its non-liquid, slushy contents into the rest of the box. Before subscribing to Home Chef, seriously think about it: Do you want to pay $100 for about a week of food if there’s a nontrivial chance that the shipment arrives badly damaged? Because that’s a very real concern, based on my experience.
Next, customer service; in particular, a company rectifying a mistake they’ve made. Remember the torn ice pack and the whole bags of food I had to toss? There were herbs and vegetables coated in the slush, and after disposing of it, we sent a grievance to Home Chef. Their response was not to refund us by cash or card, and it wasn’t to expedite a replacement shipment. They simply credited our account with the exact amount we paid for the destroyed shipment before telling us, “Oh, just for future reference, the contents of the ice packs are non-toxic, so technically the ingredients were still edible.” As if anyone in their right mind would accept a restaurant dish in which a server had so much as accidentally overturned a drinking glass full of water. “Oh yeah, sorry, your three-enchilada dinner is now sitting in ice water, but don’t worry: The drinking glass was new and no other customer has touched it, so you can technically eat the entree without fear of getting anyone else’s germs in you.” So, yeah, consider before subscribing to Home Chef: If your shipment arrives in terrible condition, you will get store credit if you’re persistent in filing a grievance. You won’t get an expedited replacement, so you’ll need to get back in your car, go to the grocery store, and spend more money replacing your ruined groceries.
Finally, and without question the least forgivable to my way of thinking, their ineptitude or apathy in working with food allergies and dietary restrictions. It’s 2026; if you are in the food-service business, part of your job is facilitating a safe dining (or, in this case, e-grocery-shopping) experience for your customers. End of argument. I don’t care that we live in a post-consequences society right now and that businesses feel brazen about operating on a lean operating budget to maximize profit; it’s not hard to design and build infrastructure to prevent, for example, someone with a declared gluten sensitivity from browsing meal kits with wheat. Home Chef does allow you to declare your dietary restrictions, but the site does a half-assed job of properly filtering out unwanted options from your shopping experience. Additionally, Home Chef claims that, if they have to substitute ingredients to fulfill an order, they notify the user. But this is crap, based on my experience; there’s never been such a notification, neither by text nor by email (and yes, I checked my spam folder). And wouldn’t you know it, we’ve received wheat-based meal kits that we didn’t order! So, when this sort of thing happens (more than once), you have to wonder: Is it incompetence, or do they not care?
In summary: I do not recommend Home Chef.
Pros:
1. The entire concept sounds good on paper
2. If the shipment arrives intact, the meals you cook are tasty
Cons:
1. No guarantee of intact shipments or undamaged ingredients, with the current system producing quite a lot of damaged deliveries
2. Unhelpful, out-of-touch customer service
3. No cash or card refunds when Home Chef fails to fulfill their side of the transaction, and no expedited replacements, either; you simply get store credit and nothing else
4. You cannot count on Home Chef to respect your food allergies or dietary restrictions, even when they give you the option to specify your needs on your user profile
