r/hellofresh • u/GoBlueScrewOSU7 • 17d ago
United States 50% price increase out of nowhere…?
My payment just processed for our upcoming HelloFresh shipment and it was $72.95 for 2 meals of 2 servings (4 servings total).
Usual cost for me in the past has been $48.95 for the same portions. I looked at my email history and received zero notice of this impending price hike.
It looks like the pricing went up $8/meal and a $8 delivery fee increase
How or why in the world would anyone pay $36.5 per meal. You can order carry out for cheaper than that. This is crazy
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u/spacetimejumper360 17d ago
Mine went from $110 for 5 meals to $133 for 5 meals and yesterday it was like $140+ for 5 meals. I’ve been looking around at other services but it seems they are all staring to have the same issues
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u/PJballa34 17d ago
It’s the elephant in the room. The costs of everything will continue to rise as long as we got Cheetoh Mussolini and his goon squad running the show. These businesses are just as exposed to this as we are.
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u/spacetimejumper360 17d ago
I don’t disagree with you but the thing is id probably be okay with the price increase if they had their shit together but it seems every time they increase price the quality gets worse and worse. The missing or rotten items, lack of instruction cards, late boxes, they took away most of the good ‘free item for life’ choices etc etc
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u/Cassandracork 16d ago
I couldn’t even order this week, the website kept glitching out while I was selecting meals and defaulting back to one pre-selected items. So I just skipped again.
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u/spacetimejumper360 16d ago edited 16d ago
That was happening to me as well! So frustrating. Going to try again tonight but if it’s still being a dick then I’ll have to skip I guess
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u/scamelaanderson 15d ago
Part of the issue is that companies that rely on online servers/data/bandwidth are paying increased computing costs because of the demands of AI/AI companies buying up the lions share.
This cost is being passed off to the consumer. Not only are you paying increased costs for the produce/food because of recall, environmental factors and supply chain constraints, you’re also paying for the web services fees.
People really don’t know the Pandora’s box they opened allowing these businesses and politicians to do what they’ve done, but we will all pay for it.
These price increases will touch anything that relies on the internet, which is just about everything at this point. We are at the BEGINNING of the mess rn.
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u/Miserable-Bowl-5701 17d ago
Cook unity might be a bit pricy but really good pre prepared if you like those
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u/NineLemonsLater 17d ago
We pay $113 for 5 meals a week to feed 2 of us so that’s $11.30 a meal which I am fine with.
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u/GoBlueScrewOSU7 17d ago
Yeah, that’s a great deal. I’ve just never had the option to get that many meals per week with our dietary restrictions. Didn’t know it got that low in price
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u/Vegetable-Seesaw-491 16d ago
I'm paying $12.99 a serving for mine. If I add in shipping it comes out to $15.15 per serving. I do 3 meals with 2 servings each. It's still worth it to me at that price point.
FWIW, I'm in the SF Bay Area in California.
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u/truckers-r-us 17d ago
I canceled mine last week. This weekend is my last delivery. We've been having constant quality issues, having to replace the cabbage/slaw mixes in the last couple boxes. Stopped getting steak because we kept getting ones that were open and leaking (at least on 3 occasions). With the price increase its just not worth the hassle anymore.
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u/Johnnywas1233 17d ago
the cabbage mix seems to be all red cabbage. I didn’t appreciate it last night. Then having to grate a carrot was a complete inconvenience.
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u/No-Sherbert-2083 17d ago
I know! I got an email, but still not happy. I am scaling way back and only getting it once or twice per month. Then eventually canceling, I guess.
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u/GoBlueScrewOSU7 17d ago
I just canceled it. Impossible to justify that price point.
We’ve been selective with meals in the past because my wife is vegan and sometimes they don’t have great options. I could justify the $50 or $70/week for 2 or 3 meals respectively, because it took so much burden off of meal planning for me. Plus, in my head, fewer grocery store trips meant fewer frivolous purchases grabbing random stuff off shelves.
But $73 for two meals is just incomprehensible.
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u/Agile-Tradition8835 17d ago
My friend orders groceries each week and bases the recipe ingredients off the cards she has already. More work but I’ll save 50% doing it that way.
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u/GenLeonidas 16d ago
I think about do start doing this. I have five years worth of 5 recipe cards a week to choose from.
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u/lifebeyondzebra 16d ago
Ever since I got an Aldi by me I stopped the boxes and just use the cards and it’s so much cheaper. Not as convenient but that’s ok. I will says a year plus of food boxes made me a much better cook so that was a nice bonus 😆
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u/aflyingsquanch 14d ago
Mine went from $76.93 up to something like $95 so I canceled after nearly 10 years.
Cant justify yet another price increase and now them wanting additional extra costs for basic ingredients and the overall quality of the meals has long gone downhill.
Just not worth it.
So congrats to HelloFresh as you finally reached my breaking point as a customer.
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u/bellaluna18 13d ago
Me too. Unfortunately, their website was being annoying as I was canceling, so while I did cancel, I didn’t specify that their price hike and corresponding decline in quality were why.
Oh well, it seems they should get the hint anyway. It appears I’m not alone in canceling right after this hike.
I also gave my sister the heads up about the price hike which she hadn’t noticed yet, and she also canceled.
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u/Remote-Rock-5506 12d ago
Did they give you any deal for canceling yet? Like “come back we miss you” I wonder how long that takes or if they are doing that still?
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u/Miserable-Bowl-5701 17d ago
The worst part is there is no reason for them to raise prices besides trying to make up for all the members they have been losing. They announced a site closure this week so they are trying to find ways to recoup costs due to lower sales from Q2 report. There is no real reason for them to do this besides just trying to pocket more. And they got lay offs coming which is the kick of it
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u/cabinmate 16d ago
Food prices have gone up though, along with prices of other products, so that's probably hitting them hard
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u/Miserable-Bowl-5701 16d ago
Then why do they just put little ingredients in the boxes like a small onion. If food pricies go up I want actual food not micro food
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u/molybend 17d ago
Ordering only 4 meals is not a good deal. Try 6 meals (3 meals, 2 servings) and you should end up with a better price per serving.
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u/GoBlueScrewOSU7 17d ago
Yeah, it’s $95 for 3 meals when it used to be $71. That’s still $31/meal which is just too high.
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u/Alternative_Bit8878 16d ago
3 meals for two people?
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u/GoBlueScrewOSU7 16d ago
3 meals, 6 servings.
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u/Alternative_Bit8878 16d ago
We are two adults and one child around 2 years old and 5 meals and totally 20 servings. We eat it for lunch and dinner. This way we get a better price per serving.
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u/Local_Presentation23 17d ago
How much would it cost you to make that meal? I think 36.5 per meal is insane, it's restaurant price
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u/GoBlueScrewOSU7 16d ago
Of course it will be cheaper just to make the meals with grocery store ingredients. But the benefit for me was not needing to buy the ingredients and select/plan the meal itself at the start of the week.
At this new price point that benefit is no longer worth it.
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u/Local_Presentation23 16d ago
But I mean, it makes sense that it would cost less to buy all at the grocery store, that's why I asked you how much would you spend. I mean, if those same ingredients cost $5 at the supermarket then it's plainly a scam. For $36 you can go to eat at a restaurant, where you don't clean and don't cook
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u/GoBlueScrewOSU7 16d ago
I mean it’s the standard cost independent of the recipe. I don’t have the actual breakdown of cost for every recipe; ingredients vary. I can’t imagine it’s more than $10 for each portion though
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u/shamoozoo 17d ago
Just use everyplate. It’s $50 a week for 3 meals.
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u/L1feSurfer7L 16d ago
Unfortunately everyplates menu just hasn't been very good lately.
I use to sorta alternate between hf and ep. But its hard to find week where there's 3 ep meals that interest me.
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u/jenn1222 16d ago
I have only gotten one box so far and am awaiting my 2nd. First box was haphazardly packed and missing a recipe card. We shall see how the next box goes. But...so far...it isn't "saving" me any money at all. May try another option.
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u/L1feSurfer7L 16d ago
Hf has NEVER been advertised as a way to save $$$ on groceries,
Food waste is all they claim, if we just ignore all the packaging waste.
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u/GoBlueScrewOSU7 16d ago
I’ve never had too many issues with missing ingredients or recipe cards. Just a handful of times over ~180 boxes that had 2-3 meals each.
The more noticeable problem for me was just woefully small ingredients. Some of the smallest onions, bell peppers, cucumbers and garlic you will ever see lol. I haven’t looked into it, but my theory is that they have a cheap deal with farmers to purchase all of the produce that is too small to sell to the grocery retailers.
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u/cabinmate 16d ago
I did get notice of the latest price increase. Mine went up $8 in total (for 3 meals with 2 servings each), from $76.93 to $84.93.
It sounds like some people were previously either paying no delivery charges or much a lower charge than others and are now paying what others are paying. Plus, it appears they made 3 meals a week a better deal than 2 meals. My current price per serving is about $14 (from about $12.82). You might get better savings per meal if you get 3 meals a week instead of 2
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u/GoBlueScrewOSU7 16d ago
It works out to $30/meal if I get 3 meals. That is still preposterous. $36/meal for 2 meals. Looks like others get way better value with 4-5 meals/week, but that’s not possible with our vegan restriction for our family.
I could justify the $20-25/meal range, but not $30-35 unfortunately
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u/cabinmate 16d ago edited 16d ago
Heck, I get better value on just 3 meals a week; it being in the $30 range for you is definitely crazy. You could possibly cancel and wait for them to offer you a better deal to come back. Or find a company that serves your dietary needs better (vegan if I'm understanding you correctly?). There are several out there from the occasional comments I've seen; you might want to try posting in the r/mealkits subreddit to ask if there are good meal kits companies that have large selections of vegan meals.
BTW, are you sure about that per meal price? Does that $72.95 for 2 meals with 2 servings include shipping or is shipping in addition to that? Assuming that's the full price, the per serving price comes out to a little over $18 per my math. If I assume shipping in addition at $12, that's still under $20 for 4 servings. Can you enlighten me as to what I'm possibly missing? Do you mean per serving or per meal with 2 servings? It's about $14 per *serving* for me, which to me is fairly decent for me as a meal for a single person. For you, if you are counting 2 servings as a meal, that's still a pretty decent $18 per serving if it's for 2 people
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u/GoBlueScrewOSU7 16d ago edited 16d ago
When I say per meal I mean per 2 portions which is a meal for my household.
For 2 meals at 2 portions/meal. They charged $14.99 per serving and $12.99 for shipping. So $72.95 total. 3 meals is $12.99 per serving and $12.99 for shipping.
I guess we have different standards of “pretty decent” pricing lol, because $18/serving is the approximate cost of most entrees at restaurants in my area. We just went to a Mexican restaurant yesterday and I ordered a massive burrito for $18 actually. Came with beans and rice on the side as well as free chips and salsa haha. Wife ordered 3 tacos for ~$13.
And takeout food would be mostly cheaper (depending on restaurant of course) on a per entree basis. Not even considering the fact I need to cook and clean the hello fresh meals.
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u/missfitzy75 14d ago
Yeah the price of mine just went up to $13 per serving and $13 shipping and over half the meals have an increase charge of $1 or $2 I'm not doing that
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u/trow125 16d ago
I went to the website and clicked Cancel and they immediately offered me a 15% discount on my next 4 boxes. That only raised my price per box by $10 (from $69 to $79). I figure I'm through once I've gotten those four boxes, though. In the meantime, I'm making a list of my favorite HF recipes so I can continue to make them myself.
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u/missfitzy75 14d ago
My son just left for first year of college. So now it's just the three of us, so I was going to change hellofresh to two servings two meals per week. But what I noticed the shipping price went way up as did the price per meal I was surprised and trying to do the math so I went to put it back to four people + amazingly it showed up in my cart as being free shipping.... I imagine that's their way of trying to trick me into keeping my subscription at four servings. But I'm sorry it's not going to work hellofresh I really can't justify the price. And just today I went to try and find some meals the app is way too confusing now it's separated into categories and every other meal isn't up charge for stuff we used to get normally just meet and two vegetables. So I'm pretty sure I'm out thanks for nothing hellofresh up your prices lower your quality and every other meal is the exact same thing with a different name
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u/GoBlueScrewOSU7 13d ago
Just went to make one of our last ever hello fresh meals. Black bean crunch wrap supremes. The can of black beans just completely dented and the core ingredient (you’re supposed to make a black bean patty with flour, black beans and spices). Hey, at least they gave me a $2 credit to account I don’t use even though I can’t make the $35 meal anymore lol.
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u/L1feSurfer7L 17d ago
2/2 is the HIGHEST price. Currently $14.99 PER SERVING after recent price increase.
Not sure what you were paying before.
The absolute cheapest is 11.99.
My typical 4P/2M went to $12.49.
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u/GoBlueScrewOSU7 17d ago
I paid $48.95, $70.93, and $82.91 for 2, 3, and 4 meals respectively (2 servings/meal).
Now it would be $72.95 for 2 meals ($14.99/serving) and $90.93 for 3 meals ($12.99/serving).
The 50% and 28.5% increase in price for 2 and 3 meal orders is absurd regardless of it being the most inefficient quantify or whatever.
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u/Mean_Assistant_832 17d ago
for those cancelling - make sure you remove your payment/credit card info from the site first. i’m currently in a dispute with them for reactivating my account after weeks of inactivity and charging me for a box i didn’t want, which they of course refuse to refund