If you are familiar with meal kit services, you know that it’s a real upgrade to your dinners at home!
Using a meal kit delivery service, you can save an incredible amount of time on recipe planning, grocery shopping for fresh ingredients, and meal preparation. The main challenge is knowing where to start with so many choices out there – Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Blue Apron, or dinnerly, for example – And this is where the Meal Kit Review comes in handy!
We provide in-depth reviews and detailed meal kit company comparisons, so you will have all the information at hand to decide which is the best service for you.
Today our comparison is going to be looking at two entirely different companies – Hello Fresh vs. Dinnerly.
Hello Fresh is a company that initially began in Germany, and is it may be the most known meal kit brand in the US. Dinnerly is a little newer on the scene and is very much price-focused – offering meals at less than $5 per serving!
So let’s dive into the full comparison:
Dinnerly Vs. HelloFresh: Variety of Meal Plan:
Hello Fresh plans:
- Classic Plan: 3-4 dishes per week for 2 or 4 people
- Family Plan: 2-3 dishes per week for four people
- Veggie Plan: 3 dishes per week for 2 or 4 people
- Calories Smart Plan: 3 dishes per week for 2 or 4 people
Dinnerly plans:
- Two-person plan: 3 dishes per week for two people
- Family-box plan: 3 dishes per week for four people
Meal Variety And Style of Dishes:
As a Hello Fresh customer, you can choose from 20 changing meals every week. The menu includes options for vegetarians, low-calorie needs, gourmet-style meals, and family-friendly options.
As a Dinnerly customer, you will have a choice of 22 divers and exciting recipes every week. These dishes include child-friendly, fast-cooking, vegetarian, gluten-free friendly, low-calorie, and dairy-free options.
Both companies offer mainly classic style meals, with a range of tastes from all across the globe – from Asia stir-fries to Italian pasta, to Mexican tacos or enchiladas, and American classics like burgers or upgraded mac & cheese.
Hello Fresh tends to include favor classics choices, but it is always with a nice added touch or twist. Due to Dinnerly’s focus on keeping their prices low, its menu tends to be very simple. The dishes have fewer ingredients and involve recipes that generally do not take longer than 30 minutes to prepare and are very easy to cook.
Quality of ingredients of Hello Fresh And Dinnerly:
Hello Fresh only provides the highest quality ingredients. They try to ensure that their meats and domestically sourced and responsibly raised, with no added hormones. All their seafood is sustainably sourced, and they include a generous amount of vegetables to try to assist their customers in increasing their intake of fresh vegetables.
Dinnerly also uses ingredients of very high quality. We were quite surprised by this due to their focus on price, but we felt that the standard of ingredients was just as good as other companies with a higher price point. Their costs are often kept low due to simple packaging, using digital recipe cards rather than including them in your meal kit and using fewer ingredients.
Popular Meals From Dinnerly and Hello Fresh:
We have long experience with both companies, and over time we tasted many of their dishes!
Our best recommendations from the Hello Fresh menu:
- Beef bulgogi meatballs with roasted carrots
- Steakhouse Pork chops with lemony green beans
- Rajas quesadillas with salsa fresca, crema & guacamole
Our best recommendations from the Dinnerly menu:
- Creamy Ravioli with Spinach & Parmesan
- Better-Than Takeout Saucy Chicken Enchiladas
- General Tso’s Chicken Fingers with Rice & Broccoli
The two things we loved most was the delicious (and pre-cooked!) pulled pork meat and the Yakiniku sauce on top. This sauce is a sweet and savory Japanese version of a BBQ sauce. To accompany the pork meat, the meal is served on a bed of fluffy rice with a side of healthy broiled green beans.
The most surprising part of this meal is that it was super-fast to cook, only taking about 20 minutes. With a few easy steps, dinner was ready! Preparation simply involved cooking the rice, broiling the green beans, heating the pulled pork, and finishing off the dish with the amazing sauce. This Rice Bowl is a perfect meal kit for busy people (singles or couples), who are looking for a fast and easy, yet satisfying and healthy dinner. What makes Dinnerly so unique is that you can enjoy this tasty treat for the very affordable price of $4.49 per serving! It’s almost a crime not to try it!
We love taco meal kits, so we were excited to try this one, and it came out great. It was a hit across the table! A tasty meal that we all loved.
For us, what gave this meal the extra kick was both the smoky red pepper crema sauce and the mango salsa. A great combination of sweet and smoked flavors!
HelloFresh meal kits, and especially the “one-pan” taco recipes, are mostly simple to cook by design. It is a great meal option for a light prep weekday family dinner.
The most technical skill you will need to assemble this meal is some basic veggies chopping, working with a frying pan, and mixing few ingredients for the topping crema.
The color-printed recipe card that accompanied the ingredients of this meal kit was neat, organized, and very clear to understand, and the meal took only about 20 minutes to cook from A to Z.
The result, as mentioned – was absolutely delicious!
The Delivery Box of HelloFresh vs Dinnerly
Hello Fresh uses a designed delivery box. Their ingredients are sorted per meal kit, so they are individually labeled and packaged. That means there is no sorting required when unpacking. Items requiring refrigeration, such as proteins, are packed at the bottom of the box with enough ice-packs to keep them cool during the delivery process.
The Dinnerly delivery arrives in a bit smaller and labeled box, and the cooled proteins are packed with on the bottom with ice-packs to keep it cool during the delivery process.
As Dinnerly is focused on being as cost-effective as possible, the ingredients are not sorted per meal, so a little sorting is required when unpacking.
With both companies, The size of the box changes according to your plan – the Four-person box is larger than the two-person box, for obvious reasons.
Managing Your Online Account:
Both Hello Fresh and Dinnerly have a website and an app that you can use to manage your account easily. Here you can register, specify dietary preferences, swap plan, and select your dishes. Hello Fresh also gives you access to past and future recipes, and the recipes include ingredients and nutritional information of each dish.
Both Hello Fresh and Dinnerly are available as a subscription service only, with no one-time purchase option. Still, they allow a certain amount of flexibility – you can skip weeks when needed, change your day of delivery, and more.
Bottom line – Our Winner is?
We enjoyed our food experiences with both Hello Fresh and Dinnerly so that you won’t go wrong with either. However, we felt they would appeal to quite different audiences, mostly regarding pricing and the style of meals.
After carefully reviewing both services for several weeks, our vote goes to Dinnerly.
Our number one reason is the $5 meal price, which is, without a doubt, incredibly affordable (almost half than the Hello Fresh price).
Even with their low pricing, the Dinnerly menu also offers a large variety of 22 great weekly meals, so everyone will be able to find something to suit their tastes.
Lastly, even though their prices are low, Dinnerly keeps the quality of ingredients high from our experience. We genuinely believe that Dinnerly is a win-win choice.
