An Honest Hungryroot Review
Bottom line up front: I like Hungryroot. It is pricey, but there are certain things I like to order from the site every so often.
Competitors
There are a number of competitors on the market for healthy grocery/meal services. One thing that I like about Hungryroot is that you can order groceries or recipes, including frozen and pre-cooked options. It doesn’t have as good of a sign on deal as other services, though.
The only other service I’ve tried is Hello Fresh. I tried it on the sign up promo - too expensive to pay full price. Their recipes are quite basic and repeat the same ingredients. I think that’s the case with these meal services, but Hungryroot has better ingredients and more options, in my opinion. So for the value, I think Hungryroot is better.
Pricing
There are a few different plans, revolving around credits. The more credits you want in your plan, the cheaper they are. I personally use the $90 plan, which makes credits around $2 a piece or so. I skip a decent number of weeks. The good thing about that, though, is they will often try to get you to come back and place another order by offering you $10 off your next order to come back and unskip. Though it can be a pain to remember to skip upcoming orders, I have a recurring reminder set in my phone. Additionally, they occasionally offer surveys where you can earn a $15 credit for participating. They also have a referral program that rewards you when others sign up.
An added perk is that they offer a free item for each order. It can be a vegetable or meat. You used to automatically have one selected for you based on the meat or veggie preference, but they now allow you to choose, which is nice.
They do offer a sign up promo, like most of these services do. Their website is advertising 30% off your first order, which isn’t as great as some other services offer. Alternatively, you can get $50 off your first box with this link https://www.hungryroot.com/r/F8SG3HKZ
Quality & Taste
The quality is genuinely good. I’ve been pretty impressed with the meat, especially, that I’ve received from them. The produce is fresh and often organic, and the cuts of meat are nice. I haven’t had anything that I thought tasted bad. I’ve genuinely been impressed with the taste and quality of food I’ve received.
Criticisms
Yes, as other reviewers have said, some of the groceries sometimes come a little dented or knocked up. That’s not ideal, but it hasn’t been an issue for me yet at this point. My main gripe is the price, especially for the recipes vs groceries. It is a bit expensive for me, but of course, part of the cost is the convenience. I think it depends on the item in terms of the value and whether it’s worth purchasing.
Favorite Items/Orders
I mostly order from the groceries tab. I have ordered recipes before, but when you calculate the cost of a whole recipe, to me, it’s usually not worth it, especially considering I regularly have items in the kitchen like pasta, rice, cheese, etc. You can, however, customize the recipes to cut out certain items that you might not like or want.
I like to order meats, juices, and some prepackaged items for breakfast/lunch on the go for weeks that I know I’ll be busy. I prefer to buy fruit and veggies on my own, but still order these items from time to time.
Product Selection
They run different products for the seasons and are clearly working on expanding their selection. Since signing up, I’ve seen a number of new products, and I noticed they launched a kids section. I even was able to participate in a survey about potential new products and my interest in them, clearly showing they have plans to expand. Most recently, they added vitamins and supplements, as well.
Customer Service Experience
I only reached out to customer service once. They were not able to resolve the issue (didn’t realize I wasn’t able to skip an upcoming order - deadline passed and their warning email went to my spam), but the person I emailed with was nice and helpful, and they seemed genuine.
Recommendation
I think this is best for someone who likes to shop at places like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s but doesn’t always have access to these places. I like that I can get healthy, organic, good quality items from this site, either through recipes or groceries.
Personally, I find it most economic to just buy the groceries.I think the recipes are a bit expensive for what they are. Plus, you may have some of the ingredients on hand. However, they do allow you the option to customize the recipes and remove ingredients you don’t want or need, which is nice.