Hungryroot is a combination grocery and meal delivery service — kind of like Blue Apron and Peapod rolled into one. On its website or free mobile app (iOS or Android), you can select what you want to cook from a huge menu of recipes and then receive the ingredients and instructions you need to prepare them. In addition, you can choose preprepared meals and all kinds of groceries from apples to milk to vitamins. Billing itself as “the easiest way to eat healthy,” it offers foods free of artificial ingredients, partially hydrogenated oils and high-fructose corn syrup. Many items are organic or vegan. By using recyclable materials, minimizing waste in its operation and promoting a diet rich in vegetables, Hungryroot claims a commitment to sustainability as well as better food and nutrition.
After trying the service for a week, I can say it offers tasty, easy-to-make meals and helps you to eat healthily by keeping protein portions small and vegetable ones large. However, Hungryroot doesn’t necessarily save you money, and it won’t eliminate trips to the supermarket. Here’s everything you need to know if you’re thinking of subscribing.
Hate deciding what to cook for supper? Hungryroot can help by sending you all the items you need to prepare a meal. Your dinner will be loaded with vegetables and on the table in 30 minutes or less. If that sounds like just what you need to simplify your life, it’s worth giving Hungryroot a try.
How Hungryroot works
You start by answering a short quiz that includes questions like how many people you want to feed, which meals you want covered, what kinds of foods you like to eat and how much effort you’re willing to put into meal preparation. Before you go any further, you’re offered a free gift in exchange for your email address, and from that time on, you’ll be getting promotional emails from Hungryroot. You’re then told how much your weekly plan will cost, but in order to find out what it includes, you need to enter your credit card information. Once that’s done, you’re given your suggested meals and grocery items selected by the company according to your profile — based on your answers to the questionnaire. Not 100% thrilled with what you got? You can easily swap the company’s picks for other recipes and foods and even change the ingredients in recipes.
Your weekly order is given a point count, and each item on the site is assigned a number of points, not a dollar amount. When you make adjustments, you need to go back to your cart to see whether your point count has changed. You can then fiddle around to duplicate your plan’s point count, pay for extra points or save unused ones to apply to your next order.
A new order of items comes automatically every week. If you want to personalize your box, you have to remember to make adjustments. You can pause the service for a week or more or cancel your subscription anytime.
What I liked about it
Large selection of recipes
Hungryroot Meals
There’s a so-called “cookbook” of over 5,000 dishes to choose from, and the company says it’s always adding new ones. Among the options are grain bowls, pastas, all kinds of sandwiches from burgers to tacos, salads and main dishes with sides. Regardless of what you like to eat, there’s plenty to choose from. You’ll never hear the family saying, “Not pizza again!”
Food arrived in good condition
Most importantly, all of the perishable items, including the raw hamburgers and salmon, were at the bottom of the box resting on an ice pack and were at a safe temperature below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Nothing spilled or leaked from the containers, and none of the packages were dented. Vegetables were firm and unblemished. One quibble: What was billed as baby romaine lettuce was two small hearts of romaine with the outer dark green leaves removed.
Meals were easy to prepare
Getting things ready to cook required a minimal amount of slicing and didn’t entail any sophisticated techniques. All five of the meals I ordered were on the table in less than half an hour, and in the case of the Simple Crispy Chicken Caesar Salad, under 15 minutes. Seasoning the dishes was as easy as opening a container or packet and didn’t require measuring multiple ingredients, mixing or doctoring. The recipe directions were easy to follow and were generally accurate in terms of timing.
Portion size
Each recipe provided a generous amount of food. The size of the protein portions was just slightly over 3 ounces. While a quarter-pound burger on a pretzel bun for each of us was more than enough to satisfy my husband and me, one lamb chop per person seemed skimpy. However, as the chops were served with a copious amount of grilled onions and zucchini with pesto, we weren’t hungry at the end of the meal and felt virtuous that we had only eaten a small quantity of red meat.
Everything was tasty
We enjoyed everything we ate. While both my husband and I agreed that the flavor profiles of the dishes were nowhere near as sophisticated as those of the meals I typically cook at home, everything was well seasoned and satisfying, and over the course of the workweek, we ate?a varied assortment of foods, including meat, pasta and fish. One caveat: Almost every recipe called for sprinkling on salt and pepper, but considering a spice mix or sauce was always part of the recipe, we felt the extra salt (read: sodium) was unnecessary.
What I didn’t like about it
The price
The cost of a weekly subscription varies according to the number of people you are feeding and how many meals you want sent. In my case, a weekly box including five dinners for two people along with a few breakfast items and snacks was priced at $143.07. With a new subscriber discount of 30%, the amount of my first order was reduced to $100.15. However, $143.07 is the projected price of my regular weekly order. At that price, each dinner for two would equal about $25. Shipping is free for orders over $70.
A similar order from FreshDirect (a New York City-based online grocer) totaled $154.88 plus a delivery fee. At Stop & Shop, a shopping basket filled with the same items, if not identical brands, was only $93.27. Both the FreshDirect and Stop & Shop carts included four burgers and buns, as those items weren’t available in packs of two, so you could consider that an extra meal was included. That means you can buy more for less at the supermarket. If price over ease is paramount, you’ll save money by doing your own shopping.
The point system
At a time in history, when food prices are skyrocketing and shoppers are counting every penny, it seemed odd to not be clearly told the price of each item but rather to add up points to reach a projected allotment. And this could waste a lot of time if you get to the end to discover your total is too pricey.
I still had to go grocery shopping
In my responses to the questions, I indicated I wanted “some” not daily breakfasts, sweets and snacks included. However, the items in my shipment were pretty paltry. I was sent one serving container of yogurt, a small bag of granola, one microwavable egg patty, small packs of pickles and olives, a chocolate bar and a mini package of mini chocolate chip cookies. All of these items were certainly not enough for two people to have breakfast and a nosh between meals or a treat after dinner for even a few days. On the Hungryroot site, I could have added milk, bread and fruit but not whole eggs or a box of name-brand cereal to my cart. Cucumbers weren’t available, and tomatoes were out of stock. There’s a full array of sauces, but as we’re strictly a Heinz ketchup and Hellmann’s mayonnaise family, we were out of luck. Plus, we needed to go to the supermarket to refresh our stock of paper goods and household cleaners.
The meals aren’t sensationally delicious
Yes, everything I cooked was tasty, but I’d stop short of calling it absolutely delicious. If you crave sophisticated flavor combinations from all over the globe, are likely to splurge on heirloom tomatoes and single-origin olive oil and enjoy making your own pesto, you may be disappointed.
Bottom line
Cooks who don’t like to cook, at least not every day, but don’t want to order takeout, will love Hungryroot. By offering a huge selection of recipes, the service makes it easy to answer the dreaded question “What’s for dinner?” It sends just what’s needed for the chosen recipes, and with minimal effort, a meal consisting of fresh ingredients can be whipped up in less than 30 minutes. However, the convenience of having your dinner planned out and the ingredients delivered to your doorstep will cost you more than shopping at the supermarket.
On the other hand, anyone who enjoys spending time in the kitchen slicing, dicing and stirring and has an adventurous palate will be underwhelmed.
While Hungryroot bills itself as a hybrid of a meal plan and grocery delivery service, its strength is in its recipe offerings. If you know you need milk or want a few apples or a chocolate bar to snack on, you can add them to your order. But to stock a fridge and pantry with staples, I believe most people will want to visit the supermarket at least every other week.?
