Home Chef: Meal Kit Delivery Reviews

My husband and I have been a customer for about 2 months, and we LOVE it. The recipes are simple yet delicious, and I love that everything you need comes in the box, and there is no food waste, which is something I can struggle with when buying from the grocery store. We started out with 2 meals per week, but upped it to 3 meals just recently. Our first box included a binder, which is super convenient for keeping all our recipes, but HomeChef has them all as well, which is great! I don’t like a lot of fuss when cooking, so the fact that they have easy, intermediate, and expert meals is nice, however, don’t be thrown off by the word expert, as those meals are still relatively simple to make! One reason I didn’t give 5 stars is because every single thing except the box is packaged in plastic. I think it would be nice if they switched to using more environmentally friendly materials, cause that’s a LOT of plastic when you think about all the people ordering boxes. The other reason is because the oven ready meals never turn out as good as the regular meals. Great concept, but I think they could be improved. Overall though, this is my favorite meal kit service due to the simplicity (yet amazing flavor) of meals, and the fact that HomeChef is super user friendly. You can skip weeks, or you can even pause your account if you need to so you don’t have to worry about manually skipping for an extended period of time. Thanks, Home Chef!

I was a loyal customer for years and spent thousands of dollars throughout my duration as a customer. Yes, there were quality issues from time to time, but their customer service was decent enough. Unfortunately, I needed to cancel a few months ago due to changes in my life. I filled out a form they requested and noted that I planned on coming back when I could. Randomly two months later, they reenabled my account. When I received the box, I notified them immediately. I was told that I had paused the service (which I had a few months leading up to my cancelling the service and I may have done prior to filling out the form), but did not cancel it. They gave me half of my money back. I said that was unacceptable, explained the history, and I received a note saying that I’m not eligible for a refund and the 50% I received was done as a courtesy.

Up until now, I thought I would return to the service, but after being robbed, I am furious. I will likely have my cc dispute the charges anyway. This was terrible. I strongly recommend you avoid this service unless you plan on being robbed too eventually by them.

Thank you Chris from customer service for ensuring that I never return to home chef. Fortunately, your service is not the only game in town.

For some reason, in the middle of every meal to pause and ask myself, “why did I wait so long to do this?” I have made every excuse under the sun, from I still won’t cook to I won’t like the meals, to too expensive, to I’m just too lazy. The matter of a fact is, I get excited to see what the next meal calls for and how to make it. This is easily the best decision I have ever made. And for those who may be looking for a single service option, I am bachelor with roommates and we all have different schedules. So I find getting the 2 servings is still actually perfect. I can eat dinner and every meal I’ve had has been so good I’m saving the rest for lunch the next day. I’m getting more confident in my cooking skills, and I love the fact I can cook and meal and it’ll present and taste like I’ve been cooking for years. I would recommend this to anyone who dreads grocery shopping. That’s the main reason I decide to sign up, and I never realized how much I really do enjoy cooking. Please sign up if you have any thoughts of potentially loving this because I can assure you will!

I was trying to avoid having to put on the mandated mask to go shopping. I just cooked my 20th meal and I am super happy. I wasn’t planning on keeping this past the stay at home orders, but I have never eaten this well in my life. As a single guy, I have always cooked a lot, but it is hard for me to make time to find new recipes and plan my shopping list. With the convenience of having each meal organized into a bag, with the highest quality meat, produce and breads, I am so happy I’ll be keeping the service. I was surprised and impressed that the recipe is included in the box so you can make this yourself without ordering the meal. My only gripe is that the price is a tad high making it somewhat difficult to afford, but I plan on coming down to two or three meals a week in the future to help with that. I am mostly ok with the price just because the quality of the food is so high, and there is tremendous value in discovering all these new recipes.

I gave this a 5 star rating because the things that are really important are done right. The food is really quite delicious plus easy and reasonable priced. It’s a decent portion but not too big if you are attempting some portion control. We live in California so the delivery has been fine and the food is fresh. I believe one of their three main distribution centers is in CA.

The nits: they did make some meat substitutions (pork to beef) that we didn’t like. However, when I reached out they responded immediately and credited us back the cost of the meals on the spot. The real test of a company is not when they do everything right but when something goes wrong, and that’s why they kept the 5 stars. My only other nit is they don’t deliver to our area on Monday. We use the food during the busy work week so getting it sometimes on Tuesday afternoon is not optimal. Otherwise very satisfied.

My wife and I used Every Plate for a couple months and then switched to Hello Fresh and were with them for over a year. We finally switched to Home Chef after two months of weekly deliveries from Hello Fresh showing up a day late and our food sitting on UPS trucks an extra day including during the hot summer months. Home Chef has been awesome and so far every box has shown up on time. The produce is way better than HF which might partially be a function of Home Chef being able to deliver our boxes on time. We are also enjoying the ability to customize the ingredients in our recipes which have way more variety than the same ol meat and roasted potatoes that HF seemed to love to feature. I also really like the oven ready meals. So fast to make and really good too! We are very happy we switched and won’t be going back to Hello Fresh as long as Home Chef continues to deliver (literally).

I don’t know if this is more a FedEx problem or a Home Chef problem but after multiple late deliveries with ruined food we paused our account. The recipes were always very good but they’re shipped on Saturday, supposed to be delivered on Monday and actually show up on Tuesday or Wednesday. Tuesday we could make work but by Wednesday the food is no good. We called after it happened once and the next week it came on time. Two weeks later (the following Monday was Memorial Day so that doesn’t count) it showed up on Wednesday and again the meats were spoiled. It’s disappointing because we really enjoyed it and I have friends who have no problem with the deliveries coming on time. It’s annoying though when you do your shopping for the week expecting Home Chef to come with three meals and when it doesn’t you’re left scrambling or ordering out. (And if you’re wondering if it’s late because we live somewhere Fed Ex may not deliver to often it’s not - we live in Hoboken, NJ!)

We’ve been using Home Chef for nearly 3 years. The meals are delicious, so easy to prepare (seriously ANYONE can do it - even those rated “expert”), they have increased variety significantly as well as improved customizations for proteins. The portions are generous but not huge and we rarely have leftovers, which is a plus. The “but” is that after this much time the options are getting pretty repetitive & many meals use the same ingredients so they all kind of start tasting the same. Thinking of subscribing to a 2nd service & alternating to get more variety. The Home Chef Plan is so flexible that’s a real option. You can easily skip weeks or even pause your account for a while.
HomeChef has improved as well and is very easy to use. I rely a lot on the in-app recipe book to make some favorites on my own, even looking up ingredients while shopping.

First world problems I know- but in my area at least they only deliver wed-sat so I picked Wednesday because I want meals during the work week. Multiple times they have been a day or so late, only once notifying me that it would be a day late. Pretty frustrating when you plan on having the meals come a certain day and it doesn’t come… would have bought things to make dinner those nights if I had known. I’ve done a few trials of different delivery services and they have better delivery day options and they were NEVER late on delivery. They also don’t let you actually CANCEL, just pause your subscription! I’ll be messaging support to see if I can actually fully cancel. Also a last thought- many of the meals come half prepped for you which is nice if you love a busy lifestyle (ex: pre mashed potatoes instead of sending fresh potatoes to cook and mash yourselves) So kind of lame when you don’t realize you’re not getting fresh ingredients to prepare yourself. Final advice: Choose hello fresh.

My husband and I have used several meal delivery services over the years and Home Chef is by far the worst! So many times our food arrived hot because it was missing freezer packs, meal items were missing, recipe cards were missing or ingredients would arrive slimy. This would happen EVERY delivery! Oh and let’s talk about customer service or I should say the lack there of! Every call was a fight to get a refund! One particular rep named Joaquin Salgado takes the prize for delivering the worst customer service by refusing to issue a refund for an entire meal missing and argued that 1) I was issued a refund the previous week for a missing meal despite the fact that it was a completely different order, and 2) lied and said he didn’t have the authority to issue refunds…only managers can and there were none available to help me!!!
Seriously folks, save your money and sanity and opt for Hello Fresh where the food is higher quality, never missing or spoiled and tastes better!

Signed up and didn’t see a single thing I wanted, so I went to cancel the subscription. No way to cancel it, just “pause” I paused it, the only way to stop everything I then get an email that says “sorry to see you go.” In the subject line July 16, four days later, they charge my card Turns out “pausing” my subscription didn’t cancel my first order, and I would have to go to customer service for that. This was buried in their fine print. I got a box today they charged me almost $90 for I didn’t want. A much bigger problem is the fact that I use one card for all my subscriptions, INCLUDING some of my grocery subscriptions, and only keep enough on there for my budget. They charged me and another charge for the food I didn’t want didn’t go through. So they stole my money and I don’t have food I need. I hope you all go bankrupt.

I deactivated/paused my account and was still charged. Funny thing was I did that awhile ago but all of a sudden I got a 109$ charge on my account . The meals were skipped and the previous weeks were skipped and I didn’t get charged. I contacted customer support and they swiftly responded. I saw the refund pending in my bank. 2 days later the pending charged was removed but the home chef company said it was processed. The only thing processed was the charge the gave me . In my bank if the pending charge/debit is supposed to be there it will stay until it goes through. So the fact that the pending debit was removed let me know they took that refund away and only charged me. Very shady, then I send them proof they haven’t even responded like they did when they were asking for the proof or the other times I contacted them

This is probably the best meal delivery service when it comes to recipes and how they taste, ease of preparation, and portion size. Also their customer service is really good and if they mess up they are great to refund or compensate you otherwise. That said, the third party delivery service is horrendous. For example we are in CO. This comes from CA. Our delivery on Thursday sometimes isn’t here until mid-day Saturday!! Two of five weeks have been a total loss. They resend the meals and give refunds but what an awful business model that is. We’re left without food and have to scramble for groceries. Then all that waste- the packaging (box, ice packs, plastics) and most importantly the food waste when there are starving families in need right now. Unacceptable. Irresponsible. We will be changing food services.

I love this service. The options for the meals are excellent. You can cater to your diet, but also to your lifestyle. In addition to classic meal kits, they also include oven ready and quick cook options for the extra-busy customer. The optional goodies of crunchy sides, salads, and desserts top off this winner.

Three months in, and I have to cancel my service. Too many times, I have received boxes that are missing ingredients, or recipe cards, once receiving a box with all the wrong meals! The last straw was today, as I began cooking the four penne pasta meal. Because halfway through I realized they hadn't provided any pasta.

Customer service has been wonderful every time, but it's been one time too many for me.

The food is good, but they have bad customer service and the boxes are almost ALWAYS delayed till the next day. Surprising when you consider there are other meal kit services out there like Blue Apron and HelloFresh who have really good service.

Also, the recipe cards and HomeChef doesn’t contain detailed nutritional info on all the recipes. For example, they’ll send you a kind of sauce without telling you what’s in it. If you have food allergies or restrictions, which I do, you have to go look it up online through another source. The impression they give is that they don’t care too much about customers being happy. It’s too bad because their recipes are pretty good.

App doesn’t do anything. I signed up for an account on my computer yesterday, added payment method, selected frequency and number of meals, paid and was then directed to download HomeChef and use it instead of the browser. So, I downloaded HomeChef . When I login, the screen goes to a blank webpage except for home chef’s green house logo at the top of the screen. I removed and reinstalled HomeChef , thinking that might fix it. Then, I removed it again, waited until the next day (today) to download it and try again. Same Issue. Blank page after logging in.

If this issue gets fixed so I can actually login to a working app and try it out I’ll happily give a different rating.

I’ll follow up with a comment about the food after my first week eating the food they send.

And while it started out amazing and very intuitive, it has recently gone very downhill. Originally delivered the meal kits and recipes and it was simple and easy. Recently, the meal kits have extra ingredients or missing ingredients or if all ingredients are there then something is rotten or broken open in the bag, like things are tossed in without any care. Additionally we’ve had recipes thrown in for things not what we got or missing our actual recipes. Not sure what exactly caused the change but missing the older versions.

We’ve enjoyed Home Chef when it has worked, however recently the boxes are arriving 2 days late and the food is spoiled and has to be thrown out. The meals have been great and we’ve enjoyed cooking them, but we will not be able to continue using if this happens again (this is the third time). While this likely isn’t Home Chef’s fault and FedEx is to blame, as a customer we’re really not sure what else to do. Home Chef support has given credits and have been nice, but when meals don’t arrive and the week is shot with plans for dinner it’s really frustrating and credits aren’t going to do much good.

Home Chef: please please figure out efficient and timely shipping with your partners, or you will lose customers that want to pay for your service.

We’ve been a customer for about a year and a half and enjoy the convenience of the delivery and the quality of the food we’ve received. The recipes are easy to make even for the teenager in the house!

Have read some complaints about late delivery but this has only happened to us twice and each time customer service was quick to reimburse us also one time when we received a wrong recipe they also refunded quickly.

My only couple of suggestions would be:

A little more variety or the ability to ask for favorites.

On the recipe cards give measurements for 2,4 and 6 servings. Usually it’s just for 2 servings and even though it may just be doubling or tripling the amount, it would be great to just have it on the card for speed and so we don’t have to remember to do it when in a hurry (I know another food delivery company does it)

Other than those two small things, we enjoy the service very much!
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I have tried almost all of these food delivery services, but I keep going back to Home Chef. In the past two years, I have only had a problem with one box. Customer service was quick to respond and refund my money. Another meal plan I ordered was two days late and every meal was missing critical ingredients. That has never happened with Home Chef. The only drawback I have found is the prep time for vegetables. The new oven ready meals have helped a lot and still deliver the same great tastes we have come to expect.

I have not been able to use HomeChef yet because I cannot sign in. I thought it would be helpful to set up Home Chef using my existing Kroger credentials, but that authentication method only works on the website. Perhaps that is a legacy authentication path or something, and if so, the decision to use it is on me. It still seems strange that the website has more login options than HomeChef . I hoped that HomeChef would be better for mobile use than the website, but I cannot say one way or the other.

I use HomeChef to make my meal selections, and it is so easy! Everything is very straightforward. I love that I can also easily access all of my current and past recipes on HomeChef .

Awesome food service....but could you please make your app viewable in landscape view, there are a lot of people that use their iPads in laptop mode....thank you!

We were gifted this service but the company took almost 20% of our gift in undisclosed fees. Their customer service is terrible and their food is fine but also something we could easily make on our own and usually with fresher ingredients. I discourage anyone from using the service

I've been using Home Chef for a couple of years. Enough to fill two binders with recipes. The deliveries are generally good as far as reliability and quality, portion sizes are good with the exception of protein+side salad meals; those aren't enough for a meal. Early on there were issues with items being missing. They would always issue a refund, but it was frequent enough that I cancelled my service for a few months. They contacted me and offered a special to try them again, so I did and have been pleased.

For the past year, it's been pretty good. Produce is fresh, proteins are high quality, and delivery remains reliable. Only issues: the shrimp always leaks juice into the bag of proteins and the recipe cards are often tossed in the box at and angle causing them to be bent when the box is closed. But the recipes are good, though I question some of the chefs' ability to cook meat considering their prescribed cooking temps and time.

As far as HomeChef , it's great. Easy to choose your meals (weeks in advance), skip weeks, and cancel. Can be tricky to find the Contact Us link, though, which is obnoxious. Still, highly recommend.

The last 2 deliveries did not arrive. At all. This week it is showing 2 days late. And it took 2+ days to get a response from Home Chef. We enjoyed the meals for about a year but something is seriously wrong with their production and delivery process. We have cancelled all future deliveries.

The meals are good, but they arrive days later than promised, so you end up cooking food that has been sitting in a box for a week or longer, and have no idea when you can expect it

Love the latest version, makes managing my meals on my iPhone X easy peezy!

I have used Home Chef now for three years. It started when I was diagnosed with cancer the first time, it gave me confidence in making sure that I eat good meals well rounded, and also I didn’t have to go to the grocery store because I was so tired it helped out a lot. I have used at least a dozen other companies from blue apron to hello fresh etc. I will say your company not only has the very best selection and food ( that are not all skillet meals which is how most other services are it seems)

You have the best meal selection, freshness, packaging/presentation, and on top of that —all the way around the board excellent customer service and menu instructions with help when needed, and website for use. I have recommended you to many people, with complete confidence. Out of all the meals that I’ve had for three years averaging on 4 a week, (skipping a couple weeks here and there when I’m out of town) – I can honestly say there were only two meals that I didn’t prefer – there was nothing wrong with them I just didn’t like them as much when I got them. Everything else has been of superb quality ,excellent menu choices and when cooked and done amazing meals!

Thank you for your consistency and great service! You have helped my life a lot!

It’s easy to choose (not to skip), and we have had so many amazing meals. We both enjoy cooking, so we like the process and LOVE the final dishes. I like that you can see everything including ingredients and instructions - full transparency to see if the cooking and food is good for what we desire. Because we skip most weeks (I use this for when we are out of town on a weekend), I’d like to “activate” a week instead of worrying about skipping every single week. I messed up once and got a shipment we didn’t need. Everything else is awesome, and I would recommend to anyone. Even if you can’t cook.. choose the easy meals, and it’s a great way to learn how to shop and to cook. In addition, we live in a condo with non air-conditioned interior mail storage, and these stay cold until late in the evening when we pick up. Nicely packaged. Thanks! **edit** just paused indefinitely because HomeChef does no have a pause button. I feel they make it purposefully difficult to track each week. I ordered one week after customer service paused my account and didn’t go to the WEB account to re-pause. Traveling and have meals arriving with no people. Huge glitch by not making this an easy process. I want to choose my meal not remember when I DONT want something. Strike 3.

HomeChef is nicely designed. I read some negative reviews from previous versions and it seems they really listened, which is nice. One thing I'd like to see (maybe I'm just missing it) is a way to change my delivery day for all future deliveries, rather than one week at a time. I LOVE that I can see all the info about upcoming meals so I can make sure I have everything I need before I even get the box.

There are similar services out there, and I've tried the big name in the space. Let's call them... "Azure Kitchen-garment". With them, the weekly selection was limited, and the recipes were just ok. Home Chef, on the other hand, has more recipes per week with no limitation of combination, and the food is delicious! I felt like everything was easier with Home Chef, from meal prep to clean up, and the meal was much tastier and more nutritious than with the other guys.

A tip for first timers. There was a 3-ring binder in my box that I almost missed. I'm diligent about recycling, so as I was breaking down the box I found the binder between the insulation and the cardboard. I didn't notice it when I first was unpacking the box.

I’ve been using this for a few months. The recipes are good and there hasn’t been one yet my family didn’t like. The recipes are easy to follow and, for the most part, the food is of good quality (had a few deliveries with off cucumbers, peppers or butter lettuce).

It’s kind of expensive but very convenient for a busy family trying not to eat fast food. The new app update was a little disappointing though. I love the flexibility of being able to order recipes in different serving sizes in the same week, but now only to seem to have the option of ordering 2,4, or 6 servings for all of the meals, which will limit how much or often I’ll order in the future.

Home Chef has been a life changer for myself and my family. We went for being the typical hot dog, spaghetti, and taco family to a family that eats a wide variety of meals while introducing my children to new foods and ethnicities. As someone who has always wanted to cook, this app has helped shape me into a confident chef and now I feel quite comfortable in the kitchen even preparing my own meals. Even with the new found confidence I still prefer this app over the super market. For one the quality of meats and vegetables is better than what one can obtain in a typical grocery chain store. Also I have found it difficult to create the same meals at home at a lower price point. The packaging is fantastic, the recipe cards are very easy to follow and the overall result is better than restaurant quality. We rarely eat out anymore, my kids and my and wife and I find ourselves trying foods we would have never eaten before and we feel healthier considering a majority of meals are prepared with fresh quality ingredients.

I have to say, I'm really impressed by Home Chef. I was very skeptical at first. We've tried online food services before and they were all expensive and all tasted like frozen crap. That being said, because of my wife's and my busy lifestyle, we ate out a ton. So we needed something fast, more affordable and tasty. Home Chef really delivered, literally. Lol. We've had a blast making the food, and because you're given the ingredients and instructions, there's no waste, it's easy to prepare and it's much cheaper than eating out. (And honestly not much of a difference than buying the same groceries if you went to the store.) Plus... it tastes fantastic! I'm a meat and potatoes, buffalo wing, pizza, burgers guy, ...and we're eating the low carb/low calorie meals! And they're good??? Wow. If you can convince me to eat cauliflower, you did something right. Try it out for a week. We've been doing it for a couple months now and couldn't be happier.

I live in a very small town. We have no Uber or Post Mates or a 24 hour anything. I also have high anxiety so to food shop the way I used to my whole life is not possible right now. Also I waste a lot of food because I have good intentions but then get too lazy or busy to prep a meal. My father passed away two weeks ago. There was literally zero food at his house as he ate out or came to my house to eat. I only received one box so far but I took it to my dads house as I have been spending a lot of time there. It felt very nice to have everything so easy when I was hungry and I didn't have to drive far to get fast food or leave during my mourning and sadness. I feel very " taken care of" when I cooked and ate a Home Chef meal. 10 out of 10 for convenience. I don't know how long I'll stick to it after the promo period but I'll try and it's nice that you can skip meals.