In January 2015, I caused a little stir in the Stuttgart community when I subscribed to Hello Fresh, a service that provides fresh food and recipes on a weekly basis.  You can order a three or five meal box, vegetarian or “classic” (including meat).  Initially, Bill and I liked Hello Fresh, even though we had a major billing SNAFU.  The recipes were different, could be prepared quickly, and the food was basically high quality.  It spared us having to go to the store to buy it.  We got the three meal classic box fairly regularly for awhile.

Over the last couple of years, Hello Fresh has made some improvements.  For one thing, their Web site is a lot better than it was when I first started using the service.  It’s a lot easier to pause shipments.  For awhile, I was having to email customer service every week I didn’t want a box.  That got old.  They also made it possible to switch out recipes.  When I first started using Hello Fresh, you couldn’t make any substitutions to the planned meals.  So if you didn’t eat pork or, in my case, mushrooms, you couldn’t substitute a different meal from the five day box.  They have since changed that, which I think is a good thing.

But after awhile, the novelty of Hello Fresh simply wore off.  I realized I didn’t like the recipes that much and I was tired of having to decide each week if I wanted to order boxes.  The last straw came last week, when we decided to order Hello Fresh again.  For some reason, the payment for my classic meal box didn’t go through, though I did manage to successfully pay for the fruit box.  I sent them an email last week and they still haven’t responded, though I have gotten at least two auto-generated emails letting me know I “haven’t been forgotten”.  I finally decided this week that I am done with Hello Fresh.  Their customer service simply sucks too much to bother with it anymore.

That being said, it was an adventure to use the service for awhile.  We did get to try some new stuff and learn a few new recipes.  Bill’s German improved by following the recipes in German.  Some of the meals we had were beautiful to look at, even if I didn’t always think they were that tasty.  So I’m glad we did it for awhile.

Quitting Hello Fresh was interesting, though.  They really do try to get you to reconsider.  With every step before I cancelled online, I had to affirm that I really wanted to stop the service.  I guess in that regard, they’re taking cues from Americans.  Given that Hello Fresh is available in the United States, I guess it makes sense.

So long, Hello Fresh.  It’s been real.  Guess we’ll go back to our regular cooking and use some of those new cookbooks I invested in last Christmas.

The best of the three Hello Fresh recipes we used last week.  Turkey, rice, and pickled vegetables.

Edited to add: I just yesterday got a response from an email I sent to Hello Fresh two weeks ago.  Their customer service is the height of suckitude.  Good riddance.