How Do Home Chef Prices & Meals Compare with Other Kit Services? Read All About Home Chef Meal Kits Now!
Meal kit delivery services were first introduced in the U.S. around 2012, and since then the idea has really taken off. The industry is expected to grow by $12.99 billion between 2017 and 2022.
Why the intense popularity for food kit subscription services?
People have become so busy that planning, shopping, and preparing meals every day of the week isn’t always possible, and eating out or getting takeout can be expensive. Meal kit subscriptions services like Home Chef nicely fill the gap between doing it all yourself and expensive restaurant meals.
Home Chef is one of the top four food delivery services in the U.S. that offers to deliver fresh ingredients and easy to follow Home Chef recipes to your door every week. The draw is that your family can still enjoy home-cooked meals without having to plan or shop.
When people are evaluating this dinner delivery service, they want to know several things. How do Home Chef reviews compare to other services? Does the Home Chef meal cost include shipping? How is Home Chef customer service to work with?
You’ll find all those answers and more in AdvisoryHQ’s Home Chef review. In our unbiased review, we’ll go over Home Chef meal options, which supermarket now offers Home Chef kits, and how they’re ranked in taste.
If you’ve been trying to decide whether to give this food kit service a try, you’ll want to continue reading to find out everything you need to know about Home Chef meal kit subscriptions.
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AdvisoryHQ News Home Chef Reviews | What is Home Chef?
If you’re wondering, “What is Home Chef,” we’ll begin with a bit of their history and where they are now. Basically, they are a subscription service that ships out boxes filled with the exact ingredients you need and instructions for cooking Home Chef recipes.
The company was founded in Chicago, Illinois in 2013, just a year or two behind Home Chef competitors, Blue Apron, Plated, and HelloFresh. Home Chef prices are right in the middle of the pack, not the most expensive and not the cheapest.
A lot has happened since the service was first started. Home Chef meal kits have a delivery area that covers about 97% of the US population. However, the biggest event was the acquisition of Home Chef by grocery store chain Kroger in 2018.
Meal delivery kit services have encroached on the territory of grocery stores, so some have taken an “if you can’t beat them, join them” approach, buying the subscription services and offering their meals both by the delivery model and in stores.
We’ll get into the Home Chef cost and the difference between their meals delivered and those that have started appearing in Kroger grocery stores. But first, let’s find out how Home Chef meal delivery actually works.
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How Does Home Chef Work?
Home Chef meal delivery service reviews show that they’re a subscription, meaning you sign up for ongoing weekly deliveries. However, you do have some flexibility for skipping weeks and choosing the number of meals you want.
Here are the basics of how Home Chef works:
- Sign up for an account
- Choose the desired number of meals and delivery date frequency
- Choose Home Chef recipes from a rotating list of meals
- Receive deliveries to your door with pre-portioned ingredients and recipe cards
- Cook your meal, it takes about 30 minutes
Is there an extra Home Chef cost for skipping weeks?
You can skip weeks or change your delivery frequency anytime and there is no penalty. Login to your account and edit your Delivery Calendar to make changes.
Is there a Home Chef App?
Do you like to do your shopping on the go? The company offers a Home Chef app that lets you manage your meal kit deliveries conveniently from your mobile device. The Home Chef app is available from both Google Play and Apple’s iTunes stores.
What can you do with the Home Chef app?
- Manage your weekly Home Chef deliveries
- Discover new recipes and cooking tips
- Review your meals and send feedback
- Refer friends and family to earn $30 for a referral sign up
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How Much Does Home Chef Cost?
Now it’s time to find out just how much this meal delivery service will cost you. Is the time saving going to be worth it? Home Chef meals start at $7.99 per serving.
A distinct feature you’ll find with Home Chef is that they’re a rare meal kit service that offers a 5-minute lunch option. There’s also a unique add-on that you won’t find elsewhere is Home Chef’s offer of smoothies and fruit baskets.
You can mix and match Home Chef meal options from a rotating weekly choice. The current week’s Home Chef price gives you a choice between about 3 lunch items and 13 dinner items.
How much does Home Chef shipping costs? If you order $49 or more, it’s free. If you order less than $49, shipping is going to cost you $10.
Pricing for the full meals below includes shipping, where applicable.
How Much Does Home Chef Cost? | Plans & Prices
Home chef meal options are pretty flexible, so you can choose as many or few meals as you like and mix and match between the standard dinner and lunch meals.
Standard Plan Home Chef Prices
- 2 servings, 1 recipe, $29.90/week
- 2 servings, 2 recipes, $49.80/week
- 2 servings, 3 recipes, $59.70/week
- 2 servings, 4 recipes, $79.60/week
- 4 servings, 1 recipe, $49.80/week
- 4 servings, 2 recipes, $79.60/week
- 4 servings, 3 recipes, $119.40/week
- 4 servings, 4 recipes, $159.20/week
5 Minute Lunch Home Chef Prices
- 2 servings, 1 recipe, $25.98/week
- 2 servings, 2 recipes, $41.96/week
- 2 servings, 3 recipes, $47.94/week
- 2 servings, 4 recipes, $63.92/week
- 4 servings, 1 recipe, $41.96/week
- 4 servings, 2 recipes, $63.92/week
- 4 servings, 3 recipes, $95.88/week
- 4 servings, 4 recipes, $127.84
Add Ons: Smoothie or Fruit Basket
- 2 servings, $9.90 (plus shipping)
- 4 servings, $19.80 (plus shipping)
Home Chef also offers a Premium Meal for a “Market Price” that will fluctuate.
Home Chef Pricing in Store
How much does Home Chef in a Kroger store costs compared to subscribing online? They began rolling out Home Chef recipes in-store in October 2018, and the Home Chef cost for 2-person meals bought in-store starts at $8.50 per serving.
Is There a Home Chef Free Trial?
What is Home Chef’s option for free or discounted meals? We researched Home Chef’s website and they don’t offer any free trials there. However, if you do a search on Home Chef coupons, you’ll find several listed on sites like Groupon and RetailMeNot.
The one offer we saw at Home Chef was the ability to earn a $30 credit for referring a friend.
How to Cancel Home Chef?
Some people get a little concerned when they research how to cancel Home Chef because it is more of a “pause” option than a full cancellation.
They state that in your account settings under the Account Information tab, Delivery Details, you can deactivate your account anytime, and for as long as you want.
They state that this effectively cancels your Home Chef subscription, but if you want to unpause it you can log back in and start it up again.
How to cancel Home Chef before your next meal delivery?
You need to cancel by Friday 12:00 p.m. Central time to stop the next week’s scheduled delivery.
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AdvisoryHQ Review | Home Chef Recipes & Meal Options
If you’re wondering what type of Home Chef meal options you’ll have, we have a preview below. Home Chef recipes rotate weekly to keep things fresh. These represent one week of options and include two holiday specials.
Standard Meals:
- Beef Meatball Pot-au-Feu
- Black Bean and Corn Tacos
- Blackened Chicken Caesar Salad
- Chicken Empanada Bowl
- Fried Shrimp Po’Boy
- Garlic Scallops over Parmesan Risotto
- Ginger-Scallion Chicken
- Italian Wedding Soup with Pork Meatballs
- Marsala Mushroom Smothered Pork Chops
- Sesame Teriyaki Steak
- Tex-Mex Turkey-Stuffed Peppers
- Thanksgiving Sides: Sage & Pecan Sweet Potatoes and Apple & Cranberry Stuffing
- Thanksgiving Sides: Walnut Maple Brussels and Truffle Mashed Potatoes
5 Minute Lunch (no cooking required):
- Prosciutto Apple Bowl
- Memphis BBQ Steak Wrap with Southwest Slaw
- Sesame Chicken Salad
Add-Ons:
- Strawberry Fields Smoothie
- Seasonal Fruit Basket
Home Chef Reviews – the Good and the Bad
Do people like these delivery kit meals? How’s the Home Chef customer service experience when someone wants to cancel Home Chef? We’re looking at Home Chef meal delivery reviews to find out.
We’ll start with the overall ratings received from multiple Home Chef reviews to give you a bird’s eye view of their popularity. Next, we’ve chosen some review highlights for Home Chef to give you details on what customers like or dislike about this meal service.
Home Chef Reviews & Ratings
- ConsumerAffairs (250 Home Chef reviews) – 3.1 out of 5
- Facebook (1,587 Home Chef reviews) – 3.8 out of 5
- Trustpilot (1,749 Home Chef reviews) – 4.7 out of 5
Home Chef Reviews – the Good/Positive
- In a Home Chef meal delivery review left at ConsumerAffairs, the reviewer said they really enjoyed the service. They and their partner work long hours and the service is convenient. They’d tried over 50 Home Chef recipes and enjoyed the majority of them.
- One of the Home Chef reviews on Facebook said the meals were easy and quick to make. They also liked the prices and said the Home Chef customer service was fantastic.
- A subscriber for over a year said they definitely have the best meal options out of other food kit delivery they’ve tried. On the negative side were issues with missing ingredients about half the time, but they said Home Chef customer service has always been very helpful with fixing the issue.
- In another Home Chef review, the reviewer said the meat was excellent, especially the salmon and that the recipes were all easy to follow, and also easy to duplicate if you wanted to make them again on your own.
Home Chef Reviews – the Bad/Negative
- In one of the negative Home Chef reviews at Trustpilot, the reviewer wasn’t happy about Home Chef’s cancellation process. The company paused the delivery when the customer just wanted their information deleted. They thought the “meals starting at $7.99” message was misleading since most of their meals cost more than that.
- Home Chef customer service being non-responsive was the complaint in another unhappy Home Chef meal delivery review. Their first order was never received, and they reached out multiple times, but received no help.
- A Home Chef reviewer wasn’t happy about receiving ingredients in poor condition during the summer. The vegetables they received were rotting and the meats were warm. They were on hold forever with Home Chef customer service and then the call was dropped and they couldn’t reach anyone after that.
- When the orders are correct, the meal service is great according to this reviewer of Home Chef. Unfortunately, they often missed ingredients and though the offer of a $10 credit helps, it doesn’t make dinner easier that night.
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AdvisoryHQ’s Home Chef Review Conclusion
We found that when the meals arrive intact and unspoiled, reviewers overwhelmingly praise the quality of Home Chef’s recipes. Their meal kits make dinner easier for busy families and are easy to make.
Where Home Chef falls short of expectations is in the consistency and customer service areas. They garner a high amount of complaints in Home Chef reviews for missing ingredients, which kind of negates the time-saving feature of their meal kit boxes.
Reviewers also say that it’s nearly impossible to get a hold of Home Chef’s customer service department by phone. Some do get a response by email and say they’re very responsive, others don’t.
On the positive side, most people find Home Chef’s prices are reasonable and they like having the ability to mix and match between dinner and lunch items and change their subscription anytime they like.
Since Home Chef is now owned by Kroger, that may fix some of the missing ingredient issues since Kroger will have a little more oversight. Their kits being in their stores now also provide the opportunity, if you live near one, to try them without subscribing.
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