- It's the battle of HelloFresh versus Blue Apron
and how money are you really saving
over buying conventional groceries.
(soft tune)
Hi.
I'm the YouTube deal guy, Matt Granite
and I'm here for you pretty much every day
to save you more cash than anyone else in the country.
I also have more giveaways than anyone else on YouTube
and while I am not giving away a box of Blue Apron
or HelloFresh, which I had actually wanted to do,
I learned that when you give away a free box,
you have to cancel before the membership rebills you
for the next week, then it's not really free, and,
instead, 50 dollar Amazon gift card,
which is about 19 dollars short of a week of HelloFresh
or Blue Apron, so, there you go, that's the money I have,
I hope you enjoy it.
In the amount of time that I've now had to test Blue Apron
and HelloFresh, there's definitely a clear winner
and I'm gonna give you a full unboxing and a comparison
and one of my amazing coworkers from television
is actually gonna join us midway through the video
for her Blue Apron unboxing.
And I should also mention that neither HelloFresh
or Blue Apron is paying us to talk about them,
we are not getting kickbacks,
this is merely to educate you on the difference
between the two and also whether or not a meal subscription
service where you're paying eight or nine dollars
per portion is actually worth your hard earned dollar.
Let's head over to my condo.
Unlike Blue Apron, this just comes
a little bit better organized
and they've actually changed the size of the recipe cards,
so the recipe cards now are really big,
almost like the size of a place mat, that is a nice change.
You get their other offers.
Again, that's sometimes how they
subsidize their cost of the shipping.
(paper crumpling)
And as we open this up we have each of the meals.
We have Penne with a Kick,
Lean Mean Chicken and Greens,
and New York Strip Steak.
At the bottom of this insulated cooler,
you have the ice packs, and then this is where the meat,
the poultry, the seafood would exist,
and the funny thing is the first time I ordered,
my wife actually took this box out to the recycling
because she didn't realize there were treasures
at the bottom of the box and I don't blame her.
In some cases, you'll see the HelloFresh branding
on the items like you will on the steak
but on the chicken they, of course, let you know
where they come from and it's usually high quality,
fancier labels that they include.
We'll show you Blue Apron in a moment
but they basically put everything into one box,
HelloFresh individually splits up the ingredients
so you don't have to sort through them
and figure out what goes with what.
Each recipe card lists a prep time,
which I do find accurate,
the total cook time, the calored value,
if that is something you are concerned with,
and they usually don't exceed 800 calories.
I've noticed them usually
hovering around 600 or 700 calories.
Of the three recipes between the chicken, the penne,
and the steak, I will conclude the penne's
actually the most complex and I use that word lightly
because it's really not that difficult in my opinion.
I'm gonna make this for you.
Six steps for this one, actually six steps for all of these,
so I will breeze through this
and we'll be eating together in no time.
Let's open this up.
(cardboard tearing)
And all the boxes come sealed,
there's usually two stickers
and never really any spillage issues.
Alright, we got a lot of spinach,
you get the penne, canned tomatoes,
onion which is in good shape, two onions actually,
tomatoes, decent shape given that this is the winter,
Parmesan cheese and, as you can see,
this is HelloFresh branded.
You get a chili pepper and then the garlic
which is really nice, it's peeled already for you.
Alright, vegetables are all chopped,
let's move over to the stove, penne is ready to go,
and as you guys can see it's almost two o'clock
in the morning, I'm getting ready for work,
so this is my breakfast slash dinner.
That's what happens when you're nocturnal.
Alright, the pancetta goes in.
(sizzling)
(scraping)
Alright, now go the onions and the chili peppers.
(sizzling)
And now it's tomato time.
I don't know why I said that in an excited way,
that was a little sketchy, but here you go.
(sizzling)
(scraping)
Alright, spinach time.
I know it looks like we have a ton
but I'm assuming this will wilt.
And finally, penne.
I haven't added any of the cheese yet
but the 30 minute prep time definitely holds true
and it looks very similar to
what it says it's going to look like.
Alright let's get some pancetta in the mix
and do a little taste test.
Really good.
There's less packaging on Blue Apron,
which also means a little bit more confusion
over what goes with what.
As I showed you on the HelloFresh recipe,
you get individually wrapped garlic
that's peeled for you per recipe.
Blue Apron's approach is they'll send you a giant clove
of garlic and then you split it up in between recipes.
They also put everything together in the box
rather than packaging them individually.
Yes, you'll know what goes with what recipe
but it's a little bit more work.
I would say the creativity and the value of the produce
provided on HelloFresh quite far ahead of Blue Apron
in terms of my experience.
- So this is my first Blue Apron experience.
It's kind of weird to me that food comes in a box
and it's okay, but I'm gonna be a believer.
So this is the stuff.
It's lettuce, with a burger you have a salad on the side,
a carrot,
these are our buns, they're a little smooshed,
just being honest,
they gave us a ton of cheddar cheese,
which I think's for burgers,
this is so funny to me, a shallot.
Okay so I cooked the burgers
and they're almost done.
I don't really think they gave us enough cheese
so I gave Alex all the cheddar and I put American on mine.
That was the one thing I would say there's not enough of,
it was this like serious tiny block of cheese.
Caramelized onions are done, I have the salad complete.
- I'm standing beside my favorite co-anchor
and the magnificent meteorologist, Hollie Giangreco.
- You're so good to me.
- I love ya, Hollie. - I love you more.
- Based on your test,
now I have been a Blue Apron member for about six months,
I tried it with Jackie, I was always hungry.
- Right.
I was too, I tried it for the very first time
and I felt like either I have
a portion control problem
or, yeah, I was starving.
- For those of you that haven't seen Hollie before,
or you're watching a different part of the country
from where she airs, she cooks on television.
She's been cooking for years on television.
One of her other shows is revolving around cooking
and if you are not sold, I don't think I could be.
- Right.
Where I do think I see the possibility is if
you wanna get into the adventure side of cooking
and maybe try something that you never have
but I'd be a little nervous about two olives for a salad.
They literally, with one of the meals, it was a pasta dish
and then you got this head of romaine lettuce,
two pepperoncini, two olives.
Now I'm the kinda, I'm an Italian girl,
I'm the kinda cook that I'm tasting as I go
and what the heck is this two olives?
(laughing)
I mean an entire can of black, and they were black olives,
this was not too fancy schmancy,
an entire can is under a dollar,
it's probably like 79 cents.
- Yes it is.
You've just nailed that correctly.
With a coupon it could be as low as 12 cents,
so aggravating.
- But we're a family of four.
Three meals for a family of two was 60 dollars.
With 120 dollars, which is what it would've been
for these three meals, I could go nuts in a grocery store.
I mean, just let me loose, Matt.
- I completely agree. - Up and down those aisles.
- You make it happen and actually the classic box,
which I had tried, the classic box, which is 109 dollars
compared to that 120. - Okay.
- I mean, as you guys just saw, the portions...
- Don't even tell me, a lot more?
- Yeah, it was.
Like four people easily out of that
and I'm a huge, I mean, you can see me eat.
- So you had leftovers?
- Oh wait, that wasn't even a question, yes.
- Yeah, well, leftovers was not even
a possibility in my case.
(laughing)
- I agree.
So the big takeaway message,
I prefer HelloFresh to Blue Apron.
I think the recipes are a little bit better,
I think the quality of the food is just a little bit better,
but I'd say if you are someone that eats out frequently
or doing a lot of pick up, you're definitely gonna save
money with a service like this.
It's foolproof in most cases.
You will be eating, in some ways, a healthier variety
of recipes that you wouldn't have access to.
If you're short on time, great.
If you're short on money, this is not the service for you.
And now it's time for a (claps hands) 50 dollar
Amazon gift card giveaway.
Using TubeBuddy's random Pick A Winner tool
to find a subscriber who's commented in the last six months,
congratulations Jan Galvez, you are awesome.
Thank you for congratulating our prior winners,
you are now a winner, just email support@mattsdailydeals.com
for your free 50 dollar Amazon gift card.
Yes!
(drumming)
Oh, you're supposed to do a drum roll
before you give the item away, woops, my bad,
you won, congratulations.
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