Video: Healthy meals delivered to your doorstep
Home Chef[1] (along with competitors Blue Apron[2], Plated[3], HelloFresh[4], and others) is one of a growing number of so-called meal delivery services. The first thing you need to get your head around is that they're not meal delivery services, they're ingredient delivery services. Turning those ingredients into food is entirely your responsibility.
Read also: How HelloFresh uses big data to cook up millions of custom meals[5]
My wife and I have been using Home Chef now for four weeks. Every week, a box from Home Chef arrives at our doorstep. Inside are three bags, corresponding to the three meals we've selected, as well three proteins (usually steak, fish, and chicken) sitting under some ice packs. Everything is packed in an insulated container.
The packing materials, for many, could be the first objection to Home Chef and the other meal delivery services. Because these meals come in cartons with packing materials, you'll have an increased trash load to manage. Since we get so many of our purchases from Amazon Prime[6], one more shipping carton doesn't make our weekly box processing all that much harder, but for some of you, it might be a deal breaker.
We're not sure which is more scary: David with power tools or David cooking.
The online experience
You might be wondering what a food review article is doing in ZDNet, but keep in mind that these services depend on the web to provide their storefront to consumers.
Beyond the basic web presence these sites offer, they also have to create menus that meet with the logistics[7]