Hungryroot Review: Meal and Grocery Delivery Made Simple

Are you torn between your desire to eat healthy food and your need for fast, convenient meal choices? If so, Hungryroot might be just the solution you need.

This company is a cross between a meal-delivery kit provider and a grocery service. It offers a variety of quick and healthy meals on its weekly menu, plus a wide selection of groceries to make your own meals or snacks.

Our Hungryroot review can help you decide if the service would be a good fit for your household.

What Is Hungryroot?

Hungryroot is a meal delivery subscription service as well as a health-conscious grocery delivery service. It provides a combination of ready-to-make meals and healthy groceries. 

The service’s meals and groceries are all made from high-quality ingredients that are minimally processed, easy to use, free of unnecessary or unhealthy additives, and taste good.

Its large selection of nutritionally balanced meals makes the service a good fit for anyone who is interested in healthy eating and wants to save time grocery shopping as well as cooking.

How Does the Service Work?

When you sign up for Hungryroot, you’ll take a short quiz about your dietary preferences, household size, and how many meals or snacks you want the service to send each week.

Based on your answers, Hungryroot selects a number of groceries and recipes per week that would be a fit for your needs. 

After you complete checkout, the service prefills your shopping cart with meals and groceries that fit your dietary needs and household size.

To choose your meals and groceries yourself, you’ll need to clear your cart and enter the meal selection page. 

This page will show you how many “credits” you have to spend and the price (in credits) of each recipe or grocery item. 

Using credits allows you to choose any combination of recipes or groceries, which adds a lot of flexibility.

The Hungryroot menu includes hundreds of weekly meal options consisting of just three to five ingredients each. It also offers a large selection of groceries.

Keep in mind that this is a weekly subscription service. As a result, you’ll need to remember to edit or skip a week to get the groceries you want or to avoid being charged. 

You can also cancel anytime on the Hungryroot app or website.

How Much Does Hungryroot Cost?

Hungryroot’s pricing structure is a bit different from other meal delivery kits. This is how it is able to remain a flexible hybrid between a meal delivery platform and a personalized grocery service.

Based on your answers to the sign-up quiz about your household size as well as how many meals and snacks you want Hungryroot to send, you’ll be assigned a number of weekly credits.

For instance, my plan was based on three four-serving recipes, plus four to six breakfast servings, five to seven snack servings, and four to six sweets servings. 

The total per week was $173.85, which translates into 82 credits. This means that each credit was worth about $2.12.

Meals start at about eight credits per recipe (which breaks down to only about $4 per serving) but can cost as much as 28-30 credits. Grocery items begin at 0.25 credits each but can cost as much as eight to ten credits each.

Shipping is free on orders over $70 and $6.99 otherwise. However, the minimum order is $65, so it’s more cost-effective to order at least $70 worth of food to get free shipping.

New members can get 30 percent off their first box, plus a free gift in each delivery.

My Experience Using the Service

Overall, my experience with Hungryroot was great. My first box actually got delayed and had been repacked by the shipping service when it arrived. 

It arrived at my home with all of the contents of the original box dumped into a plastic bag, zip-tied, and placed in a plain cardboard box. Several items were missing.

As soon as Hungryroot heard about this, they made it right in minutes by issuing me a full refund on my credits along with an additional $15 credit. 

I was impressed by the level of customer service, especially because the shipping delay and repacking were things they had no control over.

My second box arrived right on time, in its original packaging, and was neatly packed to ensure that no produce or other fragile items like muffins got crushed. 

Rather than a recipe card, the recipes were printed in black and white on the back of the packing slip. 

That didn’t bother me at all. It saved paper, and the recipes were so easy they didn’t need photos.

Nearly all of the packaging was recyclable, so it seemed pretty eco-friendly.

I ordered a combination of meals, snacks, and groceries with my credits. This made for an easy week of cooking since I received several breakfast, lunch, and snack items for my kids.

The first meal I made was the Creamy Caesar Seared Tuna Steak + Zucchini. This meal was ready in less than 20 minutes since all I had to do was sear the tuna and saute the zucchini. 

While this was going on, I tossed the salad together. Overall, it was a simple meal that everyone in my family enjoyed (including my six-year-old, who is a picky eater).

Better yet, the portion sizes were generous.

Next, I made the Rainbow Ground Bison Tacos. They were delicious. 

Since I’m keeping my meals low in carbs at the moment, I added some mashed cauliflower and guacamole to make mine a taco bowl.

Lastly, I made the chimichurri steak dinner with broccoli and mashed cauliflower. This meal was fabulous, and the premade chimichurri sauce added tons of flavor with absolutely no work on my part.

Although I’m not continuing to use Hungryroot for now, I could see myself signing back up for the service when life gets hectic. The combination of quick and healthy meals, groceries, and snacks makes it ideal for busy times.

How Easy Are Hungryroot Meals to Prepare?

They are extremely easy to prepare. For example, the only prep work I had to do for any of the vegetables in these meals was to slice the zucchini. 

Everything else was already sliced, chopped, or prepped, including the mashed cauliflower.

The most time-consuming portion of each meal was cooking the protein, which typically took no more than 15 minutes. 

Additionally, much of the other meal prep could be done while the protein was cooking. As a result, these meals were all completely done in less than 25 minutes.

If you want an even easier meal prep experience, Fresh n’ Lean is a suitable option. Read our review of Fresh n’ Lean to learn more.

Who Should Use Hungryroot?

Hungryroot is a good fit for plant-based eaters, busy people, and anyone who wants nutritious meals.

Vegan or Plant-Based Eaters

Vegans and anyone who eats a plant-based diet will find plenty of meal and grocery options on Hungryroot. They feature a huge variety of plant-based meals. 

Plus, they offer plant-based meat alternatives, snacks, and other grocery items to supplement your recipe choices.

You can even filter when editing your cart each week to view only plant-based options.

People Short on Time

In my experience, all of Hungryroot’s meals come together in 20 to 25 minutes. Each meal is made with quick-cooking proteins, pre-prepped veggies, and premade sauces and seasonings.

This makes the service an excellent fit for anyone who wants healthy meals but needs them fast.

It also makes the service an excellent choice for meal kits for one person.

People Who Like Nutrient-Dense Meals

Additionally, you may like Hungryroot if you want nutritious meals. Hungryroot’s meals are made from high-quality, fresh ingredients and are very plant-forward (even if they contain meat).

This means that you’ll get lots of nutrients and antioxidants from fresh produce, unique seasonings, and spice blends.

Who Shouldn’t Use the Service?

On the other hand, Hungryroot may not be a good fit if you’re looking for meal variety or complex recipes.

People Who Like Variety

Although Hungryroot offers hundreds of recipes to choose from each week, they all basically follow the same formula. 

For instance, when I checked the menu, there were 27 different variations on a burger available.

After a while, you may find that Hungryroot meals lack variety. If you want to keep it fresh and interesting, you may have better luck with a different meal kit delivery service.

Foodies

Hungryroot is all about simplicity, so you won’t find slow-cooked meals, complex meals with multiple layers of flavor, or traditional dishes that are more complicated than spaghetti. 

Ultimately, if you’re a serious foodie, you may find that Hungryroot isn’t quite what you’re looking for in a meal kit.

Can You Lose Weight on Hungryroot?

Yes, it’s possible to lose weight on Hungryroot. Their meals tend to be on the lighter side due to their simplicity.

Plus, the nutrient content for each meal is available on the website and on your recipe slip.

As long as you stick to a single serving at mealtime and choose other meals or snacks that are limited in calories to promote a calorie deficit, you will probably find weight loss success using Hungryroot.

Read our guide on diet meal plans if you want a service that is devoted to getting fit.

Is Hungryroot Clean?

“Clean” can mean different things to different people. In my opinion, Hungryroot utilizes high-quality ingredients that I feel great about feeding to my family.

All of their food is free of partially hydrogenated oils, artificial sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors, and artificial preservatives.

Is Hungryroot All Vegan?

No, Hungryroot is not 100 percent vegan. They offer a variety of recipes that contain meat as well as grocery items like meat, cheese, and other dairy products.

Read our guide on the top vegan meal delivery services if that’s important to you.

Pros and Cons

Here are the pros and cons of Hungryroot.

Pros:

• Combines a meal delivery service with an online grocery service
• Meals are made with pre-chopped vegetables and pre-prepped ingredients
• Prep time is 25 minutes or less for most meals
• Appropriate for special diets and dietary restrictions

Cons:

• More expensive than purchasing your own groceries to assemble meals
• Recipes can seem repetitive or be too simple for some people

If you’re looking for healthy meal prep delivery that offers convenience, Hungryroot is worth trying.

The Competition

Here’s how Hungryroot compares to other meal kit delivery services.

Daily Harvest

Daily Harvest offers a variety of totally plant-based meals that require almost no prep, like smoothies, oat bowls, grain bowls, flatbreads, and more. 

Their menu options are all made with fresh ingredients like fruits and vegetables, along with gluten-free whole grains like rice, quinoa, and oats. However, all of their products are delivered frozen.

Read our guide on top gluten-free meal delivery kits if that is a need in your home.

Daily Harvest’s prices begin at $5.99 per serving. They’re a better fit than Hungryroot if you’re looking for plant-based meals that require almost no prep at all.

Read our Daily Harvest review to learn more.

Purple Carrot

Purple Carrot is an exclusively vegan meal kit company that offers meal kits, premade meals, and plant-based grocery items from their “Plantry.” Meals start at $9.99 per serving.

Their 100 percent vegetarian meal plans are a good fit for anyone who follows a plant-based diet.

Furthermore, they might be a better fit for you if you prefer to stick to a subscription-based service that only uses plant-based ingredients.

Read our Purple Carrot review to learn more.

Green Chef

Green Chef is a meal delivery kit that offers lunch and dinner recipes using only organic produce and ingredients.

This organic meal delivery service also caters to different dietary needs and features a variety of recipes for paleo, keto, gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian, and Mediterranean dieters. 

It’s a great option for anyone who’s interested in healthy living.

Read our Green Chef review to learn more.

Bottom Line

Hungryroot is a cross between meal delivery and grocery delivery that specializes in healthy, organic ingredients.

Their credit system allows for a large degree of flexibility. You can choose any combination of meals and groceries that works best for you each week.

However, the service is more expensive than buying groceries yourself at a grocery store. Regardless, it’s a great option if you’re looking for healthy foods, convenience, and flexibility all in one service.

How often do you order from a meal or grocery delivery service?