Hungryroot Review: I May Have Found My Meal Kit Soulmate
Hungryroot
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Hungryroot is one of those meal kit services I would fleetingly notice in ads but didn’t investigate further. Although something seemed to set it apart from other meal kits, I had already abandoned my culinary aspirations for the time being, so I decided the service wasn’t for me. Turns out, I’ve been missing out all this time. Hungryroot is a unique meal delivery service ideal for a person like me: Someone who is anxious to eat nourishing meals with whole foods but lacks the patience (and kitchen real estate) to cook. In this Hungryroot review, I’ll go over why even among grocery delivery services, Hungryroot is so distinctive, and who is best suited to try it.
This content is meant to be informative, but should not be taken as medical advice. It is not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention or treatment of health problems. Always speak with your doctor before starting any new supplement or exercise regimen.
Hungryroot At a Glance
- Hungryroot is a weekly meal planning and delivery service that delivers a mix of produce, proteins, pantry items and pre-prepared dishes.
- Meals suit a range of tastes and diets, including omnivores and pescatarians, and those seeking a good meal kit for vegetarians.
- You customize your first order from Hungryroot based on food preferences and dietary restrictions when signing up, and the service further curates boxes as you refine your taste.
- Recipes are included in each box based on the included foods and meals.
What Is Hungryroot?
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Hungryroot is like the harmonious love child of a grocery store and a meal kit delivery service (Think: EveryPlate, HelloFresh, Home Chef or Blue Apron). I noticed that several online Hungryroot reviews describe the service as being among the cadre of plant-based or vegan meal kit delivery services, however, I think the branding of the service has since changed, since I never spotted that lingo on the website or in more recent press clips. Hungryroot currently offers an abundance of real meat and plant-based protein options alike. Hungryroot meal kits also include pantry items, snacks and breakfast foods. The amount will depend on your preferences when you sign up. You can opt to get a box that’s weighed more heavily by meals and cooking ingredients.
Hungryroot Pros
- Sustainable portions
- One of the best healthy meal kit delivery services—nutritious and healthy foods prioritized
- Lots of veggie and vegan protein options
- Convenient AI tech chooses your groceries while still allowing modifications
Hungryroot Cons
- Less budget-friendly food delivery service
- Experienced home chefs might prefer more complex recipes
Hungryroot Cost
A Hungryroot box runs anywhere from $69 to $129 a week, and the cost hinges on a few factors, including any promotions or discounts that may be available. But the cost largely comes down to the items in your cart, which are assigned “credits.” Your plan comes with a set amount of credits based on its size, and you can use them to shop as you please. You can still add items beyond your credit limit, you'll just see the extra charges in your shopping cart.
How Hungryroot Works
Hungryroot
Choosing Groceries
The Hungryroot journey begins online or within the app, which can be downloaded from the Apple App Store (Hungryroot does not have an app for Android in the Google Play Store). After creating an account with your name, email and password, you’ll take a brief quiz. Hungryroot wants to hammer out the basics, like how many people you’re buying for, and the nitty gritty, like your preferred spice levels and foods you don’t like.
After that series of questions to suss out your goals, tastes, time limitations and more, there’s some behind-the-curtain wizardry: Hungryroot uses its in-house AI technology to conjure an expansive list of groceries and recipes for the week. According to the company, 70 percent of the foods that make it to customers’ homes get chosen via algorithm.
This hands-off aspect of Hungryroot is a feature that I especially loved. I sat back and let the service make healthy food choices for me—foods that I later grabbed throughout the week when I might otherwise have succumbed to “decision fatigue.” A concept I learned from my experience with the Noom program, decision fatigue is when unhealthy choices become more likely at the end of the day after you’ve used up your quota of self-control.
Hungryroot
Delivery
The foods are delivered to your home in an insulated box, and tucked inside is a printout of all the included foods (with a snowflake asterisk to let you know if refrigeration is needed). If you flip the paper over, you’ll also find all your suggested Hungryroot recipes for the week. Any ingredients required will be included in the box, although the recipes won’t use every component within the box, since you’ll also have snacks, shakes and desserts, depending on your order.
Making the Recipes
Hungryroot will ask during sign-up what level of effort you prefer to put into cooking and food prep, but regardless, most recipes cook in 20 minutes or less. Typically, with a meal kit like HelloFresh or Home Chef, recipes require at least 30 minutes to prep and cook. The quicker cooking times were a definite appeal to me—spending a ton of time in the kitchen after a long day can seem especially daunting, so I was grateful for the simpler and more straightforward recipes of Hungryroot.
Hungryroot Menu/Recipes
Hungryroot
Diets
As a customizable service, Hungryroot can accommodate a broad range of dietary preferences and restrictions. The following diets are available to select at sign-up. You can also pick them within your profile settings anytime after sign-up:
- Dairy-free
- Gluten-free
- Soy-free
- Tree nut-free
- Peanut-free
- Egg-free
- Shellfish-free
Using Hungryroot
Delivery/Shipping
I opted to track my Hungryroot delivery with text notifications, which was an excellent way to ensure I was home when the box arrived. Shipping was smooth overall, with accurate tracking and a delivery that reached my door on the day requested at sign-up.
Packaging
The snacks and pantry items were packed closest to the top, while the produce and proteins were packed at the bottom, against cold packs. Hungryroot included instructions on how to recycle or dispose of each packaging component. All in all, the packaging was sufficient without being overkill. Some services include a lot more ice packs, whereas Hungryroot has just a few ice packs wrapped in insulating materials that are recycled or recyclable.
Taste and Quality
Hungryroot
This is where Hungryroot really shined. Every single food was a product I enjoyed and would buy again. I’ll touch on my favorite from a few different categories, starting with breakfast. For breakfast, I most enjoyed a mix of delicious smoothies and shakes, but my favorite item by far was the mini pumpkin bread loaf. The adorably sized, perfectly portioned loaf tasted like a recipe made by my master baker mother-in-law.
Initially, I was intimidated by the recipe card, even being fresh off a stint of extensive cooking, thanks to being tasked with reviewing EveryPlate in the weeks prior. Turns out I had nothing to be afraid of. The recipes were easy hybrids of pre-prepared foods and fresh vegetables. This for me was a perfect balance: I felt a sense of accomplishment despite only being tasked with chopping and cooking a vegetable to add to an already seasoned and sauced chicken; I got a healthier meal by adding fiber and other legume-heavy nutrients; and I didn’t have to worry about leaving a tsunami of dirty dishes in my kitchen in the process. I had two favorite veggie/meal combos. First was the Kevin’s Thai-style coconut chicken with green beans, and second was a tortellini pasta with basil pesto that called for an addition of broccoli.
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What Customers Are Saying About Hungryroot
Hungryroot has a 4.8 out of 5-star rating within the Apple App Store, and reviewers often cited Hungryroot’s unique value-add to the meal planning routine: “I like having high-quality meals with no prep and no waste and lower carb with an emphasis on fresh veggies. Even when I don’t feel like cooking I can do these meals,” writes one reviewer. They added that the snacks are “great” and that it's “fun to try them all out,” and the inclusion of breakfast in the boxes often saved them from skipping the meal altogether: “Highly recommend this, as someone who is a chef and enjoys cooking but sometimes wants to phone it in when I get home,” they conclude.
Another reviewer said that the foods are “good and so simple for our sports life,” noting the benefits of staying out of the grocery store, where excessive spending is tempting: “[The] menu or grocery items allows us to try new things without buying such bulky items. I love how we are not wasting food like before. This could be pricey if I only went with the recipes, but HungryRoot allows for the groceries which at times could be smaller credits,” they write.
Negative reviews were mostly customer service-related issues, such as items being missing from the box or roughed-up packaging. One reviewer did note that in the “one incident of a food item being damaged on delivery,” they were instantly refunded.
About Hungryroot
Hungryroot
Headquartered in New York City, Hungryroot has gone through several iterations since its founding by Ben McKean and Franklin Becker. At its 2015 launch, Hungryroot offered six food items total, expanding to 60 items in 2019 before its ultimate transformation into an online grocery subscription service. The selection is still pared down in a nod to the company’s roots—I read that a humble 500 grocery items are in Hungryroot’s rotation in a 2023 article.
Hungryroot vs Home Chef
Hungryroot and Home Chef are technically both meal kit delivery services, but as we’ve noted, Hungryroot is that and more, whereas Home Chef focuses on making home-cooked meals from scratch, but with pre-portioned ingredients that prevent waste and trips to the grocery store. People who genuinely enjoy the cooking process are better suited to a meal kit service like Home Chef, whereas Hungryroot is a more comprehensive grocery delivery service that includes many pre-prepared foods and snacks. Cooking and prep with Hungryroot is minimal.
For more information, check out our in-depth Home Chef review.
Hungryroot vs Instacart
Although Hungryroot is more aligned branding-wise with meal kit delivery services like EveryPlate and Home Chef, I found myself most often comparing the service to Instacart. Instacart, a service I’ve used frequently, is an online grocery delivery app. You select an available grocery store, do your shopping, and then pick up your neatly packaged groceries or have them delivered. There’s a lot more freedom when using Instacart compared to Hungryroot—for better or worse. Within Instacart, I often search terms like, “keto,” and “paleo” to find foods I like, but get tempted by the ads and discounted items that Instacart flaunts. With Hungryroot, you don’t have the burden of making healthy choices yourself. Instead, healthy options are picked for you, and recipes are tucked into your box so you know how to use the included produce to each meal’s advantage.
Hungryroot vs. Factor
Factor, one of the top keto meal delivery services, is a meal delivery service that requires no prep. Instead, you just have to reheat the prepared meals. Unlike services like Nutrisystem, and other meal delivery services geared toward weight loss, Factor meals can have quite high calorie counts (although a “calorie smart” plan is available), since the primary focus is furnishing keto meals low in carbs and high in protein. Hungryroot does not have a specific setting to make your meals more keto-friendly, however, you can certainly customize the box to that preference. Unlike Factor, Hungryroot boxes include recipes to use your ingredients in, although some of the foods are pre-prepared meals, essentially.
Hungryroot FAQs
Does Hungryroot use real meat?
Yes, Hungryroot includes real meat in its deliveries, if that’s your preference. Although the service offers a broad range of veggie-based proteins and meat alternatives, there are plenty of real meat options as well.
Can you pick your own groceries on Hungryroot?
With Hungryroot, you won’t have the freedom to pick out your groceries to the same degree you have with a service like Instacart, which is essentially virtual perusing through aisles. However, you can alter the items that will come in your box, with a significant amount of wiggle room.
What type of meals does Hungryroot have?
Befitting the name, the meals in Hungryroot almost always feature a vegetable, although meals satisfy an omnivorous diet as well. Meals require minimal prep and cooking when compared to a classic meal kit, thanks to the inclusion of pre-made dishes and sauces as well. There are also small grab-and-go meals, like breakfast pastries. If and how many types of meals you get will depend on your preferences when you sign up.
Does Hungryroot charge for delivery?
Hungryroot charges for delivery when a box amounts to less than $70 a week, otherwise, shipping is free.
Where does Hungryroot ship?
Hungryroot ships to the continental U.S. Hungryroot does not ship to Alaska or Hawaii. And Hungryroot does not ship internationally.
Takeaway: Is Hungryroot Worth It?
Before Hungryroot, any produce in my fridge was mostly aspirational—foods that represented my desire to eat more veggies, but inevitably ended up in the compost by week’s end. Hungryroot’s small portions and simple recipes taught me that healthy eating doesn’t have to be a wasteful struggle. I genuinely think using the app changed my whole outlook toward meal prep and weekly meal planning, a task I’ve often had to rely on by using a separate meal planning service. Having said that, I don’t plan on abandoning Hungryroot anytime soon. I love the selections Hungryroot has, and that the AI technology does such a good job choosing for me, freeing up brain space for life’s other myriad tasks. My honest review is that Hungryroot is one of the best meal delivery services out there, so I’m planning to leave my grocery shopping in this app’s capable hands for a while. I’m looking forward to skipping takeout more often and instead enjoying Hungryroot’s range of unfussy, healthy items. Among the foods I haven’t tried yet but look forward to include taco meals and artichoke additions to prepared foods, and sensibly portioned sweets, from brownies to almond chickpea cookie dough.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any diseases.
Prices are accurate and items in stock as of publish time.
