4 ms·

I used Hello Fresh for a year, not sure if recipe variety was my problem. I think there's a lot of other possibilities to use LLMs in that product though, e.g.

I used Hello Fresh for a year, not sure if recipe variety was my problem. I think there's a lot of other possibilities to use LLMs in that product though, e.g. to help users express complex preferences, or to create best menus and schedules out of existing recipes. I'd say tampering with recipes would be the worst part of the AI integration. I think it's unfortunate that businesses look into using AI for something essential when there's a lot of easy, smaller pickings around their product where it could actually be useful

tomjakubowski 3y ago
I tried hello fresh. Unpacking a meal to find a fast food-sized mayonnaise packet as ingredient made me feel deeply sad
- jnwatson 3y ago
  Why? Are you going to make your own mayonnaise for 2 tablespoons?
  - EForEndeavour 3y ago
    I'm not who you're replying to, but have experienced the same sadness when using meal kits. Why? - This company and its supply chain went to the trouble of packaging a single serving of mayonnaise for me to personally discard as my token contribution to waste. Sure, an extra mayo packet won't make a difference, but simply not caring feels bad, you know? - I have a jar of mayo in the fridge. I didn't even need this. - Come to think of it, everything in this meal kit is wrapped in packaging that may well outlive me, depending on where it ends up. All for one meal's worth of food that I could have obtained more cheaply, less wastefully, and with more control over customization had I mustered the effort to plan ahead.
    - ravetcofx 3y ago
      Would it be better if there used biodegradable plastics?
      - Filligree 3y ago
        Yes, obviously.
- Zetobal 3y ago
  Why?
  - hombre_fatal 3y ago
    They wanted more.
  - houseatrielah 3y ago
    Maybe its irrational, but some people feel bad about creating a lot of plastic waste for one meal.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- valyagolev 3y ago
  Tbh I understand this, it did feel like a lot of plastic waste being left around. But I think it'd be an impossible logistical problem to avoid this in the foreseeable future
  - Xerox9213 3y ago
    When you register for your meals they could ask if you have some of the ingredients.
    - aaronharnly 3y ago
      …and then hand-packing to include or remove individual ingredients on a per-order basis? As someone with a significant ERP & warehouse implementation at work, that sounds very expensive and error-prone. Unfortunately :(
      - valyagolev 3y ago
        exactly. "hello fresh" is a logistical, not culinary challenge, i think. but same goes, probably, for any huge restaurant chain as well.
      - asah 3y ago
        at their scale and specialization, I'd hope this is done robotically... ?
- Xerox9213 3y ago
  An aunt signed me up for a few free meals through some promotion. I tried it with an open mind but I found the entire experience infuriating. Most of the meals came with poor quality produce (e.g. tiny unripe avocado — something I never would have grabbed at the grocer) and a silly amount of waste for items I had already. My least favourite part was the recipes. I’m not sure if it was just the small selection of recipes we got, but it seemed like each one was designed around a template with six photos. As if they had a spreadsheet of all their recipes and required each one to fill six columns so they could just print it out in a predictable way. This meant that if you followed the recipe you would wind up doing several redundant tasks and creating unnecessary dishes. It drove me wild. By the last meal I just read the recipe, looked at the ingredients, and improvised. A high quality recipe should not only result in a delicious meal but also be efficient and thoughtful about order of operations and clean-up. Having full control over ingredients, HF has no excuse providing low quality recipes, never mind the ingredients. I would recommend a NYT Cooking subscription and using a grocery delivery app instead.
  - mstade 3y ago
    This was my experience with hello fresh as well. Subpar produce and absolutely useless recipes. It feels like the ingredients and recipes are the things this company focuses on the least, never trying them again and I actively dissuade people from using them whenever it comes up in conversation.
  - groggo 3y ago
    I agree about the issues - (sometimes) poor quality produce, lots of tiny bits of waste, sometimes template-y feeling meals. Also very expensive, and sometimes not enough food. But overall I really like it. I actually learned a lot about cooking. The meals aren't complicated, and they follow similar patterns, so you start picking up on things. Like seasoning in layers (they tell you to salt & pepper at multiple steps), how to improve flavors with stock, spices, how to make presentation nice. And they're all pretty quick. After a while I have a nice library of recipe cards, and now I just pick a few of them when I go to the grocery store and get the ingredients myself. And even though sometimes it doesn't feel like enough food, it almost always comes out perfect. Sometimes I'll augment the amount of rice or something like that. So I like HelloFresh, and maybe eventually I'll graduate to more interesting meals like NYT Cooking. But HelloFresh is quick, easy, and usually good. What do you mean about "creating unnecessary dishes"?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
tornato7 3y ago
As someone with a few allergies, I effectively had to throw away and replace a third to half of the ingredients in every Hello Fresh meal. That's the #1 reason I stopped using it. An AI should be able to know what to substitute to make the whole kit edible for me.
- gffrd 3y ago
  Are you thinking "Rather than having a cook compose recipes with 1000 variations based on permutations of allergies, just produce one recipe with intended outcome, and let an AI figure out the variants"? How do you train an AI on taste? Would a chef state what's allowable for a recipe? "This one you can sub the soy out, but this one falls apart without it"
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > How do you train an AI on taste? You keep shoveling piles of recipes at it, and as long as most of the recipes are positively tasteful (as opposed to just randomly generated, or worse, engineered to suck out of spite), the AI should eventually pick up on taste in general.
    - gffrd 3y ago
      One thing I’m curious about … Having done a lot of user research, sometimes the most important things to a person aren’t stated, or even consciously known. If I’m shopping for chocolate chip cookies, they’re a proxy for another need: hunger, yes, but also emotions: wanting to feel taken care of, missing a place, etc. If chocolate chip cookies are unavailable, I’m not now considering snickerdoodles or shopping chocolate bars; I’m shopping for the feel: maybe it’s pie, maybe soup. I’m interested to see if the AIs we build will have the ability to identify this, so when someone says “I want a steak frites” the AI doesn’t strictly recommend steak recipes—“they’re asking for steak”—but realized the constellation of what the asker is actually asking for—they’re asking for a recipe that reminds them of when they lived in that apartment in that city X years ago. It will be fun to see what’s possible …

tomjakubowski 3y ago

I tried hello fresh. Unpacking a meal to find a fast food-sized mayonnaise packet as ingredient made me feel deeply sad

jnwatson 3y ago
Why? Are you going to make your own mayonnaise for 2 tablespoons?
- EForEndeavour 3y ago
  I'm not who you're replying to, but have experienced the same sadness when using meal kits. Why? - This company and its supply chain went to the trouble of packaging a single serving of mayonnaise for me to personally discard as my token contribution to waste. Sure, an extra mayo packet won't make a difference, but simply not caring feels bad, you know? - I have a jar of mayo in the fridge. I didn't even need this. - Come to think of it, everything in this meal kit is wrapped in packaging that may well outlive me, depending on where it ends up. All for one meal's worth of food that I could have obtained more cheaply, less wastefully, and with more control over customization had I mustered the effort to plan ahead.
  - ravetcofx 3y ago
    Would it be better if there used biodegradable plastics?
    - Filligree 3y ago
      Yes, obviously.
Zetobal 3y ago
Why?
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  They wanted more.
- houseatrielah 3y ago
  Maybe its irrational, but some people feel bad about creating a lot of plastic waste for one meal.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
valyagolev 3y ago
Tbh I understand this, it did feel like a lot of plastic waste being left around. But I think it'd be an impossible logistical problem to avoid this in the foreseeable future
- Xerox9213 3y ago
  When you register for your meals they could ask if you have some of the ingredients.
  - aaronharnly 3y ago
    …and then hand-packing to include or remove individual ingredients on a per-order basis? As someone with a significant ERP & warehouse implementation at work, that sounds very expensive and error-prone. Unfortunately :(
    - valyagolev 3y ago
      exactly. "hello fresh" is a logistical, not culinary challenge, i think. but same goes, probably, for any huge restaurant chain as well.
    - asah 3y ago
      at their scale and specialization, I'd hope this is done robotically... ?
Xerox9213 3y ago
An aunt signed me up for a few free meals through some promotion. I tried it with an open mind but I found the entire experience infuriating. Most of the meals came with poor quality produce (e.g. tiny unripe avocado — something I never would have grabbed at the grocer) and a silly amount of waste for items I had already. My least favourite part was the recipes. I’m not sure if it was just the small selection of recipes we got, but it seemed like each one was designed around a template with six photos. As if they had a spreadsheet of all their recipes and required each one to fill six columns so they could just print it out in a predictable way. This meant that if you followed the recipe you would wind up doing several redundant tasks and creating unnecessary dishes. It drove me wild. By the last meal I just read the recipe, looked at the ingredients, and improvised. A high quality recipe should not only result in a delicious meal but also be efficient and thoughtful about order of operations and clean-up. Having full control over ingredients, HF has no excuse providing low quality recipes, never mind the ingredients. I would recommend a NYT Cooking subscription and using a grocery delivery app instead.
- mstade 3y ago
  This was my experience with hello fresh as well. Subpar produce and absolutely useless recipes. It feels like the ingredients and recipes are the things this company focuses on the least, never trying them again and I actively dissuade people from using them whenever it comes up in conversation.
- groggo 3y ago
  I agree about the issues - (sometimes) poor quality produce, lots of tiny bits of waste, sometimes template-y feeling meals. Also very expensive, and sometimes not enough food. But overall I really like it. I actually learned a lot about cooking. The meals aren't complicated, and they follow similar patterns, so you start picking up on things. Like seasoning in layers (they tell you to salt & pepper at multiple steps), how to improve flavors with stock, spices, how to make presentation nice. And they're all pretty quick. After a while I have a nice library of recipe cards, and now I just pick a few of them when I go to the grocery store and get the ingredients myself. And even though sometimes it doesn't feel like enough food, it almost always comes out perfect. Sometimes I'll augment the amount of rice or something like that. So I like HelloFresh, and maybe eventually I'll graduate to more interesting meals like NYT Cooking. But HelloFresh is quick, easy, and usually good. What do you mean about "creating unnecessary dishes"?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

tornato7 3y ago

As someone with a few allergies, I effectively had to throw away and replace a third to half of the ingredients in every Hello Fresh meal. That's the #1 reason I stopped using it. An AI should be able to know what to substitute to make the whole kit edible for me.

gffrd 3y ago
Are you thinking "Rather than having a cook compose recipes with 1000 variations based on permutations of allergies, just produce one recipe with intended outcome, and let an AI figure out the variants"? How do you train an AI on taste? Would a chef state what's allowable for a recipe? "This one you can sub the soy out, but this one falls apart without it"
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > How do you train an AI on taste? You keep shoveling piles of recipes at it, and as long as most of the recipes are positively tasteful (as opposed to just randomly generated, or worse, engineered to suck out of spite), the AI should eventually pick up on taste in general.
  - gffrd 3y ago
    One thing I’m curious about … Having done a lot of user research, sometimes the most important things to a person aren’t stated, or even consciously known. If I’m shopping for chocolate chip cookies, they’re a proxy for another need: hunger, yes, but also emotions: wanting to feel taken care of, missing a place, etc. If chocolate chip cookies are unavailable, I’m not now considering snickerdoodles or shopping chocolate bars; I’m shopping for the feel: maybe it’s pie, maybe soup. I’m interested to see if the AIs we build will have the ability to identify this, so when someone says “I want a steak frites” the AI doesn’t strictly recommend steak recipes—“they’re asking for steak”—but realized the constellation of what the asker is actually asking for—they’re asking for a recipe that reminds them of when they lived in that apartment in that city X years ago. It will be fun to see what’s possible …