Are veg boxes value for money ?

Edwardia

I've ordered veg boxes from Ocado and with the Total Savings Pass (8.99 per year) I got 10% off so it was just over £16. Although the box looked small it was heavy as filled to the brim each time

I got kale twice (wouldn't normally buy) cavallo nero (ditto but liked it) potatoes (don't buy), parsnips (don't buy), peppers, purple carrots, cauliflower, vacuum packed beetroot, fennel, butternut squash, aubergine, onions and cherry tomatoes (not all in the same box).

Got my first Abel & Cole box this week, the Gourmet £13 one. OK yes it was £3 cheaper so I didn't expect as much veg but the veg were kind of rolling around a bit lost and lonely - peppers, aubergine, romanesco cauliflower, carrots, chard, cherry tomatoes, fennel and red onions.

With Ocado you can't swap out veg you don't eat, with Abel & Cole you can.

Since Tesco is doing veg boxes now, I'm wondering is this the future for veg and are they good value for money ?

Has anyone added up the cost of the veg they normally buy and compared with a veg box ? Do you end up with stuff you don't eat ?

Have to say I either got loads of carrots or a token three. I've ended up with more veg than I want (Ocado) and less (Abel & Cole).

Any veg box regulars around with tips please ? Other novices like me ? (I've had about 5 in total). Overall I was quite happy with th Ocado organic.

Anything on veg boxes please post opinions here !

quintwins

Tesco are doing veg boxes?

Personally i find veg boxes over priced, but your organic so your veg is more expensive anyway so maybe be worth it for you.

Meadows

I use to get them from Riverford Organics and was quite happy with them then stopped. I took them up again some time later but was not as impressed (value, quality, selection) so stopped getting them.

http://www.riverford.co.uk/

LondonDreamer

I priced them up and even against organic, it never added up for me. Seemed better to purchase exactly what I wanted in the quantities I wanted, than pay more for someone else to make those decisions.

quintwins wrote: »

Tesco are doing veg boxes?

Personally i find veg boxes over priced, but your organic so your veg is more expensive anyway so maybe be worth it for you.

It's through a partnership site by the looks of it, and only trialling in London at the moment... http://www.soilandseed.co.uk

Personally this one may be worth trying (if the price works out, of course) as it sounds like you still get your regular Tesco choices for delivery slots. One thing I always disliked about the other schemes is that they would only deliver at certain times (e.g. Tuesday morning) which weren't convenient at all.

ETA: Digging around the site a bit more, looks like you can't substitute on this one either. And the mixed fruit and veg box only comes in one size which is much too big for my two person household. So that's another one out, at least until they expand their range.

Edwardia

I can't get Soil and Seed or Riverford here just Ocado and Abel and Cole.

Kirri alerted me to https://www.farmaround.co.uk which I can get. No swap outs there but I'm interested in the Mediterranean module and salad bag - would need to price it. Everything else seems to have spuds though and for me as a low carbing bod with diabetes spuds are the spawn of the devil Not sure about bags as opposed to boxes.

Is it just me or is it a pain to have to store veg I would normally put in fridge outside cos it's dirty. The chard I got Monday is all wilted. Kale keeps forever seemingly. I keep looking at it thinking must make some soup..

bornintoit

I tried a box from Riverford and I did enjoy trying some of the new veg that I hadn't even heard of before but I am quite fussy when it comes to alot of veg, I dont like peppers or celery for example. Not being able to choose what came in the box was the biggest reason why I stopped buying veg boxes but I do love the idea of them.

I didn't put any of the veg in the fridge because of the dirt but I suppose I could have scrubbed them clean, perhaps gave them a wash, dried them and put them in the fridge. Although that process is time consuming and messy.

Maybe I will try veg boxes again in the future but for now I perfer to buy exactly what I want in the quantity I want.

savingmonkey

I currently use Abel and Cole and I like the fact that I get veg in the box i would not usually think to buy. I have also used Riverford but don't like not being able to say what I don't like. I tend to just get a veg box now aas I found the fruit not very interesting (mainly apples, bananas, oranges). I didn't realise Tesco were doing them now!

With Abel and Cole I use them for a while then have a break, they usually email/phone me with an offer to entice me back, I have had free wine, 2 free recipe books and other food items. I also wait for the buy 3 boxes get your 4th one free, Abel and Cole told me that even if I ordered 3 small boxes on my 4th order I could change the size of the box get a large fruit and veg box (£25) for free - I have done this 3 times now. I reckon if you can take advantage of the offers the price isn't so bad.

Edwardia

Thanks to everyone posting and sharing your experiences, I'm finding it helpful.

Re: choosing different veg, I have done that via Abel & Cole without having a box, deliberately choosing veg I couldn't get at the supermarket.

I bought organic Jerusalem artichokes (400g for 1.45) which I really like and spaghetti squash (2.09 each )which is OK but not particularly spaghetti like. I love love love the organic globe artichokes (2 for 2.99) which aren't the teeny thin ones sometimes seen in Tesco but the proper globe ones like they have in France.

I haven't been doing an Abel & Cole order every week but I may well do so now, not so much for the veg but really for the eggs. Abel & Cole recently reduced the price of their 6 large organic free range eggs by 10p to 2.39 making them cheaper than the Daylesford equivalent. I think both of these are better than the Duchy Originals from Waitrose large organic free range Columbian Black Tail eggs I used to rave over. Abel & Cole haven't been out of stock on eggs so far and this happens with organic eggs far too much on Ocado.

I didn;t want to commit to boxes when I first used A & C so I missed out on the 4th box free and free cook book. I bought the book anyway and it is really good. Great photography, very clear, little stories in there and unusual recipes.

Anyone else cooked any of the recipes from their box ? I've done one so far a sort of rosti which was good. Ocado sticks in a recipe too.

dasophster

I never had any recipes in my ocado boxes and due to awful customer service that they didn't apologise or compensate me for when I complained I'm never shopping with ocado again. The ocado boxes varied some were fantastic other times the box was a lot emptier and they'd substituted most of the stuff. It would never include bananas when it said it would. Also the produce wasn't really fresh at all, spongy flabby potatoes and parsnips for example. Another problem is we're a family of 6 and none of the large boxes are really big enough for us as a sole source of fruit and veg so we either buy two smaller boxes which ends up costing considerably more, or have to buy a lot of extra fruit and veg seperately which kind of defeats the object a bit xx

Dollardog

I've ordered from Riverford before but wouldn't order again. I didn't find them good value for me. There are a lot of veg I don't like so would only have a box when there were more things in it that I did like, then I found that they had substituted the things I did like for something I didn't. I also found there didn't seem to be much for the money and the quality of the stuff was questionable, for instance, I like onions but in my box, three of the four onions were soft/bad. There were some carrots that had come from Spain, yet in the shops there were some nicer bunches of English carrots with the tops on, so why send Spanish? I much prefer to go to the shops and choose what I want in the quantities I want them in. With the veg box, there was so much in them I didn't like, I ended up giving most of it away. My fault I suppose for being fussy.
Perhaps if you were able to choose what you wanted, I might have liked them better.

Edwardia

Dollardog the Spanish stuff doesn't make sense to me either but I've often noticed in supermarkets that though English produce is in season that not all supermarkets will have even non-organic English. Sometimes it's cheaper for supermarkets to buy runner beans from Kenya and fly them in. I have noticed now that I buy organic that most of my food comes from within UK and Europe. Abel & Cole doesn't buy air-freighted organic produce.

I don't mind having too much veg as this gives us a great excuse to make a veggie Pot au Feu. It's a French/Belgian peasant dish going back into the mists of time.

No potatoes because they give it too much of a starchy taste but cauliflower, cabbage (white probably best), leeks, parsnips, carrots, fresh or tinned tomatoes (whole or chopped), Jerusalem artichokes, salsify, onions, shallots, even bell or romano peppers if you want.

Peeled, roughly chopped to largest bite size, into a big lidded saucepan. Water up to nearly the height of the veg, you could add a low salt veg stock cube but if you have all sorts of veg including tomatoes, onions and cauli and/or cabbage it won't need it. Takes between 40-90 mins to simmer, time depends on how much veg. Better soft veg rather than al dente.

Serve in a bowl with finely chopped fresh parsley and freshly grated cheese on top so it melts into the juices. Rough bread like pain de campagne or baguette to mop up juices and a glass of Cotes du Rhone or Corbieres something like that..