Thrive Market vs Hungryroot: Review & Discounts For Subscription Food Delivery
Curious if Hungryroot is as good as Thrive Market, and what the differences are in each subscription food delivery service? Hungryroot is a little newer than Thrive Market, and there are some major differences, even though both are in the same space of delivering healthy foods to your door on a National scale in the US. Well, I’ve got the whole scoop right here!
I’ve reviewed both services below, and I’ve included my YouTube review on HungryRoot below. I don’t want my lack of a video review to make any statement on my perception or opinion on Thrive Market. Rather, I like to review services on YouTube that are newer before the videos are saturated on the topics, and I missed the window on Thrive Market.
Thrive Market Subscription Food Delivery Review & Comparison
Pricing: The pricing is very very good with Thrive Market. It’s much cheaper than Whole Foods, and costs a little more than Trader Joe’s on most items. Considering these are being delivered to your door, the amount of a mark-up is pretty good. Plus, Thrive Market carries items that most grocery stores don’t carry, unless you live in a health-nut market like I do in Berkeley / the San Francisco Bay Area. Thrive Market often has sales on items too. If you’re a strategic shopper, you can optimize on the pricing pretty well.
Order Schedule: You can place an order at any time.
Subscription OR Not: You can opt into autoship with Thrive, but you absolutely don’t need to. I’ve never had autoship.
Shipping Cost: Free with orders over $49.
Delivery Speed: Most deliveries are at my door within 48 hours. I seriously placed an order at 1:00pm and had the box at my door by 9:00am the next morning.
Packaging Type: Paper and eco packaging used mostly. The only plastic packaging ever used is when an extra ziplock type bag is placed around liquids.
Careful Packaging: I’ve never had a broken or leaking item ever, and everything is very thoughtfully packed. Thrive even puts personally written notes stating who packed my box sometimes. It’s really cool.
Pantry Items: Thrive Market focuses on pantry items mostly.
Frozen Items: Thrive Market does have frozen goods, but the food pricing goes up unless you buy in bulk. I have placed a couple orders with frozen goods, but I usually stay with pantry items.
Fresh Produce: Unfortunately, Thrive Market doesn’t sell fresh produce.
Prepared Meals: Thrive does offer packaged frozen meals. I haven’t tried them. They offer paleo and keto options though, as well as vegetarian and gluten free.
Other Household Goods: Thrive Market sells tons of household cleaning items, beauty products, toothpaste, shampoo, wine, kitchen towels and sponges. Pretty much everything you would ever see in the non-food aisles at Whole Foods is what you can imagine you could purchase at Thrive Market. Everything they sell is thoughtfully crafted with quality ingredients.
Bonus Items: Thrive often offers fantastic freebies! I’ve received Bread Making Cookbooks, Sunscreen, and most recently, a $60 bottle of CBD oil. Most of the freebies are around $7-$25 but sometimes you catch an amazing one. Thrive Market sends out emails once you’re a customer informing you of the deal of the day. I look forward to Thrive’s emails.
Final Thoughts on Thrive Market Delivery Service
I’ve been with Thrive Market for a solid two-three years. What I love about Thrive Market is that they’re very fast and I have my items that I always order from Thrive Market. The process is really easy when I login to reorder my favorites and the website UI is really friendly. Thrive will also make great recommendations based on past ordering habits.
Thrive also packages items well, but without using bad for the environment packaging. I really love the values and care that Thrive Market puts into packaging.
I’ll remain loyal to Thrive and continue to use them for a lot of my pantry goods. The average household gets their groceries from seven (7) places, which is why I can list a few places in this post that I receive mine.
The only negative side is that Thrive Market doesn’t sell produce, but I like to get the majority of my produce locally and from Imperfect Foods anyway. If we were all shipping our produce across the country in boxes, after they were delivered to warehouses from everywhere, it wouldn’t be the best use of CO2 emissions. That said, I’m ok with receiving a few things when already ordering other items. I just don’t think it’s good to receive mass produce this way. I believe this is probably why Thrive doesn’t ship produce.
Thrive Market Discount and Promotion
If you’re new to Thrive Market, you can receive $40 OFF your first order of $100 OR 40% OFF an order under $100 with my personal referral link! Yes, you’ll receive one of these yourself to share with your friends and family once you order with Thrive. Plus, you’ll also receive a free gift worth up to $59! Occasionally, the freebies are even a higher value than that. I’ve included a screenshot of the freebie options offered the day of this blog posting below.
Shipping is included with orders over $49. As an example, if you ordered only $49 worth of groceries with Thrive in your first order, you would spend $29.40 with the 40% discount, and receive upwards of $74 worth of groceries including the free gift. Not too shabby!
Hungryroot Subscription Food Delivery Review & Comparison
Pricing: More costly than most services. The pricing feels similar to Whole Foods pricing. If you already shop at Whole Foods, then Hungryroot may be just for you.
Order Schedule: Pick one day a week and schedule a week out.
Subscription OR Not: Hungryroot is a subscription based service, with weekly deliveries. You can skip and edit orders a week before delivery and up to 5 weeks out.
Shipping Cost: Free Shipping
Delivery Speed: Because it’s subscription based, you select a delivery day of the week. Items are overnighted because they’re on ice.
Packaging Type: Paper and eco packaging used
Careful Packaging: Everything has been packed carefully, but not individually wrapped. No broken items, although my spinach came with a lot of broken leaves because it was packed with everything else.
Pantry Items: Yes, lots of snack options mostly. Less on the canned stuff with Hungryroot.
Frozen Items: Yes, most fridge items can be frozen too for a later date with Hungryroot.
Fresh Produce: Yes, unlike Thrive Market, fresh produce is offered with Hungryroot!
Prepared Meals: Yes, but limited. If you’re looking to skip meal-prep on a specific diet, Thrive Market may be a better option.
Other Household Goods: No
Bonus Items: Hungryroot sometimes offers a free bonus item, like veggies or a bean based cookie dough… If you haven’t tried them, they’re quite good.
What I Received in My Random Selection Hungryroot Order:
True Leaf Farms Baby Spinach
Noka Blueberry Beet Superfood Smoothie
Unreal Dark Chocolate Almond Butter Cups
Partake Foods Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
Little Potato Company Fingerling Potatoes
Hail Merry Key Lime Cups
Bobo's Lemon Poppyseed Oat Bar
Ozery OneBun Multigrain
Patience Fruit Co. Organic Whole Dried Cranberries
Hungryroot Peanut Butter Cup Cookie Dough
Quinn Snacks Peanut Butter Pretzel Nuggets
SpudLove Sea Salt Potato Chips
Hungryroot Seasoned Grilled Chicken Breast
Hungryroot Spinach Artichoke
Noka Strawberry Pineapple Smoothie
Hungryroot Sweet Baby Broccoli
Hungryroot Sweet Italian Chicken Sausage
Hungryroot Thai Peanut
Hungryroot Vegetable + Beef Blended Patties
Hungryroot Whole Wheat Sprouted Flatbread
Hungryroot Almond Chickpea Cookie Dough
This was my first order. After my first order, I was able to select items specifically and select exactly what I want to receive, or continue to receive random selections… or a combination of somewhere in-between. This was $110 worth of groceries delivered that I received for $65. With the promo below, this would cost you $55.
This list can be found in my online orders. When I click on each item, the nutrition info and ingredients list pops right up, along with recipes based on the items that were delivered. This part is really cool and thoughtful!
UPDATE: After your first order, you can edit items to specific items so they’re no longer a random selection.
Final Thoughts on Hungryroot Subscription Service
With my first order of Hungryroot, I went through a process of outlining dietary restrictions and products I liked and didn’t like, along with ones I would like to never receive and frequently receive etc. It took me 20 minutes to go through everything. The UI made most of that process optional, and you only need to go through that if you have dietary restrictions or you’re a control freak like I am! It gave me the impression that Hungryroot is a service where the customer doesn’t choose the items they receive, but simply provides parameters and a budget. That’s only the case for the first order.
Once you receive your first order, you can customize the following orders with exactly what you want to receive, or a mix of what you want and adventurous Hungryroot choices.
Another thing to note is that Hungry Root is a subscription service, so you must monitor your account or you’ll receive a surprise shipment if you don’t cancel or skip your orders. Thrive Market does not operate this way, but Hungry Root does.
Will I keep Hungry Root? Yes! Hungryroot won’t be my main or even secondary source of food, even though that’s the set-up they’ve provided. Hungry Root will be going into my google calendar as a reminder weekly to update my account with my Imperfect Foods selections.
Hungryroot Discount and Promotion
If you’re new to Hungryroot, you can receive $50 OFF your first order with my personal referral link! Yes, you’ll receive one of these yourself to share with your friends and family once you order with Hungry Root. The standard referral offer is $40 OFF. For a limited time, it has been raised to $50!
I don’t believe there’s an order minimum, and Shipping is Included! You can cancel after your first order or pause or skip orders anytime.
