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Meal home delivery services, between the ones that offer just the ingredients for recipes, or a week’s worth of ready-made meals, scratch a very important itch that so many Americans have: the need for more free time while still eating nutritiously at home. They may be pricier than doing your own grocery shopping and chopping, but they’re also far less expensive when you do the breakdown than ordering delivery from a restaurant. For many overworked individuals, they’re the perfect solution. Coming home after a long day to remember that you don’t have to go to the store, or possibly even use a cutting board, can be a real blessing.
But we also get it: the number of meal delivery services out there is overwhelming. And many require a commitment. How are you supposed to hand over your credit card info and commit to a month or several weeks’ worth of meals when you don’t know what you’re getting into? The whole point of these is to save you time and money, which won’t happen if you find the food unpalatable or too difficult to make, throw it away, and go to the store anyway. So we’ve compared some of the top home meal delivery services below, including information about which plans are best for which diets, and budgets.
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Hello Fresh
If you’re open to trying lots of foods, enjoy interacting with your ingredients, and are on a bit of a budget, Hello Fresh is a good choice. You can get meals for around $8 a person, but they also have family-size meal options, and the more meals you order each week, the less each serving becomes. Along with fresh ingredients, they send you detailed menu cards, and it’s nice that they send you the exact amount of ingredients needed for just each recipe. So you’re not stuck buying, say, a whole tin of some rare spice that will go to waste. However, this one isn’t ideal for those with severe food allergies as you have to go through several steps to confirm the allergens in recipes.
