A Review of The Top 5 Meal Delivery Services

Meal delivery kits are all the rage these days as they offer the taste of homemade foods with none of the headaches. These kits cut down on prep time, cleaning, and help when you want to make a homemade meal but don’t want to buy an entire container of soy sauce just for one recipe. In most kits, the ingredients come with just enough for each recipe, so you don’t waste ingredients and don’t have to measure them out yourself. Meal delivery services also offer different recipes each week, so you always have options to choose from. There are several different services to choose from. The five highly rated meal delivery kit services we examined were Sun Basket, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Blue Apron and Every Plate.

Best Overall
When looking at price, variety, ease of recipes, and allergy-friendly options, Hello Fresh takes the cake on overall best service. This service offers fresh ingredients and easy-to-prepare healthy recipes that take 30 minutes or less. They offer omnivore (meat and veggies), vegetarian, family-friendly, calorie smart, quick and easy and pescatarian options. The service also has two registered dietitians on staff who help create the meals and determine the nutrition information for each meal. The service offers 20 different recipes each week to choose from in each of the above categories, and you can choose to skip weeks and cancel at any time. One downside reviewers have mentioned is that the recipes can take a little longer than 30 minutes, but most fall within the 30-minute category. The price for this service for two people, three meals per week is $53.94 ($8.99 per serving).

Simplest Recipes
Blue Apron, one of the original meal kit delivery services, boasts the simplest recipes of the services reviewed. This service started with the idea that people can learn to cook with their help, and all recipes can be prepared and cooked within 30 minutes. You can choose from the signature box (original recipes with meat, vegetables; not allergy-friendly), vegetarian, 500 calories or under, Mediterranean, carb-conscious, diabetes friendly, plant-forward, and Weight Watchers approved. The recipes offered with this service are from various cuisines, so customers can try out recipes from around the world. One unique aspect of Blue Apron is that this service also offers wine and cooking equipment for a separate fee. The price of Blue Apron for two people, three meals per week is $59.94 ($9.99 per serving).

Most Family-Friendly
Home Chef is a meal delivery service developed by Kroger. This meal delivery service has a variety of food options to choose from, and one unique aspect is that you can customize the meat for most meals. This service offers mostly comfort food recipes, but also has carb conscious, calorie conscious, and vegetarian options. Most meals are ready within 30 minutes, and they recently added oven-ready, grill-ready, luxe ingredient and 15-minute meals. The variety of cooking methods with Home Chef is much wider than other services. The best aspect of Home Chef is that the customer can customize their order and receive more servings per meal, unlike other services which only offer up to four servings per meal. The price for two people, three servings with Home Chef is $61.93 ($9.95 per serving plus shipping), which is very similar to Blue Apron.

Best for Special Dietary Needs
Sun Basket gets the award for people who have any special dietary needs. This service has a registered dietitian on staff, and offers options for Paleo, gluten-free, vegetarian, pescatarian, Mediterranean diet, carb-conscious, lean & clean (low calorie, can choose meals to be gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free and keto friendly), and diabetes-friendly options. This service offers the widest variety of foods that meet special diets, and all ingredients are certified organic. Like the other services, Sun Basket boasts recipes that take 30 minutes or less, and has options for 20 minute or less meals as well. Sun Basket offers 30+ recipes per week, but the only catch is not all 30 recipes fall within each specific dietary guideline. Options are more limited when a customer has special dietary needs. The price for Sun Basket is a little pricier than the other services at $71.94 for two people, three servings per week ($11.99 per serving).

Best Pre-Made Meals
Every Plate is a relatively new food delivery service, and it is unique from the other services reviewed in that this service delivers pre-made meals to customers houses. All customers have to do is put the meals in the oven. This service is much easier cleanup and preparation, and is helpful for customers who either do not know how to cook or do not have the time for everything that goes into cooking. One downside with Every Plate is that because it is less expensive than the other services, the foods are not as unique and ingredients may be repeated more frequently because of this. The price for Every Plate for two people, three servings per week is $38.93 ($4.99 per serving).

For more valuable advice on staying well throughout the pandemic, and to stay connected to others, we encourage you to join the QuadMed Well-being Facebook group or subscribe to the QuadMed YouTube channel, where you can find exercise videos and more to keep you active, healthy and engaged.

A Review of The Top 5 Meal Delivery Services

"We'll keep you well; and if you get sick, we'll take care of that too." - Harry V. Quadracci

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"We'll keep you well;
and if you get sick,
we'll take care of that too."
- Harry V. Quadracci