Fresh and affordable chef-created meals
Life is busier than ever these days. Packed schedules and demanding work and family responsibilities leave little room for preparing healthy meals. You eat a rushed breakfast (or none at all) and spend 9 or more hours in the office. After work, there’s barely enough time to run to the gym, do errands, or pick up the kids. You get home tired and hungry. If you forgot to order groceries online or don’t have the energy to go back out to a grocery store, you’re stuck without dinner ingredients.
Even if you have a few items in the kitchen to throw together for dinner, you’ll still have to spend time wracking your brain for dinner ideas and dig deep for the energy to actually prepare the meal. There’s always takeout, but making it a habit can be bad for your health, tough on your wallet, and create extra waste.
Luckily for you, there’s an easy solution to this problem for anyone looking for a simple way to save time and energy while still enjoying healthy dinners: a meal delivery service.
What is a meal delivery service?
A meal delivery service is a subscription-based service that delivers fresh ingredients to your doorstep. With pre-portioned food ingredients and recipes that arrive together in one box, you can easily and quickly make fresh meals without any waste. In fact, most meal delivery services promise you can put together a meal in around 30 minutes.
What’s great about meal delivery services is that there are a variety of interesting, delicious meal options available, so you never get bored. Depending on your health and dietary needs, you can even choose a meal delivery plan that works best for your particular food preferences and lifestyle.
Recommended Meal Delivery Services
These are some of the most recommended meal delivery services:
Why meal kit delivery services?
Meal kit delivery services give you the chance to easily create restaurant-style meals in your own kitchen. You get to enjoy a homemade culinary experience without all the shopping time and chopping effort. In fact, the process can be quite fun if you include your partner or kids. With no measuring or recipe research required, putting together your meals has never been easier.
Meal delivery services can also be used as your very own meal planner system. You can anticipate when you’ll need meals and schedule them in advance to be delivered during the week. Not only that, you can choose plans that cater to your dietary needs with options like vegetarian, vegan, paleo, seasonal or organic ingredients, and more.
How does it work?
All you need to do is register for a service of your choice, such as Sun Basket or Home Chef. Registration is usually quick and easy, requiring little more than an email address and password to get started.
Once you register, you can choose the plan that suits you depending on the number of people in your household. There are meal options for 1 or 2 people as well as for families. Then you can select from the menu categories for food styles and other preferences, such as Thai, Italian, local produce, and lots more.
The raw ingredients of the meals you choose will arrive on the dates you request them for. Typically, they are already measured for you, thus cutting down on prep time and waste. Meal ingredients come with a simple recipe to follow so you’ll be able to whip up a delicious homemade meal in no time. Some meal delivery services even offer additional meal creation support such as videos and how-to guides.
Meals for all diets and lifestyles
Meal delivery services cater to most types of diets. Whether you are a vegan, vegetarian, meat-lover, or pescatarian, there are meal delivery services available to meet your specific needs. Nutrisystem is a great option, with frequent new menu items and exciting, creative recipes. No matter your diet preferences – be it Paleo, Keto, low calorie, diabetes-friendly, fat-free, gluten-free – meal delivery services have options for you. It’s simply a matter of choosing the right meal delivery service for your lifestyle.
Simplify your life
Using a meal delivery service will save you both precious time as well as money. You’ll avoid the stress of trying to figure out what to do for dinner each night and give yourself a break from wandering the grocery store aisles searching for ingredients. Finally, you’ll end up with less wasted food, since you’ll receive the perfect amount of each ingredient that you’ll need for one meal, with no leftover raw ingredients left to be forgotten in the back of your fridge.
A meal delivery service greatly reduces meal prep work. This means no more messy chopping and measuring ingredients. The result is more time to savor actually eating your meal or doing other things you loved, plus less clean up. It’s a win-win!
It’s easy to stick to your meal budget when using a meal delivery kit service, and can even save you a lot of money in the long run. You’ll find the meal kits have a set price per serving that you can count on from week to week. It takes a lot more effort to determine the price per serving of your own recipes and to discover how far you can actually stretch your food budget. Plus, there generally aren’t extra investments required with a meal delivery kit aside from a few simple pots and pans you likely already have on hand.
What’s the difference between each service?
Each meal delivery service offers different options and advantages according to personal taste and preferences. Some meals from certain services are more adventurous than others in terms of ingredients and cuisine. You’ll find, however, that each service offers a range of choices and customizations for even the pickiest eaters.
The quality of instructions can vary from meal delivery kit to meal delivery kit. Some recipes are really easy to follow with a limited number of steps, and others like Dinnerly also offer recipes that are more adventurous in their tastes and execution. There are meal delivery services that offer only digital recipes whereas others provide hard copy recipe cards. Some services are known for being exceptionally eco-friendly, using compostable or recyclable packaging.
A well-packed box will come with adequate insulation and cooling packs, which ensure that the food will not be damaged in transport and that it doesn’t spoil. Some services offer no-commitment subscriptions and 100% money-back guarantees.
Find the meal delivery service that’s right for you
Are you curious about trying a meal kit service but aren’t ready to commit? You can easily cancel your subscription or skip a few deliveries. If you’re looking to simplify your life while still enjoying wholesome, home-cooked meals, then a meal delivery service is the best option for you. You can easily find a service that helps you maintain or lose weight, save money, and adhere to your dietary needs. No matter your age, family status, or whether or not you’re an expert in the kitchen, meal delivery services can be a great alternative to doing it all yourself.
Get started on your journey to meal perfection today. Check out the brands above, read in-depth reviews, and check out our comparison tool to easily see which meal delivery service suits your needs.
