How Meal Delivery Services Are Revolutionizing Meal Time

Sometimes you just don’t want to go to the market to buy the ingredients that you would need for a meal. Other times, you might be unsure about how to follow a recipe or what the right amount of ingredients are for a meal. A decade ago, the only answer to these problems was to order food from a restaurant or a fast food joint. But with the advent of meal delivery services, you don’t have to forego the freshness and healthiness of home-cooked food when you lack the time or energy to prep and cook a meal.

Benefits of a meal delivery service

Meal kit delivery services provide pre-portioned ingredients for anyone wanting a quick, healthy lunch or dinner choice. With the increasing prevalence of these convenient services, you'll never have to say or hear:

• What’s for dinner?
• I can’t decide what to make!
• I'm hungry, but I really don’t know what I am craving right now
• I don’t know how much cinnamon goes into this!
• How much chicken should I buy for tonight?

This is precisely why 27% of all online purchases made during 2016 were meal kit and restaurant orders. Experts anticipate that this market will only grow bigger, with a predicted revenue increase to an estimated $10 billion by 2020.

By making it easy and quick for novices and experienced cooks alike to cook delicious homemade meals, the best meal delivery services are revolutionizing the way we approach mealtime. Imagine spending working overtime on a hot June day and having no time to go shopping to cook a meal for your family. Imagine going extra hard at the gym and forgetting to pick up the right ingredients to cook the meal you had in mind. When this happens, you can always rely on one of the best meal delivery service providers such as Freshly, Martha & Marley Spoon, or Dinnerly to deliver the right ingredient portions to your favorite meal.

With meal delivery kits, you won’t have to go to the store, measure ingredients, or search the internet for recipes. Instead of wasting money on unhealthy, expensive take-outs, these services make it easy to cook up a homemade meal in no time.

Let's take a look at some of the ways the best meal delivery services have brought about a paradigm shift in the way we select and eat a meal.

A vast variety of options

All the major meal planner and delivery service providers ensure that they give their customers a vast variety of options. The wide array of options includes cuisines like the Mediterranean, Chinese, Indian, Greek, and Vietnamese to different diet types like Ketogenic, low-calorie, low-carb, vegetarian, raw food, and weight loss meal plans.  With meals spanning tons of flavors and styles, the available choices are endless and enough to cater to the needs of most people.

Flexible subscriptions

Another reason why meal delivery services are such a hit is that most of the best meal delivery service providers have flexible subscription plans. This means that you can order meals every week, once a month, or every night. You can choose the number of days/nights you think you'd need a meal, and you can choose the number of servings that you'll need. If on a certain day you don’t want to receive a meal, you can simply have your meal delivery service skip that meal and save it for a future date.

Some meal delivery services also give the option to “forward the basket” to a different destination if you are not at home to receive a designated meal. For example, if you are in Manhattan for the weekend and still want to receive a meal scheduled to arrive at your Brooklyn home, you simply have it forwarded to your Manhattan address. This is why it's suggested you review the subscription options for each meal delivery service before subscribing to one.

Pre-portioned ingredients

One of the biggest nuisances while following online recipes is that you can sometimes mess up the required ingredient quantities. For example, adding 1.5 cups of cinnamon instead of 1.5 teaspoons to a cake batter is big deal in terms of the final outcome! Meal delivery services alleviate this problem. With pre-portioned ingredients provided with each meal, you just can’t go wrong with. This also means that less food will be wasted since you'll only make the amount of food that you need based on the ingredients you have.

Save time and cost

By getting all the ingredients delivered to your doorstep without you having to do any effort other than cooking, you'll save time and money. Here’s how:

• Less gas money as you don’t have to go to the store
• No hauling groceries into your home
• Save time gathering ingredients or portioning them
• Avoid buying entire packages of ingredients
• No need to spend time planning weekly meals

Conclusion

The best meal delivery services have made individuals' and families' lives easier by providing a way to cook meals in less time and by spending less energy and money. The age-old problems of deciding what to cook and finding time and energy to do so have been solved to a great degree. With flexible subscriptions and extensive menu choices, meal delivery services have revolutionized mealtimes.