Food Delivery: Meal Subscription Kits To Make Your Life (And Dinner) Easier
Last week we started a new series about food delivery, and we tackled the starting point from which most home-cooked meals stem: the grocery store. If you’re looking to skip the supermarket and have groceries delivered right to your doorstep, check out our first post.
Today we’re going to talk about actually cooking your meal. Perhaps you like being in the kitchen, but you don’t want to hassle with navigating the supermarket for each particular ingredient, or maybe you get stumped when it comes to actually creating a menu and a meal plan for the week. We love that these meal kits that come straight to your door cater to everyone: the everyday novice chef, busy parents, couples looking to spice up their life in the kitchen, singletons who just need a little help putting quality food on the table, or simply anyone who is looking to create something healthy, tasty, and homemade.
If you need complete recipes to help make your meal, and wish there was a way you could magically open a box and find everything you need to make dinner inside, then the following companies may just be the answer to your dinnertime prayers.
Adrianna Domingos-Lupher, a busy mom of two and the CEO of MSB New Media, recently started receiving HelloFresh, a weekly delivery service that brings fresh ingredients and healthy recipes right to your door, and now she’s completely hooked. “I’ve really wanted to find ways to simplify life, and one of the things I’m constantly failing at is meal planning and trips to the grocery store. I found that we were eating out more (unhealthy) but not really planning for it in our budget (expensive), and we’d often end up tossing out produce we intended to eat but never got around to (wasteful). HelloFresh looked like the perfect solution to all of those issues,” she says.
Adrianna entertained other services out there, but says HelloFresh fits her family’s lifestyle and price point, and it’s also getting her family out of their food-eating comfort zone. “A surprise benefit,” she explains, saying it’s encouraging her family “to eat veggies we wouldn’t normally incorporate in our menu, like parsnips and Swiss chard.”
Home Chef, one of the newer companies to hit the scene, offers a wide range of dietary preferences on their menus (like dairy-free and gluten-free). And speaking of menus, they even share a sneak peek of what their meals are each week, so you can take see a sample of them before you decide if you want to opt in. Along with sending wine pairing suggestions for each dinner, Home Chef also lets you pick breakfast, smoothies, and fruit basket options if you’d like to add that to your order.
According to A Common Connoisseur and a post she wrote about comparing different meal-delivery subscriptions, she said she loved that Home Chef let her pick low-calorie meals that were bursting with flavor. She describes one of the low-calorie meals sent to her: “The Cilantro-Lime Slaw was crunchy and refreshing, complementing the tender fish cakes. After eating this dish, I immediately tucked away the recipe so that I could create it again. The ingredients such as panko, lime, mayonnaise and garlic are simple, but when combined, the punch of flavor will shock you.” YUM!
Another popular meal subscription service featuring farm-fresh ingredients, interactive recipes, and how-to videos, is Blue Apron. One of Blue Apron’s missions is to build a community of home chefs, and according to one subscriber, “They’ve nailed the gourmet taste for sure!”
Meghan Witherspoon, a fitness nutrition specialist and mother of two, recently started using Blue Apron after she saw great reviews, and now she loves it, and finds it somewhat therapeutic to create a Blue Apron meal. “I find cooking these meals while listening to a good podcast and the kids nap is very relaxing to me, and is the only time I can prepare one of their meals.” Meghan mentions that there is a lot of chopping involved, so she suggests carving out time in your day/week to make the meals. “I would recommend this to any couple without kids first, because they would have the time, energy, and ability to eat meals hot! It is a nice weekend activity for a husband and wife to do, or even to get your kiddo involved with cooking. We do this and talk about food while making it, and it does get my youngest to try new foods.
Meghan also likes that Blue Apron doesn’t make her cancel her service if they don’t need it every week. “I like how some weeks I can choose to skip or change my menu because there are weeks we leave town or I just haven’t budgeted the $60 for fancier meals.”
Other make-it-yourself meal subscriptions out there include Plated, with chef-inspired recipes and quality ingredients delivered on whatever type of schedule that fits your life; and the Purple Carrot, which features complete plant-based meals. Your meal kit from Purple Carrot contains everything you’ll need to create a vegan meal, starting with quality ingredients that will result in a truly healthy, yet flavorful, meal.
If you’re ready to put your grocery list away for a few weeks, then definitely consider signing up for one of these subscription services. They not only make your life easier, but they may help broaden your horizons and introduce you to foods you may not eat otherwise. If you try any of the companies we’ve listed, please let us know how it goes!
This is part two of of our Food Delivery series. See the first post about grocery delivery here. We’re excited to bring you more posts on food delivery — it’s a fun trend, and we hope this series will open your eyes to new possibilities. If you partake in any type of food deliver, we’d love to hear from you for one of our upcoming posts.
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