Meal Delivery Kits: Review & Rankings

Back to food guys!  I wanted to take a minute to write about the trick that has helped me survive many problems brought on by COVID – food shortages, quarantining, how to keep food interesting when suddenly eating out isn’t an option (without resorting to delivery all the damn time).  Meal delivery kits! 

Throughout COVID I’ve used both Home Chef and Marley Spoon; prior to COVID, I also tried Hello Fresh.  These are super helpful ways to get ingredients for at least a few meals delivered to your door with no effort on your part.  As someone that cooks breakfasts, lunches, and at least 4 dinners a week at home (more during COVID), and has to walk to and from the grocery store, I appreciate any way to reduce my grocery haul.  Of these 3 options, below is my ranking (and rationale, because I know we all have different preferences, priorities, lifestyles, and challenges).

TIE for First:  Marley Spoon and Home Chef

• First: Home Chef (I tried Home Chef first, so I listed it first – but between Home Chef and Marley Spoon, it’s a pretty solid tie)

  • Price: $60/week (with shipping, tax) for three meals for 2 – unless I upgraded to a fancy meal option.  Personally, I was a fan of having the option to upgrade when we had a date night or just felt like being fancier.

  • Customization: speaking of which, I loved the ability to customize just in general with Home Chef.  You could customize your protein option, or add a protein to vegetarian meals.  Now that Ben can’t eat chicken, this would be a great option for us. 

  • Complexity: Home Chef offers a great variety in terms of effort/time/complexity.  There are some “oven ready” options, which are already prepped and just need to be mixed together and cooked.  There are some more labor intensive options (often, the premier recipes).  In general, though, most recipes were pretty simple.

  • Recipe writing: The recipes are quite clear and I like that they provide “plating instructions” as well – just makes it kind of fun!  They also give you a cute binder for the recipe cards, which I love!

  • Ingredients: I never had an issue with freshness, and I really like that all ingredients are included in the box – they don’t expect you to have a stocked pantry.

  • Menus: I was very pleased in the variety of meal types.  But, Ben and I never really felt full after a meal – we often had to plan snacks for after dinner (which we don’t usually do) because we would still be hungry.

  • Side note: Home Chef uses a lot of fried toppings (like those fried onion strings everyone loves around thanksgiving).  The first few times, this was a happy surprise, but they got old pretty quickly for me. 

• First: Marley Spoon

  • Price: $64/week for 3 meals for 2

  • Customization: there isn’t really any customization options with the dishes, but they do have weekly specials, like desserts, snacks, or breakfasts that you can add in.

  • Complexity: overall, these recipes are more complex.  They don’t necessarily take more time, but there are more frequent times where I have 3 burners going, or multiple things in the oven for different times – just takes more focus and attention.  Dressings are often homemade as well, which is nice but I’m definitely going through olive oil more frequently.

  • Ingredients: speaking of which, Marley Spoon expects you to have quite a few things in your pantry at all times (not provided).  Things like butter, milk, olive oil, canola oil, several types of vinegar, etc.  Aside from olive oil, I don’t usually have all of these things – and I like to think I’m a pretty seasoned home cook.  So, if I’m paying more for my meal kits, I would hope that I’m receiving everything I need.  I have also had issues with produce going bad, getting crushed, etc. before it even arrives to me.  Marley Spoon customer service has always responded very quickly, apologized, and offered me $ credits – which makes up for a lot in my book. Especially during COVID when supply chains are disrupted and I think we can all be a little more understanding of others.

  • Recipe writing: I think these recipes are written very clearly as well, although sometimes they condense them a little too much for my preference (each recipe only has 6 steps…but only because they combine so many things into one step).

  • Menus: I love the meal options.  They are all so flavorful, such a variety of different cuisines, and I like that each recipe has several tags (healthy, under 30 minutes, kid friendly, etc.).  Ben has commented several times that he likes these boxes more than Home Chef because he’s actually full after dinner.  And I like that just about every meal comes with 2+ veggies – as a veggie lover, I get sad when a meal comes with just one vegetable. 

• Third: Hello Fresh

Honestly, I don’t remember as much detail about Hello Fresh anymore.  Sorry!  Hello Fresh was about the same price as Marley Spoon (I think $63/week for 3 meals for 2).  The food was yummy, light, and fresh, and never had issues with the ingredients.  Everything was included, and the recipes were easy. Everything was fine – not stellar, nothing stands out or jumps out, but it works. 

Really, Hello Fresh was a lot like Home Chef – EXCEPT, every meal came with rice or pasta and I got really sick of it! The format for each meal was protein, 1-2 veggies, and a starch.  While that’s a solid format for a dish, they rarely were integrated or combined into a cohesive dish, which is something I think Home Chef and Marley Spoon do better.