What are meal kit deliveries and why should you try them?

Spending a few hours every weekend at the supermarket, shopping for ingredients and food for the rest of the week has been a common activity for decades. It wasn’t until the recent few years that people have become to get comfortable with online shopping, specifically online grocery shopping. There have been companies such as Instacart for example, where you can select items from a grocery/supermarket store that you typically shop at, online, and then someone will go, pick up those items for you and deliver them right to your door.

Amazon didn’t turn a blind eye to the idea that there is a growing trend of people doing their grocery shopping online. Between 2013-2014, Amazon began introducing “AmazonFresh” to major cities and has been aggressively growing their reach since then. Earlier this year, during the summer, Amazon made the announcement that they are purchasing WholeFoods for $13.7 billion dollars!  It’s been a few months since the purchase has been announced, but items that you would typically find in WholeFoods have begun to appear within AmazonFresh – and at a remarkable discount!

Naturally, with a growing trend of ordering groceries online, there have been other companies such as Blue Apron that will put together a specific recipe, source all the ingredients for you, and then send ship everything out to you in a beautiful package. Before you get too excited, keep in mind that such a service is a little bit of a luxury considering the cost per meal. No matter if you choose Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, Sun Basket or Home Chef; you’ll typically find yourself paying around $9-$11 per serving. Do keep in mind that you won’t receive a prepared meal, but the ingredients to complete a meal.

Between all the different home delivery meal kit companies, the two that stand out the most would be Sun Basket and Home Chef. Sun Basket prides themselves on donating left-over food to the food banks on a monthly basis. In this sun basket review, you’ll find more information on how biodegradable their packaging is and more on their philanthropist activities.  Also, all their produce is organic, which is quite a plus for many customers. If you opt for the smallest plan with Sun Basket, which is 3 recipes (2 servings per recipe) per week, you’ll be paying $11.99 per serving.

On the other hand, Home Chef has one of the largest options for recipes that you will find. If you’re a vegetarian or a vegan or soy-free or gluten-free, then you won’t be hard-pressed to find available recipes to choose from with Home Chef. One distinct difference between Home Chef and their competitors are their smoothie options as well. More importantly, if you are in a bind with money, you’ll be happy to hear that each serving with Home Chef comes out to $9.95 with smoothies at $6 or so.

For example, here is a “Grilled Chicken & Pear Salad” from this home chef review:

With every meal, before you opt to receive it, you may always check out the recipe card which shows you information about that meal. For this meal, the prep and cooking time comes out to 25-35 minutes, with a difficulty level of “Easy.”

If you’re sold on the idea of possibly trying out one of these meal kit services, I recommend that you make use of the promo codes offered by both companies. Click here for a sun basket promo which takes $35 off your first order, and click here for a home chef promo which takes $30 off your first order.