Which Home Delivery Meal Service Is Best

Sometimes doing the grocery shopping and cooking meals from scratch just isn't an option. You might be juggling piece of work and study, at domicile with a new baby, recovering from an illness or simply time-poor. Maybe you're sick of trying to determine what's for dinner week in and week out. Or perhaps cooking just isn't your thing.

Yous could settle for eating toast or takeaways, simply an increasingly popular culling is to use a meal delivery service. So which one is all-time?

On this folio:

Which meal delivery service is best?
Food box delivery services – a user guide
Prepared repast delivery services – a user guide
How costs compare to supermarket prices
Are repast delivery services suitable for kids?
What near commitment services marketed for weight loss?

Which meal delivery service is best?

Our testers ordered and cooked ii meals each from HelloFresh, Marley Spoon, Pepper Leaf, Dinnerly and Everyplate. They also ordered prepared meals from YouFoodz, The Dinner Ladies, Soulara, THR1VE, Nourish'd and Chefgood.

We rated the services for ease of ordering, presentation and temperature on delivery, ingredient freshness, recipe accuracy and more than.

Prices are the base prices for meal plans at the time of writing, including delivery costs. It's worth keeping an center out for promotional price reductions and discount vouchers as they tin offer significant savings, at least for your outset order.

Food box delivery services

Prepared meal delivery services

What we found

Fiona Mair, CHOICE home economist and i of our testers, constitute a lot to recommend in the meal commitment services we tested.

"Repast delivery services are predominantly marketed to time-poor families. But if you have limited cooking skills and want to consume home-cooked food, they can besides be a great manner to learn how to cook," Fiona says.

Selection abode economist Fiona Mair testing a recipe.

She found that the recipes are mostly simple and relatively easy to follow, the ingredients are already portioned, in that location'south usually a utensil or tool list of what y'all need in your kitchen, plus a list of the pantry staples yous'll need.

"Subsequently a calendar month of preparing a few meals from a meal delivery service y'all'll have a repertoire of recipes under your belt that will requite you lot confidence to shop and melt for yourself. You'll also become familiar with flavours and cuisines that yous may non take tried before," she adds.

Food box vs prepared meal delivery services: what's the departure?

In that location are essentially ii types of repast delivery services: food box (meal kit) delivery services and prepared repast commitment services. To help you decide which would accommodate you best, nosotros've prepared a general user guide, along with some tips and traps, for each type.

This information is based on the feedback from 420 consumers who participated in our 2016 survey about their sensation and utilize of Australian repast delivery services.

Food box delivery services – a user guide

Benefits

minimal food waste
easy to follow recipes
ingredients local and pre-measured

If you enjoy cooking merely repast planning gives you lot a headache, you lot're lacking inspiration or you lot find it hard to make time for the weekly shop, then food box delivery services such as HelloFresh, Marley Spoon, Dinnerly and Pepper Leaf can be a good option. Each calendar week these subscription services deliver recipes and the precise quantity of the predominantly fresh ingredients y'all'll need to melt them.

I employ them so I don't accept to think well-nigh meal planning. Plus their meals are interesting – not always the same boring staples I'd cook
Jessica, HelloFresh customer

A major drawcard for our survey respondents who use these types of services is the minimal food waste associated with being supplied with the exact quantities of ingredients required for each recipe. This is particularly beneficial with ingredients you're unlikely to use frequently.

One respondent gave the example of "a pinch of paprika – I don't accept to purchase a whole bottle of spices that I won't use again". If you've e'er bought a huge bag of fenugreek for a recipe only to apply i teaspoon of information technology in four years, then yous'll be able to relate.

Portioned ingredients for two Marley Spoon recipes.

The bulk of users said they plant the recipes to be uncomplicated and easy to follow, and obviously cooking with pre-measured ingredients means y'all tin can turn the meal effectually in less time than if you were starting from scratch.

The use of locally sourced Australian ingredients, promoted by these services, was an attraction for many. And Pam, also a HelloFresh subscriber, was pleasantly surprised by the knock-on upshot it had on her husband. "My male person partner has started cooking!" she said.

Tips and traps

When using these types of services you lot'll demand to have a range of everyday ingredients which frequently feature in the recipes. These include pantry staples such as soy sauce, white vinegar, salt and pepper, honey, oil, butter, milk, eggs, flour and sugar – then it's worth checking you have them before your first commitment so you're not caught brusk.

Leftover packaging from one HelloFresh meal we cooked.

You lot can check out the post-obit calendar week'south carte in advance, but there's little scope to brand changes to what y'all'll receive. "At that place was no way to choose meals based on our likes or dislikes," said one user. This could exist an issue, particularly for people with allergies. However, certain allergens are identified on the recipes, and because yous're cooking it yourself you'll have the opportunity to remove or substitute ingredients that aren't suitable.
Some people also commented that the amount of packaging (each pre-measured ingredient comes in its ain bag or container) was a deterrent.

Prepared meal commitment services – a user guide

Benefits:

Minimal prep
Can keep in freezer for future use

Services such every bit Youfoodz, The Dinner Ladies, Soulara and Nourish'd sell predominantly fully prepared meals. Ordering is merely a thing of choosing from the range of meals displayed on their websites, and the chilled or frozen meals volition arrive at your door in a coolbox on your nominated delivery date.

What users of these services told us they liked most is the minimal preparation required – in near cases, little more than heating and so eating. Another benefit is being able to stockpile meals in the freezer to use later.

Tips and traps

The meals from some of these services focus predominantly on the protein component, with nary a vegetable in sight. They suggest y'all add together a salad or vegetable side dish – and usually offer these to buy – but this will obviously bump up the total cost. This is worth bearing in mind when comparing repast prices.
Some of these services offer a adept selection of freshly prepared, chilled meals, while others sell predominantly frozen meals. If this divergence is of import to you, make sure y'all're clear on what they're offer before you order.

How costs compare to supermarket prices

Food boxes

We compared the price of the popular HelloFresh Archetype Plan food box ($69.95 for 3 meals per week for 2 people) with the cost of ownership the ingredients for those three meals (in the aforementioned or similar quantities) from Coles and Woolworths.

We found yous don't actually pay much less at a supermarket, and sometimes you pay more once yous cistron in delivery costs.

But in reality when doing your weekly shop you're more likely to take advantage of special offers or purchase larger packs which are meliorate value for coin – a 1kg tub of Farmers Union Greek Mode natural yoghurt (50c per 100g) rather than a 200g individual tub ($1.10 per 100g), for example. And as long every bit y'all cease up using the leftover ingredients before they reach their employ-past or best-earlier dates and need to be discarded, so it's cheaper doing the shopping yourself.

87% of subscription food box users rated food quality, freshness and taste equally good, very good or first-class.

Prepared meals

People who used prepared repast services were more than likely to consider them good value for money than those using food box services. Merely how do they compare in price with the equally convenient supermarket fix-meals?

We compared the toll of two different dishes from prepared meal services with similar supermarket ready-meals and found the meal service dishes to be more than expensive – and that'southward before you lot factor in delivery costs.

A single serve of butter chicken from meal delivery services ranged in price from $nine.95 to $23.99, but the Woolworths chilled version was just $6.90. The cheapest single serve lasagne offered by the repast delivery services nosotros looked at cost $viii.95 (300g) but the equivalent from Woolworths (fresh, single serve) was but $6.xc (400g).

93% of prepared meal service users in our survey rated food quality, freshness and taste as good, very skillful or fantabulous. But whether or non the quality of ingredients warrants the higher price is hard to say.

Are meal delivery services suitable for kids?

If you lot're planning on using a meal delivery service to feed a family unit that includes young kids yous might want to proceed with caution. While overall ratings for repast services were generally positive, their meals aren't guaranteed to win over a fussy toddler.

"I would like to see more small kids' meal options like the pasta with sneaky veg," said ane respondent near The Dinner Ladies.

What about delivery services marketed for weight loss?

Weight loss was a cardinal motivation for users of some meal delivery services, including the popular service Light n' Easy, Consume Fit Food, Muscle Meals Direct and Dietlicious (sister visitor to Gourmet Dinner Service). While nosotros did collect responses from people who'd used these services, the focus of our survey was on the pros, cons and experiences of using meal delivery services more generally.

Motivations aside, people's experiences of these meal delivery services with an accent on weight loss were overall positive.

98% of survey respondents who had used weight loss meal commitment services rated their delivery reliability as expert, very expert or first-class, and 77% of users rated food quality, freshness and taste as good, very adept or first-class overall.