Depending on your location, eating habits, dietary restrictions, time, and income, meal kits can be a great way to learn to cook, save money, and eat more healthily. But there’s no need to get overwhelmed trying to determine which meal service to try; your best bet is just subscribing to all of them.
Before we get into the reasoning here, let’s talk about your potential new dinner guests.
- Blue Apron
- Plated
- Hello Fresh
- Home Chef
- Green Chef - All organic.
- Sun Basket
- Marley Spoon - Has Martha Stewart
Those are the seven services I’ve personally used. Here are some more:
- Chef’d - A meal kit marketplace with no subscription required.
- Terra’s Kitchen - Food comes in a plastic mini-fridge.
- Purple Carrot - Has Tom Brady. Super vegan.
- Peach Dish - Southern.
- Takeout Kit - 2-month shelf life.
And the list goes on. With rare exception, and unless you have specific dietary restrictions, there’s little of significance to differentiate these services.
Whether you think around $10/person for dinner is a steal or still too pricey, taking advantage of the sign-up discounts offered by the various meal services is a no-brainer, and they add up.
These deals are usually something along the lines of three of your first six meals being free, ~$30 off ~$60, etc. Basically, you’ll be getting around ~$5/person per meal for your first delivery. That’s cheaper than most pints of ice cream in New York City. Repeat the process for, say, the seven services I tried, and you’ve gotten 21 dinners for two for ~$5/person, or around a hundred bucks.
Our Promotions Team [Sponsored] regular offers discounts on Blue Apron services:
Once you’ve gotten all that “free” food, your first option is to pause/cancel all your accounts and walk away, and if you pause, you’ll likely regularly get hit with “rescue offers” that’ll save you even more money if you accept the offer and come back to the service in question.
If you stick around, while you’ll have to manage your various accounts to ensure you’re not getting unwanted deliveries, you’ll be rewarded with exponentially more menu options to choose from each week. Want Martha Stewart delivered in a mini-fridge or some Tom Brady with a 2-month shelf life? You got it.
How’s your experience with meal services been? Tell us in the comments.