I'm a Professional Chef and Tried 67 Meals to Find the Best, Actually Delicious Meal Delivery Services

I’ve always been a bit too far ahead of the times regarding entrepreneurial endeavors. In the early 2000s, my wife and I owned a personal chef business where we’d prepare heat-and-eat meals for our clients. I tried to find a way to expand what we offered, including grocery delivery with a recipe, but the technology and logistics weren’t as accessible then. So, we opened a restaurant instead. I missed my chance and better-organized, better-funded companies filled the need before I could get back to it. 

While meal delivery services may seem like a luxury, the price per meal can be lower than purchasing ingredients at the grocery store. Add to that the various conveniences, like pre-selected menus, regard for dietary restrictions, and time-saving food prep, and they can make sense for many people. I’ll admit that I have one.

Why does a former chef use a meal delivery service? Well, because my wife recently launched a new business that’ll allow me to realize my dream of being a stay-at-home dad to our furry kids. But in the meantime, I’ve assumed the roles we formerly shared, like caring for the home and our pets, and preparing meals while still working full-time. I’m busy, y’all. A meal delivery service lets me not have to worry about daily meal planning and shopping, and certain elements cut down on the cooking time.

Meal delivery services come in three main categories: heat-and-eat, semi-prepared, and ready-to-cook. Each has its strengths and weaknesses and accommodates different people’s needs. I tried 11 leading meal kits (67 meals total), seeing what they offered, how they were delivered, and, most importantly, how they tasted.

The Winners, at a Glance

The Best Meal Delivery Service

HungryRoot

View on Hungryroot.com

Hungryroot offers an array of complete semi-prepared meals (and a small selection of heat-and-eat) and groceries. Its recipe selection contains a mix of raw and pre-cooked ingredients. The pre-cooked ingredients are typically minimally processed with techniques like sous vide, and the raw ingredients are frequently organic or sustainably sourced.

Another Great Meal Delivery Service

Marley Spoon

View on Marleyspoon.com

In the realm of “Here’s your groceries and a recipe, now go cook,” Marley Spoon had the tastiest selection of dishes. After a couple of back-to-back natural disasters (I live in Florida), I appreciated the simple comfort of a well-made meatloaf. The meals weren’t the fastest or easiest to cook, but the results were worth the effort.

The Best Plant-Based Meal Delivery Service

Purple Carrot

View on Purplecarrot.com

Purple Carrot provided a mix of ready-to-cook and heat-and-eat plant-based meals that took 25 minutes or less to prepare. It’s a good service for people who want to balance convenience and a plant-based diet.

The Best Heat-and-Eat Meal Delivery Service

Factor

View on Factor75.com

Factor’s popularity lies in its convenience and food quality. Nine single-serving meals were microwave-ready and cooked in just a few minutes. I was impressed by the flavorful, comforting meals like Louisiana shrimp with smoked Gouda cauliflower grits and queso fundido and ground beef. They were satisfying and perfectly portioned.

The Tests

• Packaging Test: I examined the box for damage and then opened it to view the contents. I looked at how the service organized its product (were the proteins packed at the bottom to avoid cross-contamination?), then checked the temperature of all the perishable food to ensure it was within the food-safe range (40°F or below). I also looked to see if the cold packs melted, if there were any broken products or spillage, and if everything promised was accounted for.
• Recipe Test: Not every meal kit involved cooking, some were heat-and-eat offerings. But for those that did require cooking, I read the recipes for clarity and efficiency—I don’t work in kitchens anymore, but old habits die hard. Were the recipes easy to follow? Did the instructions make sense? How many steps did each recipe require, and how many extraneous dirty dishes did they generate? This was a big one for me, as my dishwasher died early in testing. If a recipe required 20 minutes of cleanup, it wasn’t really a time saver. I followed every recipe, as written, with no “cheffing about,” to arrive at the same product every consumer would.
• Taste Test: I tasted every meal I made and judged it on its flavor, texture, and visual appeal. These are all subjective matters, but I like to think I’m a pretty astute judge of food quality. First, did it taste good? Were the ingredients cooked properly and thoroughly? Were there overcooked or mushy elements? Were there extra ingredients that didn’t make sense, like Brussels sprouts on Bolognese? (Yes, one meal had this.) Finally, did the food look good or was it just some glop on a plate?

What We Learned

There Was a Plan for Everyone

The key drivers of the meal delivery service industry are convenience and pricing. If you ask 10 people what convenience is to them, you’ll probably get at least six different answers. Some people want ready-to-eat meals that eliminate cooking, like Factor provides, while others just want to skip the trip to the grocery store, which is where companies like Blue Apron thrive. In between there are folks who want to control their portions or stick to certain dietary preferences. Purple Carrot caters to plant-based eaters while Hungryroot provides portion control and ethically sourced ingredients that cut down on prep time.

Costs vary considerably, depending on the amount of processing and ingredient sourcing. I’ll take a look at that further down the list.

Pay Attention to Nutrition

This may be a non-issue for many, but you’re on your own when it comes to nutrition. Many meal kit companies provide filters to help narrow your search based on your preferred diet, but just because the filters are there doesn’t mean they’re accurate. I filtered an order from Blue Apron for low-calorie and low-carb meals. I got 16 results, but most of them contained white rice or potatoes. Prepared foods are high in sodium, so if that’s a concern to you, consult the nutritional information of each dish when ordering. Purple Carrot provided a breakfast burrito with over 1,000 milligrams of sodium, which is 44% of the recommended daily allowance for adults, as set by the Food and Drug Administration. Prepared meals from Factor averaged just under 900 milligrams. 

Here’s a listing of the average calories per meal, per company:

Get Ready for Loads of Packaging

Most companies ship their food in eco-conscious, easily recyclable containers, and most of the ice packs are filled with a gel that, when thawed, can be used to water plants. But that’s where sustainability ended. Packaging portion-controlled ingredients for two-person meals has some challenges. I don’t have a better packaging suggestion but prepare yourself for a plethora of single-serving ingredients, like sour cream, fruit cups, oil and sauce packets (think soy sauce packets), and disposable trays for prepared meals.

Some Meals Had Inefficient Instructions

When I’m cooking, I want the processes to make sense. I found several inefficiencies in recipes that just plain irritated me. One recipe from EveryPlate asked me to slice the green parts and white parts of two scallions separately, along with grating some ginger, chopping some garlic, and a few other steps. Okay, no big deal. But when it was time to use them, one step required half the garlic, half the ginger, half the scallion whites, and half of some other packaged ingredients. I needed someplace to keep the other half of the ingredients out of the way. Now I needed a bowl for the ginger, a bowl for the scallion greens, a bowl for the scallion whites, and, well, someplace to keep the open packages from spilling their contents across the counter. At the end of the dish, I’d used seven bowls and a skillet to make lunch for two. As an aside: Using my chef's brain, I can tell you that the white part of a single scallion in a dish is almost inconsequential, flavor-wise. It just seemed like busy work.

Double Check What's In the Box

Blame it on my time in restaurants, but when I receive a multi-piece delivery, I want a clear list of what’s in the box. Most boxes arrived with a selection of recipes that listed the ingredients needed to make them, but there wasn’t a cohesive list to check against without going through every recipe to ensure everything was there. As such, I didn’t notice when I was shorted a package of chicken from HelloFresh until it was time to make the dish. Hungryroot was the only company that provided an itemized list of contents to check against while unpacking.

Prices Varied

Each plan comes with an introductory offer, typically 30 to 50% off the price of your first order. The less prepared the meal kit, the lower the price. Prepared and semi-prepared meals carry a higher price tag, and ingredient sourcing also influences the price. Most companies offer free shipping on orders above their minimum (typically $75 to $100). The chart below compares the cost of the meal kits I tested.

The Criteria: What to Look for in a Meal Delivery Service

People have different goals when signing up for a meal delivery service, so there are a variety of options to choose from. Some services simply provide the groceries and a recipe to make a meal. Others provide a level of convenience with semi-prepared food that eliminates the “what’s for dinner” question and makes cooking quicker and more convenient. Still others offer fully cooked, fresh, or frozen meals ready for the microwave or oven. The key is finding what works best for you. 

After that, a service that delivers reliably and safely (food-wise) is the prime consideration. Look for variety and dietary considerations from each provider to tailor your plan. Recipes should be easy to follow—even experienced cooks get confused by unclear directions. Minimal dish cleanup is also a strong consideration, as are meals that are filling, delicious, and somewhat pleasing to the eye.

The signup process is fairly similar across the board: Enter your zip code to ensure delivery, select the number of meals and servings you’d like per week, and add your dietary preferences. Each service then presents you with pre-selected options based on those criteria, and you can edit the choices, and sometimes modify the ingredients.

Our Favorite Meal Delivery Services

The Best Meal Delivery Service

HungryRoot

View on Hungryroot.com

What we liked: Full disclosure: I’m a regular Hungryroot customer, and it’s great for those who want time savings without sacrificing flavor and quality. The meal kits contain a mix of semi-prepared and raw ingredients. The former are typically sous vide meats for you to finish by searing or roasting and pre-made sauces, like pesto or chimichurri. The ingredients tend to be high quality, like organic or sustainably sourced proteins and dairy products, and spice blends from Spicewalla. Hungryroot frequently swaps in plant-based products for things like sour cream onion dip.

What we didn’t like: Not all the flavors were winners, like the General Tso chicken ‘n veggie skillet, which I found one-note rather than a balance of sweet and hot. Hungryroot also has a high per-portion cost, but it’s lower than what I’d spend at the grocery store.

Key Specs

• Number of dishes: 8
• Number of servings: 16
• Price per meal: $21
• Average prep time: 14.5 minutes 
• Average calories per meal: 587
• Meals tried: Shredded pork and guacamole tacos, rigatoni alla vodka and chicken sausage, chicken and chickpea bowl with avocado lime dressing, General Tso chicken 'n veggie skillet, roast and ready pork chop saltimbocca, best-dressed swordfish salad, turkey meatloaf and roasted broccoli, everything chicken shawarma tacos

Another Great Meal Delivery Service

Marley Spoon

View on Marleyspoon.com

What we liked: Marley Spoon delivers recipes and the groceries to prepare them. This is a great service for folks who just want the “what’s for dinner?” question solved for them and don’t want to go to the store, but don’t mind taking the time to cook a good meal. These aren’t quick meals, but overall, the flavor and texture were quite good. A dish of sausage, rapini, and gemelli fulfilled my love for Italian food, and the meatloaf with caramelized onion gravy was a much-needed comfort dish. The proteins are higher quality, like sustainably sourced farmed salmon, and the directions were clear and mostly free of overly fussy steps, like dividing ingredients for no real gain.

What we didn’t like: These meals took the longest to prepare, averaging 44 minutes from start to finish. Although the recipes were straightforward and kept fussy steps to a minimum, I did find myself washing a lot of dishes afterward. While it’s expected with cook-at-home kits that you provide certain staples, like salt, pepper, and cooking oil, I was taken off guard when two of the recipes required butter and another needed flour—both ingredients not included in the kit.

Key Specs

• Number of dishes: 5
• Number of servings: 10
• Price per meal: $9.99
• Average prep time: 44 minutes
• Average calories per meal: 832
• Meals tried: Cheese buldak, seared salmon and citrus butter sauce, pumpkin-coconut curry and shrimp, Martha's best sausage and broccoli rabe gemelli, meatloaf with caramelized onion gravy
  

The Best Plant-Based Meal Delivery Service

Purple Carrot

View on Purplecarrot.com

What we liked: The kit arrived with a mix of three quick, heat-and-eat meals and two ready-to-cook meals. There was also a surprisingly tasty box of cocoa-flavored sunflower cereal with pistachio milk that reminded me of my favorite childhood grocery store cereals that rhymes with “caftan brunch.” The heat-and-eat meals were largely fine but sometimes relied on chiles to carry the entire flavor profile. The ready-to-cook meals (a chickpea dish and farro and lentils) had clear, easy-to-follow recipes, each taking about 25 minutes from start to finish.  

What we didn’t like: Let’s start with this disclaimer: I LIKE to eat plant-based meals. That being said, when vegan restaurants were in their infancy 35-ish years ago, there was a common, uncooked spice blend that contained paprika, cumin, and turmeric that permeated many dishes. I came to refer to that offputting spice blend as “vegan-flavored.” I was hoping I’d tasted the last of that as plant-based cooking progressed in sophistication. Sadly, there were two vegan-flavored dishes in the assortment, taking me back to the early ‘90s. The Veggie Wow Bao was distinctly vegan-flavored and was a doughy, whole-wheat mess.

Key Specs

• Number of dishes: 6
• Number of servings:11
• Price per meal: $13.25
• Average prep time: 14 minutes
• Average calories per meal: 450
• Meals tried: Chickpeas alla faux-dka, creamy mac ‘n cheese, veggie wow bao with spicy gochujang dipping sauce, Seven Sundays sunflower cereal (with real cocoa) and Táche pistachio milk, egg and cheese burrito with potatoes and tomatillo salsa, Lebanese farro with lentils and crispy dates

The Best Heat-and-Eat Meal Delivery Service

Factor

View on Factor75.com

What we liked: Factor meals are ideal for people who want to save time by forgoing cooking, but still want good-tasting, healthy meals. Factor offers dietary selections including keto, low-calorie, high-protein, and vegan/vegetarian. The shipment arrived with fresh, pre-packaged, single-serving dishes that were ready to eat in two or three minutes, depending on your microwave. The standouts were a bleu cheese filet mignon and some blueberry pancakes with turkey sausage. There were low-carb and vegetarian dishes in my sample pack as well as a personal comfort food of mine: chili mac.

What we didn’t like: None of the dishes were what one would call flavor-packed, although they tasted fine, if unexciting. One smoky Gouda chicken dish was reminiscent of hotel convention food. Because these are fresh and pre-packaged, they require a small amount of shelf-life expansion (read: preservatives). So, they’re pretty high in sodium, with the highest at 1,060 milligrams and the average of the remainder in the mid-800 milligram range. As this is all prepared food, it also carries one of the highest costs per serving.

Key Specs

• Number of dishes: 9
• Number of servings: 9
• Price per meal: $12.99
• Average prep time: 2 minutes
• Average calories per meal: 628
• Meals tried: Bleu cheese filet mignon, blueberry pancakes, Louisiana shrimp with smoked Gouda cauliflower grits, smoky Gouda chicken, chipotle roasted salmon, queso fundido and ground beef, chicken and mushroom cauliflower risotto, smoky tofu and baked beans, beef chili mac
  

The Competition

Also Good

• Blue Apron: Blue Apron came in just behind Marley Spoon in the home-cooked meal segment. The dishes were tasty and the prep times efficient, but Marley Spoon edged Blue Apron out on overall flavor and texture.
• Green Chef: Green Chef focuses on clean eating and provides ingredients and recipes to cook at home. Two dishes were fairly tasty, with the smoky Barramundi with walnut gremolata standing out. One of the meals was a small chef salad with prosciutto, made smaller by the wilted head of lettuce.

Not Recommended 

• Mosaic Foods: Mosaic offers mostly pre-cooked, heat-and-eat plant-based meals. I found the meals fairly unremarkable, but their packaging and freezing process did little to help them. I either struggled to unwrap the meals without destroying their container, or the packaging was too loose to seal it. Some of the meals had ice crystals on the food, which led to a watery cooked product.
• HelloFresh: HelloFresh is another cook-at-home service. I didn’t find the meals particularly tasty; the flavors were fairly muted for the amount of ingredients and work that went into the dishes. All three dishes contained chicken, and, honestly, the world doesn’t need another chicken primavera pasta. Adding to that, I didn’t receive enough chicken to cook all the dishes, so I had to skip preparing an overly complicated, mid (as my Gen Z nieces say) fried chicken sandwich. All that said, HelloFresh bought and now operates Factor, one of my winning picks. 
• Home Chef: Home Chef’s cook-at-home recipes could have benefited from slightly longer cook times or better techniques. The fire-roasted tomato ragout for the sirloin steak still tasted raw, and the instructions for boiling carrots before crisping them in a skillet resulted in boiled carrots with a tiny bit of caramelization.
• EveryPlate: Honestly, I got really irritated cooking EveryPlate’s food. There were a lot of steps for less-than-stellar results. There was an overly sweet pineapple pico that went on a sirloin steak with a creamy mojo that added nothing, a crispy Caesar chicken that was reminiscent of hotel banquet food, and weird pork dumpling tacos that required multiple steps, bowls, and tools only to end up a flavorless, soggy mess.
• CookUnity: CookUnity provides chef-designed, refrigerated heat-and-eat (or ready-to-eat) meals with an eye toward a high caliber of food. Unfortunately, that didn’t translate. The ceviche didn’t travel well and was quite chewy, and the hanger steak with red chimichurri was rubbery and tasted like reheated meat (which it was, but there are ways around that).

FAQs

What is the best cheap meal delivery service?

You have to look at the price per portion to get the full picture of the cost of a meal delivery service. Many base their pricing on a sliding scale where the number of meals or portions reduces your cost per meal and cost per portion. EveryPlate has the lowest cost per portion of the services we reviewed, at a price of about three dollars per person per meal. I didn’t particularly like the food, but I’m a snob—I earned it over the course of over 35 years in the kitchen. 

What is the best meal delivery service for two?

To answer this question, you have to look at what you want from a meal delivery service. If you want to cook everything from scratch, I found that Marley Spoon had the best meals and the best portion sizes for two people. If you’re always in a hurry or hate cooking, Factor had the best-tasting ready-to-eat food, but you’ll have to ensure you order two of every dish if eating the same thing matters to you and your significant other.  

Which food delivery service is rated best? 

I rated the services on what value they added—convenience, portion control, time savings, what have you—balanced with how good the food tasted. Again, people have different goals in what they want from a meal delivery service, but if I had to select “the best” from our test population, it would be Hungryroot. I make that recommendation on the time savings, portion control, calorie control, quality of ingredients, and overall flavor and texture of the meal. It’s one of the pricier options, but I still save over $200 per month versus going to the grocery store.

Why We’re the Experts

• Greg Baker is a multi-time James Beard Award-nominated former chef from Tampa, Florida. 
• He’s reviewed knife sharpeners, charcoal chimneys, and more for Serious Eats.
• For this review, Greg tested 11 meal delivery services, cooking and sampling 67 dishes and rating them on their ease of preparation, meal quality, packaging, and delivery.