It has FINALLY arrived. About a month and a half ago, I set out on a journey to try as many meal boxes as I could and make a blog post comparing every one that I tried! My husband loves our meal boxes and the mere convenience of meal boxes so he was down to go on this journey with me! He loves to cook them as well so its a great way to spend a little extra time together! Welcome to our Ultimate Meal Box Showdown (part one of, definitely two, but possibly many parts!)
Today we will be reviewing and comparing:
Home Chef | Hello Fresh | Every Plate | Martha Stewart X Marley Spoon |
Before we get too far into the post, I want to make a few disclaimers. We order meal boxes with three meals a week, with two servings each, with shipping, handling, and tax. The prices listed in this blog will only reflect the price of a single meal and one serving. Many of these meal boxes allow you to order 2-6 meals a week and for 2 or 4 people. We do what is best for our family! You should too! :) Also know that all of these boxes charge for shipping. They are all packed very well and I found that my ingredients were still cold to the touch even after sitting in the Oklahoma sun in the middle of the summer. Trust me, you'll want to pay that extra for your meals to be packed correctly! Most of these meal boxes also allow you to customize meals and add on appetizers, breakfast, lunch, and desserts. We have ordered extras a couple of times but for ease of this post, we won't include those today! (In short: they were delicious, not sure if they're worth the extra $$$ though!) All of the meal boxes included in this post do allow you to use coupons, skip a week when needed, and cancel at anytime!
I've created a rating system for each of these blog posts so there is some kind of fluidity and concrete way to compare throughout. I will use each of these categories and rate on a scale from 1 (not so great) to 5 (amazing!) Minimum number of points is 5 and maximum number of points is 20!
Taste | Convenience/Speed | Value/Price | Ease of Ordering/Website |
Home Chef: https://shopstyle.it/l/bEEBO (Try Home Chef for $35 Off!)
Spoiler Alert - Home Chef is a busy mom's dream. We order Home Chef if we know we are going into a busy season in life or we just know we have a lot going on! Home Chef offers classic meal kits, 15 minute meal kits, oven ready meals, and fast and fresh meals!
Taste/Freshness - 4
Home Chef is very fresh, but we did find boxes that provided fresher ingredients. I would like to add that with the oven ready meals and the fast and fresh meals, some of the ingredients come prepared to just throw in the pan (potatoes chopped and seasoned, noodles pre-cooked, etc.) which makes it hard to be as fresh as possible due to the fact that those ingredients do need to be preserved somehow! The classic meal kits are just as fresh as other boxes in our opinion!
Convenience/Speed - 5
Taylor knows my favorite is the oven ready meals that Home Chef offers out of all the meal boxes we get. They come with the pan you use in the oven and all the ingredients ready to go, as I mentioned before! The Fast and Fresh meal options take 5-15 minutes and you are able to make them in the microwave or the oven. This makes Home Chef the standard of convenience and speed.
Value/Price - 3
I will be completely honest and say Home Chef is one of the more expensive meal boxes. You do pay a little extra for the convenience of being able to have the pan you use, have the ingredients already chopped and seasoned, etc. I happily pay the little extra! I get it is a personal choice and you should go with what fits your budget! Meals start at $8.99/serving and according to what certain meals you get they can go up as follows: Culinary Collection: $11.95 - $18.95 per serving (the fancy, surf and turf type meals.) Fast & Fresh: $9.99 per serving (oven ready and fast and fresh microwave meals.)
Ease of Ordering/Website - 4
Another nice thing about Home Chef is their website. It's all laid out very nicely, its colorful, and if you're going to be paying more for something or adding on, its displayed so there's no surprises. Choosing meals and skipping a week is easy as well. One thing that has happened to me multiple times is I have skipped the week but I am still charged. It is extremely frustrating when this happens but Home Chef has excellent customer service and made it right every time.
Total Points: 16
Hello Fresh: https://bit.ly/3tvQKr9 (Try Hello Fresh for $120 Off your first 5 boxes!)
Hello Fresh: the OG meal box in the Barnett household. I started ordering Hello Fresh when we first moved into our new house and I was driving an hour to work one way every day and pregnant on top of it! (Only back in 2019 but what seems like 10 years ago...thanks COVID.) Hello Fresh was PERFECT for where we were at in our life! It was healthy options for us, correct portion sizes, and meals that I would never think to make. Another thing I loved about Hello Fresh is, the first time we signed up, they didn't have the option for quicker/oven ready options. You spent 30-45 minutes making each meal everyday. It allowed time for Taylor and I to spend time together cooking and going over our days together three days a week. If you and your spouse need a good way to unwind and spend time together without watching TV or planning something elaborate, I'd highly recommend any type of meal box, not just this one! We ordered Hello Fresh for a couple of weeks to refresh our brains on the boxes and see if there was anything new they had to offer! One downfall we want to make sure we mentioned about Hello Fresh is we felt a lot of the time we needed a dessert or a small snack after dinner. We didn't always feel full!
Taste/Freshness - 5
Hello Fresh has fresh in their name for a reason. It's becuase it really is fresh. Their meals are usually a meat/seafood, veggie, and a carb. Just the way I love to plan our meals when we don't get a meal box. They also offer really unique Mexican, mediteranian, and Asian meals! I don't think we have ever been disappointed in a meal from Hello Fresh.
Convenience/Speed - 3
As I stated before, we spent 30-45 minutes (and sometimes more!) every night cooking. This was really fun for us at the time but not always realistic for us now with two kids. Hello Fresh has started to offer faster options but if I recall, while doing my research, the shortest amount of time listed was 20 minutes.
Value/Price - 4
Hello Fresh meals start at $7.49/meal. They do increase if you want fancier meals. They call those the "Hall of Fame," "Gourmet Plus," and other various categories that pop up seasonally. Those are obviously going to be more expensive but most of the meals stay at the $7.49-$9.00 price range! I took off one point here due to the "fullness factor" and what I meantioned before. We didn't always feel full after we ate the Hello Fresh meals. We haven't found ourselves feeling this way with Home Chef or Every Plate. This doesn't do a whole lot for saving money becuase if you're purchasing a meal box and you have to buy snacks or desserts, are you really saving money in the long run?
Ease of Ordering/Website - 3
Hello Fresh is secretive!! Okay, I'm kind of kidding but sometimes while ordering, I'd look at my total price I'd be paying for the week and go, "What on earth is in my cart!?" After I learned that steak, seafood, unique side dishes, or anything with fancy wording (okay, exaggerating a little!) was more expensive, I know how to pick meals and if we want something a little fancier add that in the budget for the week.
Total Points: 15
Every Plate: https://bit.ly/3sRywRY (Try Every Plate for $20 Off!)
As far as value and uniqueness goes - Every Plate gets our vote! I think if I had the time to cook dinner like Every Plate every night, we would order this box alone and do more meals per week! Find out why:
Taste/Freshness - 5
These ingredients don't get any fresher! They come basically how you'd buy them from the grocery store. It can't get any better than that!
Convenience/Speed - 2
Here's where the issue lies. These meals take 45-60 minutes (realistically) to make. The recipe cards say anywhere from 35-50 minutes but I find we take a little longer. These meals do allow us to have that awesome conversation while cooking and we've had some FANTASTIC meals from Every Plate, but it has come with the fact that we don't eat until later. Which for these meals, I'm okay with I think!! I've also taken off points in this category because a part of the problem with the speed is the way it is packaged. Most other meal kits come in a well packaged box with ice packs and each meal (minus the meat) are packaged individually (Home Chef comes in clear plastic and Hello Fresh comes in brown paper bags.) When you go to cook the meal, you grab the bag of ingredients and the meat that belongs to it and get to cooking. With Every Plate, all the igredients are just thrown into the box with the meat underneath seperated by cardboard and ice packs. I put my ingredients in a seperate drawer in my fridge but it's still not as convenient as the grab and go bags!
Value/Price - 5
Once again, Every Plate is winning this category out of all of them. It is the cheapest one at $4.99/meal (yes, they do have premium options but not as many of the meals are premium and you get some great options for this $4.99/meal price point! One of our favorite meals of all time (and we've been at this a while) is a meal from Every Plate that was Cheese-tastic Southwestern Hash with Peppers, Sour Cream & a Fried Egg. It was absolutely amazing! I would order this meal again if we get this box again and I've never repeated any other meals. (Isn't that crazy!? Look at the variety you've got between all of these!!) We even felt so full and satisifed after each meal with had with Every Plate!
Ease of Ordering/Website - 4
Every Plate's website is easy. They don't offer a ton of extras. They offer regular, Premium, and Premium+ meals and there isn't a whole lot of questioning what you're ordering!
Total Points: 16
Marley Spoon X Martha Stewart https://bit.ly/3HStbOr (Try Marley Spoon!)
Taste/Freshness - 3
These meals were just okay. They definietly were fresh but we didn't find that they were unique or special. If they were, they just didn't seem to live up to the hype on the recipe cards and on the website.
Convenience/Speed - 2
Meals from this box took us 45-60 minutes, much like Every Plate. We did do one of their fast options (20 minutes or less) and it was pretty good. It was our favorite from this box but it seemed like was more of a good lunch option as we weren't very full after eating. Unlike Every Plate, this meals weren't worth the 45-60 minutes to us. They were just okay and if I'm spending that long cooking a meal, I'd like it to be at least something I like!
Value/Price - 3
I mentioned this slightly above, but, we didn't feel super full after eating these meals, but we weren't starving either. The fast option was great, but a better lunch option in our opinion. It is the most expensive box option at $10.49/meal. However, no matter the meals you picked, they weren't any more money! You could even add just the meat packs (a few pounds of various meats to use in your own recipies) and it didn't add any money! Another cool thing is they do have breakfast options included in this as well. So instead of three meals you want to do one meal, a breakfast, and a meat pack - you can at no added cost, but you pay more up front!
Ease of Ordering/Website - 4
I didn't feel myself finding their website super user friendly. It shows you the "chef's choices" if you will, based off the little quiz you take when you sign up. I had a hard time figuring out where all the meals were and if I even had the option to choose from those! Eventually, I did find it.
Total Points: 12
Let's wrap up!
Total points awarded to each box:
Home Chef: 16
Hello Fresh: 15
Every Plate: 16
Marley Spoon X Martha Stewart: 12
Looks like we have a tie for first place - Home Chef and Every Plate. Which makes sense because those meal boxes provide quickness from Home Chef but uniqueness and freshness from Every Plate. If I could only order two forever from this list of four, I would probably pick those two! Hello Fresh is SUCH a close second and I have a feeling great things are coming from them and maybe one day they can take the top spot!
If you've made it to this point:
1) What a champ.
2) I hope you found a meal box you'd like to try! Don't forget, I've provided links (and coupons where I could) so you and your family can try these boxes as well! Let us know if you do and give us your review as well in the comments!
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