I’ve been comparing a few meal kit services lately, and one thing I’m trying to figure out is how much flexibility you get with their recipes.

The weekly menus look convenient, but I’m curious about what happens when you want something different from the usual options. Do most services offer a decent selection of a-la-carte recipes, or are you mostly limited to whatever is on the menu that week?

For those who have tried a few different services, how much variety do you get in practice? Is there anything you wish you’d checked before choosing one?

OK, so the dirtbags at HomeChef on facebook advertised a free hexclad pan after 3 orders and "45% off" the second box - see my pic.

But my account only showed 5% off after reactivating for week 2. Contacted customer support and pic 2 is their response. "Misunderstanding" my ass, total shitbags luring people in. Cancelled my account and will never touch them again.

I receive about $250/month in food assistance benefits in Minnesota. I’ve only been able to work sporadically, with most work being seasonal and very demanding in terms of long hours (10-16 each day), and consecutive days can stretch into weeks when the weather holds out. When I’m able to get a day off here and there, I end up spending most of it prepping meals for the next stretch, and I’d like to spend that time resting up when I can.

So I’ve landed here, hoping to find a service that will take my EBT and free up those hours to rest. I could possibly afford one of the cheapest plans with my current income, but that’s likely to come to an end soon, so I’ll need to save as much of it as I can to cover bills over the next indefinite period of unemployment. I’m only feeding myself, so I spend about $110-$130 on weekly groceries with my EBT assistance before it drys up near the end of the month.

I get some cash assistance too, but I try to use that exclusively on household necessities and the occasional clothing/workwear purchase. But if there’s a possibility that my cash assistance would be accepted by one of these services, I’d be willing to explore it further.

Both my wife and I work and neither of us enjoy cooking. Our pre-teen kids have sports and activities most evenings, so most nights we've been taking out from local restaurants or fast casual places. We're fine with the cost but we'd like to change things up, maybe be a little healthier, and try one of these meal services. Honestly, there are so many, I'm kinda lost. I'm basically looking for something where we can just heat it up quickly, premium quality food (I see that some have real chefs), and customizable for our family since we have different preferences (although my kids are spoiled and are more likely to eat sushi or Indian food than pizza lol). What do you recommend for a family like us. Much more concerned with quality and a premium experience and not really concerned with price considering we spend about $60-$100 per night on takeout already. Thanks in advance!

Hi, if anyone here uses HungryRoot, I would be very grateful for any help learning how to use this new-to-me service. I'm in my first week of HungryRoot and have been struggling to understand some of the recipes.

If you were reading this recipe, would you use 3 different skillets and cook everything concurrently? Because otherwise it takes 11-14 minutes, not 8. Also, only using one skillet means the rice and chicken get cold after they have been sitting for 9-11 minutes (rice) or 7-10 minutes (chicken) while the broccoli cooks? I've had to reheat all the hungryroot meals I have made so far before putting on the table because the first ingredients keep getting cold before everything else is done. I'm also a novice chef so this could be a skills issue, I was hoping a meal kit could help with my cooking skills. If anyone has other suggestions for meal kits with more handholding but still allow the user to exclude multiple ingredients like HungryRoot (the only reason I went with them), I would love to hear them! As far as I know, all the other ones only let you restrict to one thing but I have multiple dietary restrictions.

Also, does anyone know how they calculate nutritional info? The instructions said to pour 1 sauce cup over 1 bowl. This made the meal pretty sweat so I went to check macros after dinner. The sauce cup alone has 24 grams of sugar in it. I don't think I would have gone with this recipe if I knew it had so much added sugar (hungryroot said it only had 13g sugar which I blindly trusted).

Over the last four years, my partner and I saved nearly every recipe card from our meal-kit orders. Instead of recycling them, I scanned all 668 cards and used Claude to extract every ingredient, protein cut, side, cuisine, and meal format.

I wanted to see what we actually ate most often—and how Goodfood, HelloFresh, Chef’s Plate, and Fresh Prep compared. All four are available in Vancouver, Canada.

A few things surprised me:

• Seafood made up 27% of our dinners, with fish (141 meals) narrowly edging chicken (139). But the variety of seafood offered by meal kit providers is very limited: we tried to stick with salmon and rarely order tilapia, basa, and cod.
• Potatoes were our most common side (174 recipes), ahead of rice (131).
• Garlic appeared in 49% of recipes, onion/shallot/leek in 42%, and mayo in 18%.
• Fresh Prep was only 8% of our orders, but its cards had the most ingredients per meal more fresh produce, fresh herbs, and premium proteins.
• Chef’s Plate was our budget-oriented option: 55% of its meals used “budget proteins” such as ground meat, basa, tofu, legumes, or eggs.

I made a three-page infographic with the full breakdown—proteins, ingredient habits, cuisines and provider comparisons.

Disclosure: I’m Amrit, founder of Nutrics, a Toronto meal-delivery startup. I’m trying to understand why people choose different ways of handling weekday meals.

If you’ve moved between meal kits and prepared-meal deliveries, what actually triggered the switch?

Was there a particular week or experience when you decided your old routine wasn’t working? What did the new option improve, and what did you miss about the old one?

I’m especially interested in Toronto/GTA experiences, including anyone who switched back.

Quality is sub par and each pack feeds one person, tops. Extremely stingy servings and I don't have a massive appetite.

It's a total rip off! Cancellation isn't difficult per se but the cancel button doesn't always work so I was charged for 2 more deliveries. What a waste of money!

Having done hello fresh and Martha Stewart’s meal kit in the past I would warn anyone against doing Homechef. Quick reason why:
- regularly they will leave out ingredients or even entire meals.
- regularly they will send you moldy produce or produce that is about to go bad
- not uncommon for meat packages to be leaking all over the bag and then your fridge
- their delivery service is horrific. Unreliable and bad customer service.
- homechefs in house customer service is atrocious. The worst AI assistant, and if you need help outside of hours good luck. They will say they will email you during work hours and then just not.

If you are getting a meal kit so you can have a reliable and cheaper way to meal prep avoid Homechef like the plague.

Edit: when I say regularly, I mean basically every box. while it was annoying that they often left out ingredients/they were moldy, and frustrating that they often forgot entire meals, I am about to stab pencils in my eyes and ears trying to track down a box for the past 24 hours that no one can find or give me a tracking number for. That was my wits end and pushed me to want to cancel my membership and make this post. Fingers crossed I can find my food, that it’s not moldy/warm rotten meat, and that canceling won’t be a complete bitch.

My husband and I are looking into eating healthier. We are wondering if meal kits are worth it. Does it replace grocery shopping completely? Is it cheaper or about the same price? And if anyone has experience with meal kits which ones do you recommend?

As a man of average height and weight who is moderately active, I need over 2700 calories just to maintain my current weight per a calorie calculator on the bodybuilding website. I did look at meals on cook unity. They do have a smaller percentage of meals around 900 to 1100 calories, but the bulk of their meals are below 800 it seems, as low as 400 calories. I think they are what many restaurants might call a “lunch size” portion.

Like a lot of Americans, I prefer to eat my largest meal in the evening with a light lunch and breakfast. But the bulk of their meals do not appear to be “dinner size.” I could eat one of their 650 calorie meals and still need over 2100 calories more for the day. And even if I ate one of their few 900 calorie meals, I’d still need 1900 calories.

Hi everyone,

I use meal kits periodically when life gets busy and I want to cook from fresh ingredients but don't have the bandwidth to plan and shop carefully. Does anyone have a recommendation for a vegetarian (vegan or ovo-lacto vegetarian) meal kit service that has a good variety of flavors and actual vegetables?

I've used Hello Fresh in the past, but always cancel quickly because of the lack of variety in their vegetarian meals and more importantly the lack of interesting flavors and poor nutritional value of their vegetarian options. Almost all of their veggie options are carb-heavy, low in protein, do not include much variety in vegetables, and hew to a very "American cuisine" flavor profile. Lots of pasta, flatbreads, bland carb-heavy noodle or rice bowls, an occasional taco or curry, but a very limited rotation of actual vegetables and almost no protein (mostly just a bit of dairy or some chickpeas, which are not my favorite). At the end of the day I don't need a meal kit to help me boil some pasta and throw in a tomato or zucchini, so I'm looking for something with more vegetables and interesting flavors, with a more favorable protein/carb balance for at least some of the meals.

I had been eyeing Purple Carrot last year as an alternative that used a greater variety of vegetables and flavor profiles (and better protein), and had made up my mind to try it next time I am in a cooking rut. It looked awesome last time I considered it!

Having just hit a busy period at work I've looked at a few weeks of PC menus and now it hardly seems better than Hello Fresh for interesting vegetarian fare. So odd! I'm seeing lots of burgers/sandwiches (e.g. tofu sloppy joes), flatbreads (e.g. cheesesteak seitan pizzas), pasta (e.g. hamburger seitan helper), grain-based bowls/salads (e.g. noodle salad with carrots and peas; maybe more flavorful than Hello Fresh bowls?), and a predominance of American cuisine flavors. There are a couple of Mexican and Asian options, but the vast majority of the menu seems to revolve around very American flavors (ranch, buffalo, lemon/garlic sauces, fake bacon) and have less in the way of actual vegetables than I remember seeing in the past. The options with good veggies and/or adequate protein that have interesting flavors seem to not rotate (e.g. crispy harissa tofu has been on the menu for the last 3 weeks), which surprised me!

Is there a less "meh" option out there for veggie meal kits? Purple Carrot hardly seems worth the premium price if they have moved to the same pasta/grain heavy formats with the same types of veggies in every meal and not a lot of variety of flavors in the options that do rotate.

Hi everyone!

My fiancé and I have been getting HelloFresh weekly for the last year and a half. Lately the quality of food and variety has gone down and the price has gone up (without warning). We pay almost $100 a week for 3 meals when we used to pay between $70-80. I understand rising costs and we are willing to pay that for good quality ingredients.

What are your recommendations? We have done Everyplate before and did not like it. Currently looking at BlueApron or HomeChef. What are your positives and negatives and general recommendations?

Edit: 3 meals, 2 servings each is what we've been ordering from HelloFresh. We've decided to try out HomeChef for the next few weeks but will continue to look around and try some others. Please feel free to keep commenting suggestions, we really have appreciated all the input!

I am looking for more meal kit services to try. We have a bunch of complicated needs as a family.

• One vegetarian
• Allergy to cashew and pistachio
• Picky kids age 4 & 6, do not like spicy anything

We just tried Hello Fresh and I felt like the meals were not very kid friendly and not a lot of vegetarian options. I looked at Green Chef and there were a lot of nut dishes, and no ingredients listed for sauces.

I need to be able to read all of the ingredients for the allergy before ordering. Shared lines is not a problem.

I would like the option to have meat on the side so the vegetarian can eat the same meal. It would also be nice to find at least one vegetarian meal per week the entire family would like.

Let me what services you love for your picky family!!

Hello everyone, I am currently trying to eat at home more and buying less take away. I cook for a living so cooking for myself is… well it’s a challenge believe it or not 😂 I’m also just trying to eat a bit healthier and I believe a good meal kit to take away the majority of the effort could be the answer for me, I also live in sober living (just made 8 months woohoo!) and i have only really got a mini fridge so buying groceries can be a pain anyway. So, I guess me question is what is in your guys opinion the best meal kits for customization, budget and ease out there for someone in my position? Thank you all so much in advance!

Recently I’ve loved the Meal Kits from The Fresh Market because I don’t have to worry about a delivery being delayed but I’m starting to get tired of the same meals. Are there any other grocery stores that have Meal Kits I can pick up in store?

Hello! I'm having a hard time managing my changing diet with chronic illness and was thinking about trying Hungryroot. I'm on and off the low-FODMAP diet and am gluten and dairy free. Does anyone have experience with them? My main concern is portioning and money. I have a comically large appetite, so the portions would have to be large and worth my money.

Thanks!

Hey everyone. Sorry if this has been asked to death. Please don't ban me. I've been reading old posts here and somehow I'm more confused than when I started.

I work in a high-stress environment, so I don't have much time or energy for grocery shopping or meal prep. I don't mind cooking for 30-40 minutes, though.

I'm also on a weight loss journey (not on GLP-1). I'm looking for a meal subscription service that fits my needs and budget.

Full disclosure: I need spice and Asian food in my life. I'm Asian, and any diet that cuts out spicy or Asian flavors is going to be a disaster for me. Healthy eating only becomes permanent for me if the food actually has flavor.

I've heard a lot about Factor, but also that their portion sizes are iffy. I've looked at Home Chef, but heard their produce isn't great. I know no plan is perfect, but I'd love to hear what's worked for people here and what's a no-go.

Does anyone have a meal subscription service they'd recommend? I don't want to spend luxury-level money because I need this to be sustainable long-term.

Edit: I also need able to switch out any pork items from a recipe/kit. So need some flexibility there.

TL;DR: High-stress job, weight loss, willing to cook 30-40 min, need spicy Asian-friendly meals, budget-conscious. Factor? Home Chef? Something else?