Meal Prep Kits: Reviewed!

Spending a lot of time food prepping and thinking of what to make for dinner when you get home from work can be time-consuming and stressful. So stressful that you end up getting takeout and making choices that you may end up regretting. Now with the way things are, takeout services are far more readily available. But, so are some meal kit companies. They all have their pros and cons. Some more cons than pros but at the end of the day if you make some smart choices you can have a great dinner in under 30 minutes and spice up your recipe repertoire!

Hello Fresh

• Ordering & Customer Service: 5/5
  • For the two-person meal plan it is a minimum three meals per week
  • Payment on Wednesday delivery the following Thursday
  • Website is fairly easy to navigate and select what meals you would like to receive in your order.
  • Will often get a tracking email to let you know when your box has been pickup and delivered
  • You can skip a week if needed
• Food Quality & Effort: 4/5
  • Can chose Meat & Veggie, vegetarian, family, or no beef meals
  • You need to mince, dice, chop your own vegetables
  • Some meals can be fairly carb heavy with not enough vegetables
  • I try to make sure I have extra vegetables on hand just in case
  • There are calorie smart meals but still need to be aware
  • Recipe cards are easy to read and follow with step by step pictures
  • Quality of the vegetables is fairly decent. There have been some sad carrots or bock choy that didn’t make the cut. 
• Quantity: 3.5/5
  • Cost $68.94 plus shipping 3 meals 2 servings
  • Price per serving: $ 11.49; Shipping: $ 9.99; Total price: $ 78.93
  • Often the protein positions are quite small for one person. Maybe 2.5 oz and I would like to see them bigger with less carbs
• Macro Break Down: 3/5
  • Often need to portion out the rice or potatoes from the meal as what they say is too big for one person as they can be quite carb heavy
  • Don’t get an overall breakdown of macros but are given measurements of all ingredients in the bag. Can easily be added into My Fitness Pal for tracking 
• Environmental 3.5/5 
  • Food is delivered in a cardboard box that can be broken down into recycling
  • Has ice packs that are environmentally friendly and can be disposed of, plastic bag recycled
  • Meals come in paper bags that can be used for composting
  • Low plastic content
• Ranking out of Five: 3.8/5

Good Food Box

• Ordering and Customer Service: 4/5
  • Website was fairy simple to navigate
  • A bit of confusion with delivery date
  • Different box ideas are laid out so that you can easily choose your box
  • No direct contact with customer service needed
  • It’s clear what you are ordering 
  • Chat function for quick questions 
  • Can’t cancel unless you contact customer service
  • Can pause and skip a week if needed
• Food Quality: 5/5
  • No need to cut up veggies, mince or dice
  • Content quality over all was pretty good
  • Nothing came off as bad or needing to be disposed of before I could even cook it.
  • Overall food quality was really good
  • Flavor of the meals was pretty good. 
• Quantity: 4/5
  • Can chose 3 types of meal kits 3 meals 2 servings
    • Easy prep – all food comes precut and ready to go
      • $13.95 per meal/$82.74
    • Classic Basket – More of a culinary adventure
      • $11.95 per meal/$71.70 per week
    • Family basket – recipes the whole family will love 2 recipes 4 servings
      • $10.75/$86.03
  • Choice of meals are classic, easy, clean 15 (Low Carb), vegetarian, Family style
  • Meals were good in size 
  • Didn’t feel like there wasn’t enough protein per meal
• Macro Break Down: 3/5
  • Don’t get an overall breakdown of macros but are given measurements of all ingredients in the bag. Can easily be added into My Fitness Pal for tracking 
  • For being low calorie type meals they were fairly decent at being low carb. Did give me the option to add in some rice to one of them
• Environmental: 3.5/5
  • Food is delivered in a cardboard box that can be broken down into recycling
  • Has ice packs that are environmentally friendly and can be disposed of
  • Meals come in plastic bags that can be recycled along with some of the contents are in it
  • Diced garlic and sauces came in hard plastic containers that could be washed and placed in the blue bin
• Ranking out of Five 3.9/5

Fresh Prep

• Ordering and Customer Service 5/5
  • Customer service is top notch. If I have ever had a problem they have been really great at refunding or giving a discount on future meals
  • Food order goes in on Wednesday for food delivered Sunday
  • Minimum 2 meals per order for $49.00
  • Deposit for cooler bag $20 (??)
  • Food comes in a cooler bag with an ice pack. Coolers get picked up when new weekly order comes
  • Can pause service and skip a week
• Food Quality: 4/5
  • All ingredients come prepped and ready for use so there is little time spent chopping and dicing
  • Recipe cards can sometimes be difficult to read and might not make sense
  • Meals are easy to make and have good flavor
  • Have had some food come in not the greatest quality and had to call customer service about it
  • Some dishes could use more protein but you can buy more for an added cost
• Quantity: 3.5/5
  • Minimum 2 meals per order
    • Price per meal; $12.25/$49.00
  • Some of the meals that are for two people can be quite large and you can actually get 3 or 4 servings from them. 
  • Then on the other hand some of the meals are on the smaller side and would like to see more to them. 

• Macro Break Down: 3/5
  • Recipe cards have all ingredients and their weight listed as well as measurements and herbs that may be in a “spice mix”
  • Macros are listed but I find them wildly inaccurate and not to be trusted
  • Because recipe cards list out all the of the ingredients you can save them and make them if you like them
• Environmental: 3/5
  • The meals come in paper bags that can also be used for composting
  • Ingredients do come in many plastic packets. Soft plastic can be cleaned and put into cooler to be disposed of back at the facility. There is quite a large amount of plastic used. 
  • Starting to introduce a zero-waste kit that all the food comes prepped in then returned to the facility.
• Ranking out of Five 3.7/5

ADP Catering 

• Ordering and Customer Service: 4/5
  • Pretty easy through the website
  • More options (custom macros) when you talk to them 
  • Great customer service upon delivery and timing communication
  • Meal prep delivery day communicated well
• Food Quality: 4.5/5
  • Good quality food 
  • Locally sourced options
  • Fresh tasting
  • Veggies were tasty 
  • Flavors are always really great
• Quantity: 5 /5
  • Bigger meal size whichever is a great option for a larger man or one meal might even be 1.5 or 2 meals for someone who doesn’t eat as much.
  • 6oz protein per meal with lots of carbs
  • Veggies and extra salads added for no cost
  • Can give weight of food on container for easy macro tracking
  • Great rotation of different meals
• Environmental: 3.5/5
  • Food comes in plastic containers but always returned so you don’t have to recycle or throw anything away
• Ranking out of Five 4.5/5

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