Meal Prep Delivery Options - My Opinion

Although I love watching Top Chef and my friends describe as a "foodie," cooking is not my strongest skill. I can cook, but I make simple mistakes that can break even the simplest recipes. I get intimidated with cook times on poultry or over season dishes.
A couple of years ago, a friend suggested a meal prep company and I thought it was worth a try since the first delivery was discounted and the recipes looked intriguing. Overall, we enjoyed the service but only used it a couple of times, no real reason why, we just went back to the basics and my husband continued doing most of the cooking.
This past summer, we moved to a new area and got busy with new jobs. After the newness of our move, we got in a rut of boring cooking. A friend suggested trying a meal delivery service again, and there just seemed to be so many options for services that I didn't know existed 2 years ago. We decided to try as many as we could to make a decision of what we thought were the best services.
I am going to share what we tried and rank the companies based on the following criteria-

• Quality
• Variety
• Ease of recipes
• Easy to create as well as easy to duplicate on own
• Packaging
• Website (ordering, pausing service, deactivating)
• Customer Service 
• Price (this is the lowest priority because most are about $10 -$12 per person/per meal)

• Home Chef- Link to save $30 off your 1st order!!   Home Chef is my favorite because of easy to follow steps and minimal ingredients to eliminate mistakes. The cost is $59.95 for three meals. The cards come hole-punched and you get a binder with your first order to keep track of your recipes. The packaging is another reason that I am a fan of this company. The box come well equipped with ice packs and then there are only 4 bags, one with all the proteins in their own bag and then a plastic bag for each recipe with all of the ingredients in the bag. It works well because there is minimal waste, and the the bag is perfect to collect and seal aways any trash while cooking. The website is really easy to manipulate your choices and pause your account. There are no hoops to work through. The customer service is very easy to work with, I emailed a concern about my box and they stood behind their product but also sent me a credit to cover my next order. 

 Attached below are some entrees that we have  

had over the past couple of months.

Mushroom Chicken (Like Green Bean Casserole without waiting for a holiday)

Roasted Salmon

Steak Sandwich

Chicken Marsala

My favorite dish so far... Hot Honey Salmon

 

Steak is an affordable option as well-

Salmon used to be so intimidating until I started using Home Chef-

• Hello Fresh-is very similar to Home Chef with just a bit more of complexity in their options. Until recently, the reason that Home Chef was rated higher to me was the packaging of the meals. As of our most recent delivery, it is now packaged with each meals components in a recyclable brown bag with the meat separate as described with Home Chef. 

       Click to save $40 on your first order

• Green Chef-great quality, great selections, very customizable. The cost is a bit more at $11.95 per meal/per person but you can select from numerous diets. Omnivore, Carnivore, Vegetarian, Paleo, and Keto options are all available. There are less to choose from within the categories but if you consider all the categories and the options under each, they offer something for every palette. The website is easy to select options as well as to put your account on hold or cancel. A con for the service is definitely the packaging, there are a lot of components for each meal but they are color coded.

• Gobble-these menu items are more prepped and make weeknight cooking easier. For example, the mashed potatoes were already prepared, we just had to add the butter and cream. This service is affordable and easy to assemble with the design that dinner will take less than 20 minutes. Not my favorite service... Unfortunately, we did not take pictures of these dinners. It was easy to sign up and to cancel.

• Least Favorite (Will not order again) - BLUE APRON

1. Product Quality-we had the steak option and the steak had a tendon running through the steak that could not be cut. When we reached out to the customer service, they apologized and gave us a credit of $9.95. We were disappointed because we could not eat the steak at all, and now we had to reorder if we wanted to use the minimal discount.
2. Packaging is all separated and some seasonings or dressing are just for Blue Apron, so you could not duplicate the recipe on your own.
3. Customer Service-when I spoke to the general customer service person about canceling, she was very unhelpful and when I asked to speak to someone else, she just stated that the policy was the same no matter whom I spoke with about the issue
• On a positive note, when I wrote a review about my experience on their website, a team member reached out with the most respectful tone to see if there was anything at all he could do for me.  
4. Does not send emails of upcoming orders
5. Difficult to cancel with multiple steps.

Pictures of the delivery day-

 Everything is well labeled but all separate. 

If you have a favorite service that I have not mentioned, please share because I am always open to trying new things!!