Food Delivery Services Comparison Chart

Blue Apron – Seared Cod and Pickled Grapes

Finally – the RESULTS!  So since last writing about food delivery services, I spawned another child.  This has resulted in quite a bit of time passing before finally getting around to posting my results.  I tried 4 different food delivery services over the course of about 2.5 months.  I tried an equal number of dishes from each service.  The bottom line – they were all awesome, but we won’t be using any of them anymore – at least for now.

In my original post, I listed a few considerations about food delivery services that I was keeping in mind, and those remained applicable throughout my test.  As I thought I would, I totally enjoyed trying the new recipes and not having to plan my dinners.  Receiving boxes was akin to Christmas, and I created all sorts of dinners that made me feel like I was dining in a restaurant (even if we were using our “fine china” as you can see from our pictures – thanks Dixie!).  While I didn’t measure, I think we did reduce food waste – I don’t think I ever threw away any leftover food.  A few boxes did come with more ingredients than I needed for a recipe, but it was better than buying an entire box or bag of something when you only need a tablespoon.  I did also enjoy the healthy meal options, and we did reduce spending overall.  Looking at a total of 7.5 months, we spent on average about $120 less per month on groceries and restaurants when using the food delivery services.  These numbers would, of course, make my graduate school statistics professor cringe because I basically didn’t control for anything – like birthdays, holidays, and maternity leave – which also affect food spending trends.  But anyway, I’m not claiming this to be a scientific study.

Blue Apron – Shrimp and Grits

The one thing I was thinking may be a negative – that food prep takes too long – proved to be the kicker.  With one kid it was hard enough – with two?  No thanks.  I didn’t even try.  I’m lucky if I can manage to eat at all, much less actually prepare a large meal.  Another negative I didn’t foresee is the fact that I like cooking certain meals on my own.  We were missing out on our family staples.  This could be remedied by changing a delivery date to only receive meals every other week.  My husband also found the packaging to be where the bulk of our money was going.  Individually wrapping tiny amounts of spices and sauces takes a lot of plastic containers.

Hello Fresh – Spiced Turkey Meatballs with Parsnip Mash and Roasted Carrots

Overall, I loved cooking the meals and very much enjoyed the different flavors.  I cooked many meals I probably would have never decided to cook on my own.  The food prep was another story – all 4 services took considerably longer to cook than the estimated time given.  That being said, I was trying to prepare these items with a toddler in tow, and absolutely zero ninja knife skills.  But this is real life and not a cooking show.  If the ingredients came pre-chopped, pre-graded, and pre-everythinged, I would probably still be subscribed to a service.  I want to be Rachel Ray and have little bowls of everything all ready to go close at hand.  If ever we find ourselves with more time on our hands, we might go back to a subscription.  It would also be a fun thing to do every so often to change things up.  For now though, I am going to stick to premade crockpot dinners and  super fast meals with very little prep time.

Plated – Asian Meatloaf with Miso Mashed Potatoes and Roasted Broccoli

As for a preference over one service or another, they were all very comparable. For my test, I wanted to order 2 meals per week with 4 servings for each meal. This wasn’t always possible or easy, so this was one way to differentiate the different providers. I also looked into cost, general taste of the food, portion size, ease and time and prep, and delivery presentation. My top pick was Home Chef mainly because they had the most options, flexible meal subscriptions, smallish but adequate portion sizes, and super tasty meals.  There was one meal, however, that was just super small and we had to create a side dish to go with it.  For the most part though, they were perfectly sized.

A few notes on the other options.  Blue Apron was the least expensive option, and also had the availability of a family plan to receive the 2 meals of 4 servings. Also wine. They are the only one in the group who also delivers wine…mmmmm.  Sadly, they added this option after my test so I didn’t get the chance to review that segment.  (if I had Blue Apron could have been a number 1 contender) Food was tasty and portions were large. Hello Fresh had fewer options and was the most expensive, but still super delicious with lots of leftovers. Plated had no family plan option. You could increase your servings by physically going into your account and requesting the same meal twice. This was a bit cumbersome and unintuitive – I had to call customer service to figure out how to do it.  If I didn’t do it every week, my plan defaulted back to 4 meals for two people.  That happened once and it was super difficult to cook all four meals in one week.  That being said, customer service was super friendly and helpful, and they also said there is a family plan option in the works that will resolve this issue.

Hello Fresh Chicken something – I think?

Listed below are my results.  I LOVE creating decision matrices. They help me so much to think through all the different options and criteria that are involved in making a decision.  I do one for pretty much everything.  Baby name?  decision matrix.  Buying a house?  decision matrix.  Picking lunch?  well, you get the idea.  I took each service and rated it (5 being the best, 1 being the worst), for each of 7 weighted categories.  I weighted each category on a scale of 1-3 in order of importance to me (1 being the least important).  Finally, I multiplied each rating by the weight, and added the score from each category together to reach a final score.