7 Best Meal Subscription Boxes of 2017 – With Before & After Cooking Pics

Great, Home Chef is my favorite, great prices and menu

I have tried Diet-to-Go, Hello Fresh and Plated. I thought Plated had the best tasting foods and they seemed to stay fresh longer. Diet-to-Go’s meals seemed a bit bland. But there are others out there I might try such as Healthy Chef Creations, Factor75 and Nutrisystem. Has anyone tried any of these products?

I have 3 teenage boys to feed, and I have been wanted to try a meal box for a while. We decided to go with Dinnerly. The price works for me, and each meal is ready in 30 min or less with no more than 5 ingredients. At least for the summer, my boys can cook dinner while I am at work!

I have been using Hello Fresh and Blue Apron for over 2 years. This is my comparison of the two services, evaluating both pros and cons. Both services are the same price for their weekly 3 recipes for 2 people. Plan for 4 people differ in price. Hello Fresh is the better deal as they offer larger entree portions for the same price; however, if Blue Apron is offering a discount, then Blue Apron is the better deal, as both services offer high quality meat and produce.

Hello Fresh Pros: larger portions of main entree, e.g., chicken, fish, pork, steak. Usually 12 ozs., rarely less than 10 ozs.; great customer service; generous compensation due to low quality produce or missing ingredient; recipes are separated and placed into individual bags; beautiful recipe cards; shorter lead time for placing next order–5 days vice 7 days; easy to use web site; easy to pause or cancel subscription via web site; easy to reach customer service through their toll free phone number.

Hello Fresh Cons: Nutritional information not provided on each separate recipe card. Instead, the nutritional information for all recipes is contained on a separate card, which is easily misplaced and therefore not available when that information is needed.

Blue Apron Pros: Occasionally offer discounts to clients not tied to new subscriber; Great customer service; appropriate compensation due to low quality produce or missing ingredient; beautiful recipe cards; easy to use web site; easy to pause subscription via web site.

Blue Apron Cons: Smaller portions of main entree, e.g., chicken, fish, pork, steak. Usually only 10 ozs. or less. Salmon is often only 8 ozs, which is not enough to feed one man and one women; recipes often do not state how many ozs of entree like some other meal delivery svcs.; longer lead time for placing next order–7 days vice 5 days; More difficult to cancel subscription via web site; Customer service hours are somewhat limited; Recipe ingredients are not separated, necessitating separation upon arrival; nutritional information is not on main recipe card, but instead, on a separate insert.

That is so great! I just ordered my 2nd round of Blue Apron. I am a Sun Basket addict, but trying to keep checking all newest meal kits out there!
Thanks for this list!

Try Chef’d! Over 700 recipes and no subscriptions!!! Yummy!

I read every review site I could think of and chose Home Chef based on price, number of selections, and flexibility. Some of the others make you choose between meat or vegetarian options, but Hone Chef has 10 selections each week and they include meat, fish, and vegetarian selections tailored to your taste profile that you fill out. You can even specify things like bone-in meat being okay (I love bone-in pork chops as they’re always juicier). I can get 2 meals one week, 3 the next, 4 the next – whatever suits my plans and needs. When I rate their meals they are usually. 5/5 with a couple 4s and one 3. Very impressed with this service.

OOh, I’ve wanted to try Sun Basket. I found they now deliver to my area! Just signed up to get my first box next week!

Oh, and I also liked how Hello Fresh how each meal was packaged inside the bigger box. However, they just changed it to a bag and that takes up more room in my fridge. I also get a half share from a CSA during the summer, so my fridge gets pretty packed.

I have tried Plated, Home Chef and Hello Fresh. I probably like Hello Fresh the best, but they have changed their packaging and it doesn’t seem to keep the food cold enough. I was also rather annoyed that they did not leave it by my house. I had to go to a UPS Store in the next town over, that in itself a pain because there are several UPS Stores in my own town. I don’t know if I could change it with the company, but I just gave up because even with the smallest plan possible for each I was still wasting food. I am only cooking for myself, so basically I get 6 meals instead of 3 per week. I should not be wasting…Not sure if I’m going to go back to a subscription or not…

Takeout Kit!

I wasn’t organized enough at the time the survey was done. It would be nice to do a comparison of the meal subscriptions. Pluses & minuses. I have Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, Green Chef, SBPanty (local ventura county) and just added Marley Spoon. As my friend mentioned, it would be nice to have an opt-in rather than opt-out plan. I usually only get one mail order meal a month and pick among these services. I usually pick meals with ingredients I can’t find easily locally, or recipes the interest me. (Like lomo saltato – a favorite peruvian restaurant dish )
My favorite is Green Chef because they make all the sauces and cut some of the veggies so there is less time involved and less room for error. Meals are usually under 30 min unless a longer cook time. But it is the most expensive and some of the meals are “strange” so I wouldn’t recommend it on a weekly basis.
SBPantry is local so they aren’t as sophisticated in their website or delivery, but I have enjoyed it too. It seems more personal.
And i was very pleased with my Marley Spoon meal. I will order that again. . . and maybe if I do the survey for 2017 it will be make the list!

I love Plated and don’t mind paying a bit more to have a large selection of meals each week with a lot of variety throughout the year, and their customer service is fantastic. I’ve been subscribing for almost 2 years and can’t imagine my life without it!

Freshly!

I would like to try Gobble. I hope that they start delivering to Michigan soon. Has anyone ever tried Terra’s Kitchen?

Home Chef is my favorite. Although I really like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh, I want 3 meat dishes a week and I want a huge variety of meals to choose from each week. It’s the best value for me. I loved that Green Chef had stuff already chopped up (biggest time waste for these home cooking boxes is prep aka chopping). Gobble is great for their bags of (what I call) mush. You get a meal in 10 minutes, but you also know why. Good for the kids, they love that stuff. Lacks flavor/texture, but time trade off is nice. Most of these are great options, you just got to figure out which one works best for you.

I have been subscribed to Green Chef for 9 months and am very pleased. The choice of meals is perfect and customer service has been excellent. Boxes arrive as scheduled, packaged well and the recipes are well written and tasty. I have appreciated some of the recipes that I would normally not put ingredients together and they have become my favorites.

I’ve been a committed Home Chef subscriber (I guess that was technically my first sub box!!) for over a year now and it really has been a lifesaver. I work full time and live alone so the convenience of having “someone else” do my meal planning and shopping for me is worth the additional cost. I chose Home Chef because although they don’t always have the fanciest or healthiest recipes I can always find something that appeals to me, is quick/simple and comforting! It’s so great to be able to come home from a long day, go on a walk with my dog and still have a home cooked meal with real food eaten and cleaned up by 7pm. So much better than frozen meals, processed food or takeout every day…or having to battle grocery stores on Saturdays every week to get fresh produce! Fresh food in the 20th century. Thanks Home Chef! 🙂

I am a Gobble convert. Meal boxes are quite expensive, but the fact that I can make a (usually) restaurant quality meal in under 15 minutes is a worthwhile once in a while splurge for me. Plus, I never feel hungry after these meals like I have with some other boxes I’ve tried.

I love Terra’s Kitchen. They have a lot of meals with different dietary specifications. You can order meat and veggies a la carte. They even have snacks, smoothies, and salads you can order. The meal prices range from $9.99 a plate to $18.99 a plate. Everything is organic and they send everything in a reusable cube with drawers. You put it out the next business day and they pick it up.

I like it better than other plans (I’ve done Plated, Hello Fresh, Bistro MD, and Blue Apron) because I can choose anything I want and as little or as much as I want. I also feel like they organize and prep everything better. It was easier for me to assemble the meals.

Marley Spoon is my fave and didn’t make the list. Price-wise they are decent – $61.50 a week but the price per dish goes down even more if you order more than 3 dishes per week. My favorite meal from them was lamb merguez sausage with M’smen flatbread, yogurt, tahini, and fresh mint. I like Marley Spoon because their recipes have a bit of a European flair and their ingredients are always top of the line. I liked the M’smen so much that I now order it directly from the Hot Bread Kitchen in NY.

I just recently tried Home Chef thanks to receiving a free trial and then I purchased one more week on my own. I did really like it, but I find that the food boxes are a bit expensive for only getting two meals out of it when I can go to the grocery store and buy more for my money there. I may every once in a while order a week, but I’m not keeping up with a weekly subscription.