Gone are the days where pizza and Chinese food were the only options you had for home meal delivery. Nowadays you can have pretty much anything you want sent right to your front door from already cooked meals ready to heat up and eat to meal kits that you can prepare and cook yourself with the ingredients provided in your delivery.
Let’s break down some basics for you.
Types of Meal Delivery Kits
There are three different types of Meal Delivery Services – Home Meal Kits, Home Meal Delivery Services and Subscription Foods.
Home Meal Delivery Kits
A meal delivery kit is a subscription service where you can order and send to your home a pre-portioned menu that you can prepare yourself. Meals come with recipes, pictures to help you prepare your meal and individually portioned ingredients for you to create your meal.
Home Meal Delivery Service
A home meal delivery service is a pre-ordered precooked meal that simply requires heating up in an oven or microwave when you are ready to eat.
Subscription Food Delivery Service
A monthly or weekly subscription service that provides a buyer a certain food delivery at a predetermined time. Many are known as “Dessert of the Month”, or “Cheese of the Week” or a “Meat in a Box” type of order.
The meal delivery kits and services allow you to choose the meals that you want and how many meals to have delivered. Costs vary based on how many meals you are choosing. You are also able to pause or suspend your deliveries so that you aren’t locked into having a meal delivered each week and paying for it. Many customers will join 2-3 different companies and then just activate them on a need to basis. In a subscription food scenario like a dessert of the month or a cheese or meat delivery you generally are getting an order delivered each month of their choosing which is meant more for consumers to have a surprise each month or try food that they would never have tried otherwise.
How Much Does Meal Delivery Cost?
It is cheaper than eating out at a restaurant but more expensive than buying the ingredients yourself at a grocery store. It does save you the time of making lists and driving to a grocery store to buy the food needed to create your own meal. In the case of a meal delivery service where you can just heat and eat, it is still more affordable than eating at a restaurant or having home delivery of meals by Uber Eats or Door Dash and you get the benefit of a healthy meal that takes just minutes to heat up and eat.
Who Should Order A Home Meal Kit?
Meal delivery is big with large families that just don’t have time to prep and cook a healthy meal on a nightly basis. When cooking for 4-5 people it can actually be more affordable to order a meal to make at home than buying the ingredients yourself. Some single people that don’t know how to cook and want to eat healthier have taken to them to improve their healthy eating. One of the largest segments of growth is for seniors where children that live away from their parents will order these prepared ready to eat meals for them so that they can guarantee that they are eating healthy and regularly.
Advantages Of A Meal Delivery Service
1) Healthy Food Choices
If you are only having pizza delivered or doing Chinese food then you probably aren’t looking like you did when you were younger. The meals that you can choose online are healthy, portion controlled and nutritious and if you want to eat better, you can now choose a healthy meal and make a better lifestyle choice.
2) Portion Control
To follow in the footsteps of healthy eating comes proper portion control for your meals. On average a meal that is delivered or you need to prepare will be about 700 calories per person which is enough for a regular adult who is trying to maintain a level of calories throughout the day. Obviously you can order more, or make more but the meal is set up to be a proper healthy portion.
3) Simple No Fuss Cleanup
Meals that you need to prepare come pre-packaged and portioned and just get popped into a pot. Pre-made meals just get heated up in the container they come it. No matter which one you use, there is a lot less to clean up than the usual mess a kitchen is in after a home cooked meal.
4) Creating Diverse, Exciting Menus
You get tired of the same old at home because you don’t know what else to make but with the easy to follow instructions to make your own meals you can try and make meals that you’ve always thought about but didn’t know how to prepare.
5) Become A Better Cook
Cooking is contagious and once you get good at it you will start to look for more recipes to try and improve your skills. If you have no idea your way around a kitchen, a home meal kit will be what turns you into a star chef that will make your mother proud.
