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While you’re paying a bit for the convenience, this actually worked out great as a lunch or easy dinner option. If I didn’t live in a city where takeout options are vast and tasty, it would be even better. The food is pretty fresh, and the dishes are a little more interesting than you usually get in the freezer aisle. They come in individual servings. The microwaving instructions are incredibly accurate (no burned tongues!). Table for one, please.
Price: Freshly is priced by each individual prepared meal—$11.50/meal for 4, but $9.50 for 6, $9 for 10, and 87.50 for 12.
Six Other Meal Kits You Should Consider
Hungry Root
Hungryroot is kind of a healthy meal kit/food delivery service hybrid. Before you sign up and input your credit card information, the company guides you through a short quiz to get some basic info on how much you eat and what kinds of foods you prefer. Once you have completed that, the company suggests a corresponding mix of plant-based meals and snacks for your first delivery. These deliveries significantly cut down on the amount of time you’ll spend grocery shopping and the meals tend to be extremely easy to make, requiring very little real cooking. It’s food that saves you time and somehow tastes pretty good! A welcome treat for the time-starved. (Everyone.)
Price: At minimum, each weekly box costs $60. That gets you three recipes that yields six servings of entrees and costs $60. As you add meals they get progressively cheaper—5 meals cost $9.50 per serving, 6 meals cost $9 per serving, 8 meals cost $8.50 per serving. You can also tack on a few servings of ready-to-eat breakfasts, snacks, and sweets for $10.
Fresh n’ Lean
Fresh n’ Lean is a meal service for time-starved people on pretty restricted diets. It offers five different plans, all of which are gluten–free and non-GMO, tailored to different dietary restrictions. Its base plan is Vegan, with organic meal items like chipotle lime cauliflower and yellow curry vegetables. The company also offers slightly more expensive plans with premium proteins or that allow you to stick to a strictly keto or paleo diet.
Price: The vegan standard plan costs about $8 per meal, while the “Protein +”, Keto, and Paleo plans cost about $11 per meal.
Sakara Life
This is a meal plan for the Goop-crowd. 100 percent of the meals are plant-based and promise a litany of health benefits, including boosted energy, improved digestion, reduced bloat, and better skin. There are a few different programs to choose from, most tailored towards detoxing, and even one designed specifically for people preparing for their weddings. That might not seem like your thing until you see the sample menu. One day includes lemon poppy seed donuts and two delicious salads. If that’s what detoxing looks like, sign us up.
Price: A subscription to the company’s signature program costs $70 per day for 5 days worth of food per week. If you only want two or three days of meals, it’ll cost $80 per meal.
Daily Harvest
Daily Harvest’s meal kit delivery service doesn’t really deliver meal kits. Instead, you’ll get a selection of frozen smoothies, oats, bites, soups, lattes, harvest bowls, and more, all in a convenient-to-heat container. You will need to have a good blender to get the most value out of your subscription, but you don’t have to know how to dice an onion.
Price: Each of the company’s oat and chia bowls are $6. Smoothies, soups, bites, and lattes are $8. The harvest bowls, flatbreads, and ice cream scoops are $9. You have to buy at least 9 items, but you can save a bit of money if you buy over 14 items at a time.
Veestro
Veestro’s vegan, preservative-free meals arrive frozen and are best prepared in an oven or skillet. The meals span a bunch of different cuisines, including Turkish meatballs, Thai curries, and shawarma. The aim is to provide people with three meals a day for under 1,200 calories total (ish).
