I have been using meal kit services for a while now. Personally, I use them because they save me time and broaden my horizon in terms of bringing new flavors into my cooking. But I was also curious if using a meal kit service made financial sense??!?
I decided to do a comparison, using meals from the three main meal kit services – Hello Fresh, Blue Apron and Plated and then comparing the cost of the meal kit services to the equivalent cost of buying the groceries from the supermarket.
These are my findings:
- As you can see, it’s clearly more affordable using the meal kit service. One of the biggest initial concerns of people who have not used meal kit services before is that it is an expensive process. Surprisingly enough, not only do meal kits save you time, they also save you money!
- One more very important thing to note is that it is very common for meal kit companies to run various promotions. If you use these promotions when ordering your meal kit, the savings are even better!
- There are many advantages to using a meal kit service. On top of the time and money-saving elements, I also find that they allow me to experiment with new ingredients. In most meal kit recipes, there are special ingredients that I would not normally use in my kitchen. Items such as curry paste, red chili paste, dill, etc. When it comes to new ingredients it makes little sense to buy them from your supermarket in larger portions, whereas in a meal kit, the ingredients you need come in just the right portion sizes. Moreover, some of the special ingredients can be quite hard to find in a regular supermarket, so trialing these special ingredients is an opportunity that using a meal kit service provides. Using a meal kit service has certainly made me more adventurous in the kitchen which is wonderful.
To sum it up, in my opinion, the meal kit services are a win-win for the customer – they save you money, time and spice up your life!
