There are many meal kit companies on the market, which can make it confusing to know which ones are right for you. With our extensive meal kit company reviews, we aim to help you navigate the complex and ever-changing meal kit industry a little easier.
Today, we are looking at Green Chef and Hungryroot, two companies that offer services geared towards people after a plant-centric meal kit service. Our team re-tested both meal kit companies in 2024 to ensure our review and comparison are accurate and up-to-date with current offerings. So, let’s dive in and see how they compare!
Short on Time? Our winner is Green Chef. Here is why
- Excellent, high-quality organic ingredients
- More classic meal kit service
- Amazing variety of delicious recipes and market add-ons
- User-friendly and transparent sign-up process
- Supporting many diets – low-carb, keto, paleo, vegan, gut-healthy, Mediterranean and more.
What is Green Chef?
Green Chef is a USDA-certified organic meal kit company that delivers tasty, easy-to-cook meals right to your door. Their recipes emphasize using fresh, high-quality ingredients to create delicious, nutritious meals.
What is Hungryroot?
Hungryroot is a meal delivery service designed to replace your weekly trip to the supermarket. Based on your preferences when you sign up, they offer groceries and simple recipes for your weekly delivery. Their market is full of healthy, often plant-based items designed to combine for quick and easy cooking.
Pros and Cons
Hungryroot Pros
- Offer easy-prep and ready-made meals for busy schedules
- Personalized sign-up quiz lets you specify your goals and preferences
- Great menu filters make it easy to find foods to meet your dietary needs
- Designed to offer groceries to really help you skip the supermarket
Hungryroot Cons
- The sign-up process is less transparent than other services
- The simple recipes can be less flavorful and creative
Green Chef Pros
- Uses USDA-certified high-quality ingredients
- Choose from 80+ tasty and healthy recipes each week
- Options to suit many diets, including Mediterranean, Calore Smart, Plant-Based, and more
- Offers healthy add-ons like quick breakfast options, lunches, and snacks
Green Chef Cons
- Upscale recipes may not suit all tastes
- Can be more pricey compared with other services
The Meal Plans
Green Chef Meal Plans
With Green Chef, you can get a box to serve 2, 4, or 6 people and receive 3 or 4 meals per week. When signing up, you can choose a dietary preference to get weekly recommendations for the Mediterranean diet, Gut & Brain Health, Calorie Smart, Quick & Easy, Plant-Based, Protein Packed, Keto, or Gluten Free.
Each week, you’ll choose from the full menu of 80+ recipes, plus add-on options for quick breakfasts, lunches, extra proteins, and more.
Hungryroot Meal Plans
When signing up for Hungryroot, you’ll specify how many lunch and dinner recipes you want each week, with a minimum of 3 recipes and a maximum of 8 recipes per box. You can also specify the size for recipes, from 2-servings or 4-servings.
Then, you can pick how many breakfast, snacks, and sweets you’d like to add to your weekly box with options for none, 2-3 servings, 4-6 servings, or 7-10 servings in each category. Once you choose how much you want to receive, you can shop the full market of available groceries and recipes to build your box.
The Meals Style
Green Chef is all about delicious meal kits that are convenient to prepare and made with all organic ingredients! Green Chef does not believe eating well should be time-consuming, so they have created recipes that can all be served in 30 minutes or less. Each box comes with the freshest organic ingredients and delicious and easy-to-follow recipes.
With Hungryroot, it is a bit difficult to get a full picture from the website, as we could not access the full menu options and could only look at a limited range of examples. Hungryroot features grocery items designed to be paired to create a range of easy-to-prepare meals, found in their Cookbook section. Many featured items for each recipe are organic.
Unfortunately, we honestly thought that many of the Hungryroot meals were more of a mishmash of items and not at all at the same level as the Green Chef chef-designed meals.
Is It Tasty? Our Experience
We have plenty of hands-on experience with Green Chef and Hungryroot over the past six years and recently re-tested both services for two weeks in 2024. We’ve updated and verified our review from the past to keep it up-to-date and helpful for you!
Overall, we were satisfied with the deliveries from both companies. They arrived in clearly branded, well-insulated boxes that were easy to sort. The produce was high-quality, and the included recipe cards were clear and comprehensive. Here’s what we thought of Green Chef vs. Hungroot when it comes to the meals we tried.
Best Meal We Enjoyed From Green Chef
The standout meal from our recent experience with Green Chef has got to be the Southwest Fajita Cheeseburger with roasted sweet potatoes and chimichurri sauce. We loved the Southwest flavor spin on the classic Cheeseburger with the delicious melty cheese and sauteed veggies, and the chimichurri sauce gave it that extra elevated taste! The sweet potatoes on the side were a great nutritious switch from typical french fries and satisfied us.
Best Meal We Enjoy From Hungryroot
With Hunryroot, our favorite dish was the Yuba Thai Peanut Rice Noodles. Unfortunately, we found this simple combination of grocery items to be good but not amazing. It was quick and easy to assemble with just three pre-packaged Thai peanut sauce, Asian salad mix, and noodles, but the flavors didn’t wow us. Hungryroot’s recipes, including this one, are geared towards super healthy, new-age eating, which means not everyone will like the flavors.
Other Popular Meals To Try
Green Chef Meals
- Spiced Tilapia With Cilantro-lime Sauce, Zesty Scallion Rice, And Roasted Broccoli
- Southwest Turkey & Pepper Quesadillas With Sharp Cheddar, Monterey Jack, And Scallion Crema
- Blackened Cauliflower Bowls With Dirty Rice, Charred Corn Salsa, Paprika-dijon Aioli, And Pecans
- Pork Filet With Warm Mushroom Kale Salad With Apricot Rice, Pesto, And Parmesan
- Spiced Chicken With Lemon Yogurt Sauce With Pistachio Cauliflower “Rice” And Spicy Lemon Carrots
- Sweet & Spicy Orange Shrimp With Jasmine Rice, Sauteed Bell Pepper, Cabbage & Carrots
Hungryroot Meals
- Wild-caught Shrimp + Asparagus with Cauli Mash
- Traditional Spaghetti + Meatballs
- Parisian Brie + Apple Sandwich
- Peanutty Lemongrass Tofu + Broccoli Fried Rice
- XL Dressed Up Chicken Tacos
- Low-Carb Garlicky Cheeseburger
The Ingredients Quality
Green Chef is a USDA-certified organic company that stands out among the rest by offering meal kits containing only the healthiest organic ingredients. Green Chef is very proud of its network of suppliers, which includes a trusted range of ranchers, farmers, fishermen, and artisans who produce only the best organic ingredients. The company also strives to be eco-friendly and work with sustainable suppliers.
Unfortunately, we could not find much information about the chain of supply for the Hungryroot ingredients. We found this highly concerning, especially considering they are a plant-centric company. When it comes to Hungryroot, we are unable to advise if their ingredients come from trusted sources, are sustainably sourced, or chemical chemical-free.
They do note that many foods are organic and non-GMO, but not all of them, and add that you can filter to see options in these categories. Hungryroot focuses on meals rich in healthy fats, complex carbohydrates, fiber, minerals, and phytonutrients. They also state that no artificial preservatives or refined sugars are used in their meal kits.
Diet and Lifestyle Support
As meal kit services focused on helping you create better habits with many plant-based and organic dishes, Green Chef and Hungryroot support many dietary needs.
With Green Chef, you can choose a plan with recommended recipes for the Mediterranean diet, Gut & Brain Health, Calorie Smart, Quick & Easy, Plant-Based, Protein Packed, Keto, or Gluten Free. You can even mix and match these recipe options to meet multiple needs. Their menu includes clear labels for dishes to meet these dietary needs, and which ones are Dairy-Free, Low-Added Sugar, Sodium-Smart, and Carb-Smart. This makes it pretty easy to suit most lifestyles and diets with Green Chef!
Hungryroot asks you about dietary preferences and lifestyle during the sign-on process so you can specify your needs. We will say this element of the Hungryroot service is quite robust! They ask whether you eat meat or follow a pescatarian, vegetarian, or vegan diet. You can also indicate the need to avoid common allergens, including Dairy Free, Gluten-Free, Soy-Free, Tree Nut-Free, Peanut-Free, Egg-Free, or Shellfish-free.
You can also indicate other preferences, including following an Anti-inflammatory diet and reducing sodium, sugars, or carbs. This all helps get recommended recipes and groceries to meet your needs, and their Cookbook has many filters to help you find these options as well.
Optional Add-ons
Green Chef has a great selection of add-on options each week. You can get breakfast items like oatmeal or egg bites, sides and salads, quick ready-to-heat lunches, and more. Any items you pick will be added to your weekly delivery.
With Hungryroot, add-ons are figured into the plan, as you can choose to get a certain number of breakfast options, snacks, and sweets each week. They also offer a whole grocery section with many staples like breads, dairy items, sides, beverages, and even supplements.
Some Green Chef add-ons:
Pricing
Green Chef
Per Meal Cost: $11.99-13.49 per serving
Shipping: $10.99 per box
Hungryroot
Per Meal Cost: $9.69-11.39 per serving
Shipping: $6.99 per box (free for orders of $70 or more)
The Delivery Box
Green Chef and Hungryroot deliver meal kits in fully recyclable, specially designed boxes with recyclable insulation and non-toxic gel ice packs. This is very convenient as both boxes can be left outside the refrigerator for a few hours if you cannot unpack them when delivered.
With Green Chef, ingredients are labeled and individually packaged per recipe. For Hungryroot deliveries, all ingredients are labeled but have not been grouped with their respective recipes. While Green Chef provides printed recipe cards, Hungryroot does not, meaning you will need to look at the recipe box included or go online to be sure which ingredients go with each dish.
Subscribing & Managing Your Account
The website provides little information about the Hungryroot service for non-subscribers, and you’ll need to complete their personalized quiz before you can see plan options. However, once you have created an account, you can access the relevant plan information you need.
Overall, we did find that the Green Chef website generally provided more information before signing up and was comparatively easier to use.
Once you have created your account with either Hungryroot or Green Chef, you can fully manage it online. This includes registration, menu selection, updating personal details, skipping weeks, and canceling your subscription.
What Do Customers Think Of It?
What Customers Think of Green Chef
Green Chef customers appreciate that the ingredients are organic and the recipes are high quality and healthy.
Compared to other meal kits, @talaron says Green Chef “Recipes are fancier and come with more premium ingredients.”
Reddit user @Paddiewhacks and their family love Green Chef, saying, “Very tasty meals. I think they are a bit easier to prepare.”
Green Chef App Score & Reviews
The Green Chef app has an average rating of 4.7/5 stars in the Apple App Store, with 22K+ ratings. Here are a few recent reviews:
What Customers Think of Hungryroot
Hungryroot customers like the simplicity of the recipes and the variety of grocery options and snacks available.
On Reddit, @Dry_Extreme_2837 says, “I like the fact I can choose my own groceries and develop my recipes to suit my needs.”
Another Reddit user @16336Sie says, “We’ve been getting it for a few months now and the longest meal prep is 20mins, very easy instructions to follow.”
Hungryroot App Score & Reviews
Hungryroot’s app has a rating of 4.9/5 stars in the App Store, with 11.4K ratings. Here is a snapshot of some recent customer reviews:
Customer Support
Both Green Chef and Hungryroot meal services have extensive FAQ sections with answers to many common questions.
With Hungryroot, if you still have more questions, you can use the online ChatBot or submit a form with your question. They do not offer over-the-phone support but have a number you can text with questions.
Green Chef also offers an online AI chat option and a phone line you can call during business hours to connect with customer support.
Delivery Area
When it comes to delivery areas, Green Chef and Hungryroot are pretty similar. Both services deliver to most areas in the continental United States but do not currently service Alaska or Hawaii. You will enter your zip code as part of the signup for both companies to verify they can deliver to your area.
Bottom Line
The right meal kit service for you will be a personal choice, and both Green Chef and Hungryroot have many healthy food options to meet your dietary needs. Still, our comparisons always must have a winner!
In this case, it was easily Green Chef. We love that Green Chef is a USDA-approved organic company and is also officially certified to cater to gluten-free diets. We also love the taste and style of Green Chef’s meals, which are always pleasing and easy to cook. Finally, their website and ordering process are more user-friendly overall.
Why Trust Us? Our Review Methodology
Thanks to our hands-on approach, you can trust The Meal Kit review to have first-hand experience with the services we review. Our meal kit experts have extensive knowledge of the industry, and we always go through the full process of signing up, choosing meals, unpacking our boxes, and enjoying the meals for the meal kits we review.
