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When getting dinner on the table, sometimes your busy schedule makes it tricky to find the time. Between finding tasty recipes to make and grocery shopping, it’s a lot of work to eat well! Meal kit delivery services can help by picking the recipes for you and even bringing the ingredients right to you!
These days, with so many meal kits to choose from, it can be difficult to know which one is best for you and your family. At The Meal Kit Review, we want to help you find the best fit by providing our comprehensive reviews.
In this comparison, we look at Home Chef and Gobble to help you decide which meal kits best fits your needs. We recently re-tested both services in 2024 to ensure our review has all the current information about what each provides. Now, how do Home Chef and Gobble compare?
Short on Time? Here’s why we think Home Chef is Better
- The affordable price
- Great tasting, crowd-pleaser-style meals
- Better range of dietary support
- Different kit options from conventional, express, oven-ready, and more
- Great selection of add-ons for breakfast, desserts, snacks, and more
What Is Home Chef?
Home Chef is on a mission to provide meal kits that fit your needs. They provide conventional meal kits, oven-ready options, Fast & Fresh options, and more, so you can enjoy home cooking even with a busy schedule. Home Chef is a great meal kit for couples or families looking for flexibility at dinner time.
What Is Gobble?
Gobble specializes in fast meal kits, and its service comes with a unique twist—fully prepped ingredients. They aim to make throwing dinner on the table easy by taking the prep out of the equation. Your pre-measured ingredients will arrive peeled, chopped, and sometimes even pre-cooked for maximum convenience—an ideal fit for people with busy schedules.
Pros & Cons
Home Chef Pros
- Offers easy-to-cook traditional meal kits, oven-ready, and microwave-ready options
- Exciting collaborations with loved food brands like Dolly Parton’s Good Lookin’ Cookin’
- Diet support for Vegetarian, Calorie-Conscious, Carb-Conscious, and more
- Great add-on options like quick breakfasts, lunches, and desserts
Home Chef Cons
- Can only customize traditional meal kits
Gobble Pros
- Pre-measured ingredients arrive fully prepped
- Easy-to-cook meals ready in 15 minutes or less
- Offers add-ons, including breakfast, dessert, and sides
Gobble Cons
- Limited weekly recipe options to choose from
- It is not ideal for those with special dietary needs
- Meals sometimes prioritize being easy to cook over flavor
Variety of Meal Plans
When picking a meal kit, it’s important to know if the plans will meet your needs. Here’s how Home Chef and Gobble compare in terms of the variety of meal plans.
Home Chef Meal Plans
When signing up for Home Chef, you’ll answer a few questions to help them personalize your weekly recipe recommendations. This includes the types of meals you’re interested in, from traditional meal kits to oven-ready options and more, plus your dietary needs, such as Keto-friendly, Gluten-Free, Pescatarian, and Calorie-Conscious.
Once you pick your preferences, it’s time to choose a plan! You can get a box to feed 2, 4, or 6 people, with between 2 to 6 meals in the box. You’ll also be able to shop weekly add-on options for extras like breakfast, dessert, and snacks.
Gobble Meal Plans
Gobble offers three main types of meal plans – Classic, Vegetarian, or Lean & Clean. These plans recommend recipes that meet your needs each week but can be changed at any time. You’ll pick one of these options, plus select the kinds of proteins you’d like in your meals.
Then, simply pick between a 4-person or a 2-person meal plan and decide how many weekly meals you’d like to receive, from 2 to 5 in your delivery box.
Meal Variety
Home Chef Meal Variety
The Home Chef menu is divided into different categories based on the required prep. Every week, you can choose from 15+ classic meal kit recipes, 12+ quick prep express meals, 5+ oven-ready meal options, and a handful of microwavable premade meals. You can use their easy filters to find the meals that meet your dietary needs, such as low-calorie, low-carb, Pescatarian, protein-smart, Mediterranean, and more.
On top of this, Home Chef customers can choose from the Extras menu for add-ons like breakfast waffles and muffins, beverages, and desserts like cookies or brownie skillets.
Gobble Meal Variety
Gobble’s menu includes different dinner categories, including standard quick meal kit dinners, lean & clean dinners, premium dinners, and specialty kits. There are usually about 15+ dinner options each week. Gobble offers low-calorie lean meals but not diet support for other specific needs.
As part of their weekly menu, Gobble also offers add-ons for salads, sides, soups, breakfasts, and desserts.
Our Experience – Is It Tasty?
Of course, when choosing a meal kit, you want to know how it tastes. Our team at the Meal Kit Review has extensive experience with both Home Chef and Gobble over the past six years. We recently re-tested both brands in 2024 to ensure our comparison review includes all the current offerings and accurate information.
Both meal kits arrived well-packaged in clearly branded, insulated boxes. We will say that the Home Chef box was overall more appealing, and we liked how it was organized a bit better than Gobble’s box. The pre-prepped ingredients are convenient but do not always look the most appetizing when unpacked compared with fresh, whole vegetables.
So, how did the meals taste?
Home Chef
In our recent box from Home Chef, we enjoyed the Oven-Ready Shrimp Scampi Couscous with Tomatoes and Parmesan. This tasty meal had great overall flavors, from the delicious scampi sauce to the satisfying combo of the couscous cooked with fire-roasted diced tomatoes. Add in the freshness of the roasted shrimp, and this meal is a home run. Plus, it was an oven-ready meal option, which means it was super quick and easy to make! Everything went in one provided pan, which made clean-up easy, too.
Gobble
From Gobble, we tried the Paneer & Cauliflower Tikka Masala with Aromatic Basmati Rice. This meal was quick and easy, thanks to the pre-prepped ingredients—we sure did not miss chopping up the cauliflower and tofu! The Indian soffrito and tikka masala spice sauce were flavorful and gave the dish a good taste. However, the pre-cooked rice was a bit dry, leaving us wishing this meal was better.
Other Top Meals To Try
Home Chef Meals to Try
- Chipotle Butter Mahi-Mahi with Green Beans and Roasted Tomatoes
- One-Pan Barbacoa Steak Tacos with Cheese and Cilantro Cream
- Hawaiian-Style BBQ Flatbread with Pineapple and Green Onions
- Sweet Chili Shrimp Rice Bowl with Green Beans and Roasted Peanuts
- Sheet Pan Spicy Pimiento Cheese-Crusted Chicken with Green Beans
- Spicy Kung Pao-Style Tofu with Rice and Peanuts
- Double Chocolate Mini Cookies
- Brew Master Pub Cheese Spread
Gobble Meals to Try
- Butternut Squash Ravioli with Spinach & Pecan-Sage Brown Butter
- Aloo Matar with Marble Potatoes & Cucumber Salad
- Tuscan Salmon with Roasted Root Vegetables & Balsamic Reduction
- Korean Sesame Chicken Lettuce Cups with Sweet Potato Noodles and Sesame Soy Marinated Chicken Thighs
- Mirin & Miso Shrimp Stir-Fry with Shiitakes & Bok Choy
- Pork Pad Kee Mao with Stir-Fried Vegetables & Rice Noodles
- Vegetable Frittata with Crostini & Chipotle Butter
- Chocolate Crepes with Whipped Ricotta Cheese & Raspberry Sauce
Style and Complexity of Dishes
Home Chef
With Home Chef, customers can expect many classic home-cooking-style meals with a twist, like penne with sun-dried tomatoes and sirloin and sherry sauce. The meals are designed to be easy to cook, creating great flavor without too many fussy steps and components. That said, some of the traditional meal kit meals do take around 40 minutes to make—perfect for fancier, date-night meal kits for couples.
Home Chef also has more global cuisines on their weekly menu, but mostly familiar dishes like kung pao-style protein with rice or chicken tortilla soup. The flavors are suited for picky eaters, making Home Chef a good meal kit for families.
Gobble
Gobble’s menu combines classic American-style meals like seared chicken with gold potatoes with global cuisine options like Asian-style meals and Indian-style meals. The menu changes weekly, making it harder to find flavors to suit the tastes of pickier eaters.
With Gobble, meals are generally simple to make due to the fully prepped ingredients they provide. They are all designed to come together in 15 minutes or less, which we did find sometimes meant the flavors were not quite as impressive as we wanted.
Quality of Ingredients Used In The Meals
Both Home Chef and Gobble provide pre-measured, high-quality ingredients in their meal kits.
Home Chef sources ingredients from a diverse range of trusted suppliers, working to find seasonally appropriate fresh produce and ethically raised animal proteins. Not all produce is organic, though some may depend on the supplier. Customers can opt for only organic chicken with the Customize-It! feature.
With Gobble, ingredients arrive fully prepped, and the peeling and chopping are done for you. Some ingredients, like rice, may even be fully cooked. They state their ingredients are thoughtfully sourced for high quality. Gobble is not an organic meal kit service, meaning you may receive conventional produce.
The Delivery Box
Both Home Chef and Gobble ship their meals in branded cardboard boxes. But how do they compare in terms of sustainability?
With Home Chef, many items can be reused or recycled. Ice packs, portion bags, and portion cups can be recycled at special plastic facilities or reused in your kitchen. Boxes, liners, dividers, and trays can be easily recycled curbside.
For Gobble, the delivery box and some containers can be recycled curbside. Other items, including ice packs, liners, and plastic bags, are recyclable, but only at specialized facilities.
Subscribing & Managing Your Account
Signing up for a subscription and managing your account with Home Chef and Gobble is easy. You can subscribe, pick your meals, skip weeks, and manage or cancel your account, all from their easy-to-use website.
Home Chef also has a mobile app, making it easy to pick your weekly meals and manage your account on the go. Gobble has no mobile app, but you can access its website from your phone if needed.
What Do Customers Say About Home Chef and Gobble?
Are you curious about what other customers have to say about their experience with Home Chef and Gobble? We looked on Reddit, where people talk about anything and everything, for some customer reactions to both meal kit companies.
What Customers Say about Home Chef
Home Chef customers love the tasty yet easy-to-cook dishes, especially the oven-ready options. They’re also impressed by the quality of the ingredients.
On Reddit, @rabidstoat says, “Oven-ready meals are my favorite from Home Chef because they are so easy. I work from home, and since there is so little prep, I can easily cook lunch while participating in a meeting.”
Another Reddit user, @lgoos99, says, “Home Chef has much better meat than anything you can find at the grocery store, especially chicken.”
What Customers Say about Gobble
Gobble customers love the convenience of pre-prepped meals, which makes it easy to cook dinner fast. However, some have had issues with ingredient quality.
On Reddit, @Down10 says, “My family started Gobble last month, and so far, we’ve been very satisfied! The meals are tasty, they aren’t terribly difficult to prepare, and the quality has been good.”
Reddit user @Chase-531 says “I have been using Gobble for a couple years on and off and I love their stuff but I really also have been disappointed in their recent boxes. Missing ingredients frozen lettuce, bad produce…”
Customer Support
Home Chef and Gobble both offer FAQ sections on their websites to help you find answers to many common questions about delivery, ingredients, and more. We will say that Home Chef’s FAQ is more developed than Gobble’s. If you need more help, here’s how you can contact customer support for both companies.
Home Chef has a 24/7 virtual assistant chatbot and phone support with customer service during business hours. You can also fill out an online form to get an email response from customer service.
With Gobble, you can use 24-hour text message support, call their phone number during business hours, complete an online form, or use the virtual assistant chatbot.
Delivery Areas
When it comes to delivery, Home Chef wins with a wider range of available areas. In fact, Home Chef delivers to 98% of the United States.
Gobble, on the other hand, delivers to most of the continental US, aside from Montana. However, their delivery areas are limited in many states, including Nebraska, New Mexico, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, North and South Dakota, and Louisiana.
Both companies check your zip code to confirm availability as part of the sign-up process.
Bottom Line: Our Winner Is Home Chef!
When comparing Home Chef and Gobble, we appreciated the services offered by both companies that fit their target customers.
For us, Home Chef is the clear winner! They provide a greater range of meal prep options and dietary support, not to mention more consistently delicious crowd-pleaser recipes. The price is also more affordable than Gobble, which can be more pricey due to the fully prepped ingredients.
No matter which meal kit you choose, you will love the convenience of having pre-measured ingredients delivered right to your door.
