Pros and Cons
Martha & Marley Spoon Pros
- Chef-designed meals, including Martha’s Best Meals by Martha Stewart
- Pre-portioned, high-quality ingredients
- Market includes add-on options like desserts, coffee, and breakfast items
- Caters to many diets, including vegetarian, dairy-free, low-calorie, and low-carb
Martha & Marley Spoon Cons
- Ingredients are not individually sorted per recipe
- Unable to guarantee allergen-free orders for those with food allergies
Who is Marley Spoon For?
Martha & Marley Spoon is an ideal meal kit service for couples and families who want to eat delicious, well-balanced, and healthy home-cooked meals. The company provides easy-to-follow recipes featuring quality meats, poultry, seafood, and farm-fresh vegetables. The recipes are quite classic but with an upscale twist from the chefs, including Martha Stewart.
In addition to traditional meal kit options, Marley Spoon’s one-pot meals are easy and even oven-ready, perfect for those short on time but still wanting to enjoy home-cooked meals, and great for college students.
Meal Plans
Marley Spoon offers subscription plans for 2 or 4 people. You can receive anywhere from 2 to 6 meals in your weekly box. The plan includes traditional meal kits and oven-ready, one-pot menu offerings. Customers can also shop Marley Spoon’s market for add-on items like breakfasts, snacks, and more.
Each week, Marley Spoon will recommend some recipes based on the preferences you choose when signing up. The categories include Gluten-Free friendly, low-calorie, low-carb, picky-eater-approved, quick and easy, and vegetarian options. No matter which you pick, you’ll still be able to select from the full weekly menu.
Meal Plans:
How to Get Started With Martha & Marley Spoon
Getting started with Marley Spoon is easy. You can create an account on their website or app, where you will select your plan and dietary preferences. Then, you’ll get your first weekly recommended recipes and be able to swap out for any preferred meals from the weekly menu.
Once you pick your first week’s recipes, you will get your first box on your area’s next weekly delivery day.
What Diets Does Marley Spoon Support?
Marley Spoon has a large and flexible menu with options to support many diets. When signing up, you can specify many dietary preferences to get recommendations to meet your needs. The menu is also clearly labeled with the diets that each recipe supports, making it easy to choose the right ones for you. Currently, Marley Spoon offers weekly meal options for:
- Low carb
- Low calorie
- Dairy-free
- Gluten-free friendly
- Vegetarian
- Climatarian
- Vegan
The meats for each meal are clearly labeled, making it easy to avoid red meat or follow a Pescatarian or Mediterranean diet.
Variety & Style of Meal Kits
With Martha & Marley Spoon, you have over 100 recipes to choose from weekly, with options that include various authentic flavors. Their menu consists of all sorts of culinary influences like Italian, Mexican, Asian, and more. Here are a few examples to show the range of dishes that you can expect from Martha & Marley Spoon every week:
- Beef Bulgogi with Jasmine Rice
- Chicken Alfredo & Rice Casserole with Peas & Toasted Panko
- NYC Halal Cart-Style Cauliflower with Golden Rice & Creamy Garlic Sauce
Due to the large number of options, there are several dishes for many dietary preferences, and plenty of vegetarian, meat, seafood, and pork meals are available, just to name a few. Basically, anyone can find at least 2 meals they would enjoy cooking and eating from Marley Spoon each week.
Quality of Ingredients
When we opened our Martha & Marley Spoon box, we were genuinely amazed by the quality of the ingredients we received. All the veggies looked super fresh, the proteins were high quality, and even the individually packaged spices were appealing thanks to the packaging. It felt like we had been shopping at the local farmer’s market!
Marley Spoon incorporates seasonal produce into its meals and works with trusted suppliers to deliver quality fish, poultry, and meat. Whether you’re receiving grass-fed beef, sustainably sourced seafood, or antibiotic-free chicken, with Martha & Marley Spoon, you can trust that you’re receiving the best. Not all of its produce is organic, as it emphasizes fresh and seasonal produce.
Our Experience With Marley Spoon – Is It Tasty?
The Meal Kit review team has several years of experience with Marley Spoon and recently re-tested the service in 2024 to update our review.
We are still impressed with Marley Spoon’s meal kit delivery service. The box was well-insulated, and the ingredients were securely packed. The recipe cards were large, colorful, and easy to follow, including photos of each step. The produce in our box was fresh and high-quality, and the proteins looked great and fresh. Although the ingredients were not separately sorted per recipe, they were clearly labeled and easy to sort out when it came time to cook.
One impressive meal from this recent experience was the Stir-Fried Curry Rice Noodles with Chinese Broccoli and peanuts. The combination of curry and Tamarind soy sauce really gave the noodles an impressive flavor, and we loved the crunch of the fresh snap peas and peanuts. The mix of flavors and textures made this dish truly impressive. It also came together really easily, with clear instructions that helped us perfect the meal.
We also loved the Martha’s Best Chicken Shawarma Hummus Bowls with Shepherd’s Salad. These were super easy, especially with the chicken coming pre-cut into slices. The marinated shallots added great flavor, and the shepherd’s salad was a beautiful complement to the spiced chicken slices. Add in the hummus and the delicious warmed pitas, and this meal was a real winner!
Finally, our team enjoyed the NYC Halal Cart-Style Cauliflower with Golden Rice & Creamy Garlic Sauce. This is Marley Spoon’s “highest-rated” vegetarian dish; after sampling it, we see why! The golden rice is a tasty foundation for spiced, roasted cauliflower, fresh, lightly dressed tomato, and lettuce. The creamy garlic sauce and feta are the perfect toppings for the dish, and the included sauce adds some optional heat if you like spice.
Other Recommended Marley Spoon Meals To Try
- Grilled Steak, Broccolini, & Ciabatta with Parmesan-Walnut Vinaigrette
- Sweet & Sticky Glazed Salmon with Sesame Broccoli & Pickled Radishes
- Martha’s Best Saucy Tortelloni Florentine with Balsamic Green Beans
- Yakiniku-Glazed Pork Meatballs with Roasted Veggies & Jasmine Rice
- Ground Beef & Bacon Skillet Hash with Zucchini, Tomatoes & Cheddar
- Tofu Sofritas Tacos with Poblano Peppers & Chipotle Cashew Crema
Is It Easy To Use?
Signing up for Marley Spoon through their website is quick and easy, and picking your weekly recipes and add-ons is also a breeze. Once your box arrives, unpacking it takes only a few minutes. You will need to sort your ingredients when you’re ready to cook since they don’t come pre-packaged per recipe, but this is easy to do thanks to the clear recipe cards in your box.
The step-by-step recipe cards are easy to follow, and the recipes come together in a breeze! You may need a few specialized tools, which are also clearly listed on the card. Overall, we found Marley Spoon’s meal kit service very easy to use.
Add-On Options—How Does It Work?
After you choose your weekly recipes from the Marley Spoon menu, you can shop for that week’s available add-ons before finalizing your order. You can pick from the available items, including breakfasts, yummy desserts, snacks, and more. The prices for each item are clearly listed, and you can shop by category to filter for what you need.
When you choose add-on options, they will be added to your final order total and shipped with your box for the week.
Inside The Marley Spoon Delivery Box – Is It Well Organized And Eco-friendly?
Your Martha & Marley Spoon delivery arrives in a specifically designed insulated box suitable for meal kits. The box’s contents are packed in a smaller inner carton to keep them safe during shipping, with meats and proteins tucked between two ice packs to ensure they stay fresh. The box is packed so that your delivery can safely remain outside for a few hours until you arrive home to unpack it.
Ingredients are not individually sorted per recipe, but the inner carton makes it relatively easy to pop all of the items into the fridge. When it comes time to cook them, you’ll simply need to follow the recipe card to find the ingredients you need for each recipe.
As for the environment, the Martha & Marley Spoon box is quite eco-friendly, with most of the box components being recyclable. For example:
- The paper boxes are SFI and FSC-certified, which means they’re made from paper sourced from sustainably managed forests.
- The ice packs contain 98% water and 2% super absorbent polymer (SAP), a non-toxic, non-hazardous, oil-based polymer. You can cut the bag open and discard the non-toxic material in your garbage bin to recycle them. The outside plastic can be recycled where flexible films are collected.
- The insulation liners vary by location, but all liners wrapped in brown paper can be recycled curbside.
- All bottles and containers are made of #1 recyclable plastic, and the plastic bags are made of #4 recyclable plastic.
Website and Ordering Process
The Martha & Marley Spoon website and app are user-friendly and easy to navigate. To subscribe to their meal kit delivery service, click “Choose your meal kit.” From here, you’ll choose your plan and recipe preferences, enter your address and payment method, and lastly, choose your meals.
After subscribing, you can manage your account completely online or in the app. From here, you can adjust your plan and delivery settings, choose your weekly meals, skip a week, or cancel the service.
All 100+ weekly recipes are available to browse and order each week. You can mix vegetarian and meat dishes, gluten-free, low-carb, low-calorie, and so on – each diet choice is easy to find thanks to the clear labeling. Overall, the website makes managing your account and ordering your weekly meals easy.
What Do Customers Think Of Marley Spoon?
Customers generally appreciate the wide variety of chef-designed meals on the weekly Marley Spoon menu. They love the upscale recipes that really teach you how to prepare restaurant-quality meals at home. Ingredient quality, especially produce, is also a common favorite aspect of the Marley Spoon meal kit service. However, some customers have noted issues with delayed deliveries.
Of their experience, @reckoning4ce on Reddit says: “I like how vegetable-forward they are even when the meal is protein-based.”
Another Reddit user recommends trying Marley Spoon, saying, “MS has a lot going for it. The meals are definitely much more varied than [other meal kits]… It felt like there were a lot more exotic international meals.”
Regarding the enjoyability and ease of recipes, @PreferenceSalt says, “As someone who likes to cook as a stress reliever I love MS!”
The service’s app has a very high rating of 4.7/5. The reviews show that customers appreciate the extensive variety and deliciousness of the meals.
Customer Support
Marley Spoon’s customer service page answers many Frequently Asked Questions about shipping, account management, ingredients, etc.
If you still have questions, you can use the “Contact Us” button to submit a contact form with your question and email address. Or, you can call customer service between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. on weekdays or 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. on Saturdays.
Delivery Areas
Marley Spoon is located in the US and internationally in the UK and Australia. Their US operation delivers to most of the contiguous United States. You will enter your address during the sign-up process to confirm that they deliver to you.
The Bottom Line – Is It Worth It?
Martha & Marley Spoon is an excellent meal kit delivery service, and we highly recommend trying it!
Their subscription is very flexible, and the variety of meals is one of the best in the meal kit industry.
Last but not least – the meals are delicious, healthy, and full of fresh, quality ingredients. You know you are in good hands when using a meal kit with weekly menus featuring the queen of home cooking, Martha Stewart.
