What is a Meal Kit Service?
With a meal kit service, you select recipes online each week. Then a box is delivered to your doorstep with all the necessary ingredients. Easy-to-follow instructions and fresh, pre-portioned ingredients help you cook restaurant-style dinners in a short time. Meal kits also come with all the components for your recipe individually packed, labeled, and perfectly portioned for your convenience.
Meal Kit Services: You Select, They Deliver
When you order a meal kit service, you select a plan based on your lifestyle and dietary preferences. Recipes usually come with portions for 2 or 4 adult servings. You can typically order between 2 and 6 recipes each week.
Each meal kit service has special categories for the types of plans offered. Some meal kits are for specific diets like vegetarian, vegan, keto, gluten-free, or low carb. Other options are family-friendly, premium proteins, or time-saving.
Every week, menus are made available online. Most services let you select meals in advance. That way, you can do so at your leisure. And there are no commitments – you can change or cancel your subscription easily during the week before delivery.
Benefits of Using a Meal Kit Service
Why should you try a meal kit service? The first thing these companies will point out is that you get to skip the supermarket. It saves time and energy on- deciding what’s for dinner, searching for ingredients, making the trip to buy the things you don’t have on hand, prepping, cooking, and cleaning up.
When people cannot go to supermarkets, their instinct might be to order food from a restaurant. But regularly ordering restaurant food can quickly turn expensive and unhealthy. Meal kits give you more control over your eating habits because you can thoughtfully select them ahead of time, and you know which ingredients are going into your meal.
Another benefit is the reduction of food waste. When ingredients are pre-portioned, you don’t purchase too much of something for a particular recipe that later gets tossed. This not only helps the environment and your wallet but also your conscience about your impact on the environment (and your wallet too).
Speaking of the environment, many meal kits companies have green practices and initiatives. They support sustainable farming by maintaining high standards with suppliers, often preferring local and organic farmers. They use recyclable materials for their packaging. They have programs to provide nutritious meals to communities in need and to offset their carbon footprint. If you are curious, many have a page on their websites dedicated to their sustainability efforts.
Lastly, meal kit services have a mission to give you a positive cooking experience. Following their simple, one-photo-per-step recipes allows you to gain confidence in the kitchen by learning new skills and vocabulary and building your personal repertoire of recipes. Not to mention, a simplified process for getting dinner on the table also means less stress, perhaps allowing you to actually enjoy the time you spend in the kitchen and maybe even share this positive experience with others.
Meal kit companies can deliver to your door anywhere in the continental United States, and your box arrives with insulation (not pictured) to keep your food fresh.
Best Meal Kit Services to Try this Year for Every Lifestyle
One of the best things about meal kit services is that there are so many available now that you can find one that perfectly suits your needs. Most companies have amazing offers for new subscribers to make the start of your meal kit service experience even better.
