Top 10 Best Prepared Meal Plans

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Last Updated: October 2024

What are Prepared Meal Delivery Services?

Meal kit services don’t always require a ton of prep and cook time—many delivery services offer premade, prepared meals you can save time with just by heating up and serving within minutes. Many of our prepared meal delivery services offer pre-packaged and pre-portioned frozen or fresh meals to save you prep time, cook time, and clean up.

Today, there are many premade options for you to choose from making it extremely easy to find the prepared meal delivery service that best suits your lifestyle. Whether you’re vegan or vegetarian, have specific dietary-restrictions, or just overall too busy to spend time planning and cooking every week, we are going to go through why prepared meal delivery services are a great place to start.

Benefits of Using Prepared Meal Kits

  • Eliminates food waste We’ve all been in a position where we run into some form of food waste, especially if you grocery shop regularly. Even if you carefully plan out your meals, you always seem to end up with extra produce that ends up in garbage at the end of the week. Premade meal delivery services allow you to completely eliminate food waste from your budget. Instead of wasting money, the pre-packaged and portioned recipes ensure that you won’t have leftover ingredients going bad in your fridge.
  • Simplifies healthy eating Depending on the grocery store, you may be spending a lot more money choosing top-quality ingredients. Our prepared meal delivery services provide the best ingredients available. Most premade services offer organic and non-GMO meats, seafood, and produce. If you’re looking to eat high-quality ingredients while also remaining sustainable, it can cost you. With a prepared meal delivery service, you can simply select the meals and enjoy organic ingredients. Since organic typically means a premium price tag at the store, you can save and enjoy the convenience of a meal delivery service.
  • Saves time If you’re operating on a tight schedule, ordering through a prepared meal delivery service will save you a ton of time and frustration. Premade meals are delivered to your door oven, or even grill-ready. Premade meals also allow you to eat the kind of meals you want since you are in complete control of choosing the meals you order each week and when you want them delivered. You actually end up spending less time shopping and cooking. In addition to this, all of our prepared meal delivery services send meals that are already prepped, either fresh or frozen, which ends up saving you even more time.
  • Saves money Arguably the most obvious way that choosing a prepared meal delivery service can save you money is by allowing you to stay home instead of dining out. It’s no secret that the expense of eating out quickly adds up. Prepared and premade meal delivery services give you the ability to choose how many meals you want for that week in order to fit your schedule. If you find yourself dining out several times a week, then a premade meal delivery service can offer you significant savings. We can guarantee you won’t find it challenging to stay in when the premade meals offered by our top services provide meal selections that taste as good or even better than your favorite restaurants.

Choosing a Prepared Meal Delivery Service That Best Suits You

Choosing the right meal prep delivery service can seem a bit overwhelming at first, which is why we’ve spent hours identifying unique options that each service provides. In order to get started, you’ll want to identify the type of food you’re looking for, what diet-restrictions you want to follow, and how much money you’re looking to spend or save each week.

Once you have this information, you can always refer to our reviews so that you can make an informed decision that suits you best. The best part? All of the premade meal delivery services that we've picked have flexible subscriptions allowing you to skip or cancel anytime! With the vast amount of prepared meal delivery services and recipes available, we can guarantee you will find the best choice for you or your family.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Prepared meal delivery services can significantly cut down on your nightly dinner routine. To prepare a dinner traditionally, you’d have to drive to the store, pick and choose each ingredient, prep the ingredients, cook, and then clean up. With prepared meal delivery services, you simply heat the pre-prepared dish in the oven or microwave, eat, and throw away or recycle the trash.
There are a lot of great new meal delivery options available in the market, with each meal service putting their unique twist on an otherwise tried and true model. If you are looking to maximize convenience, you should consider prepared meal plans such as Factor or Tempo, with meals ready to eat in just 3 minutes. If you enjoy cooking but are tired of food waste and grocery shopping, you should consider meal kits such as Home Chef or Hello Fresh, where you can cook recipes from carefully packed, fresh ingredients within 30 minutes. Most services are accommodating, but meal delivery services aren't made equal when it comes to dietary restrictions. Green Chef and Purple Carrot stand out with the widest range of keto, vegan, and organic options. Other factors you will want to consider include cost per serving, delivery fees, cancellation policy, and menu size and flexibility.
There is a tremendous amount of customization you can make to the meal plans available in the market, which creates an almost endless number of options to choose from. The first decision you will need to make is whether you prefer a meal kit plan, where you cook with fresh ingredients, or a prepared meal plan, where your meal prep starts with a partially or fully cooked meal. The next factor you will want to consider is the diet type, with common options including meat, seafood, vegetarian, keto, gluten-free, and more. After you have chosen your meal plan and diet, your plan will be customized based on the number of mouths to feed, the number of meals you want per week, shipping dates, and more.
Prepared meals come in pre-packaged, individual servings that can be popped into the oven or microwave for a quick meal. Meal kits come with pre-measured ingredients and recipe instructions that are simple to follow. In both cases, your meals will be shipped in a well packaged box with an ice pack to keep ingredients fresh until they make it into your fridge.
Meal kits will provide you with pre-measured ingredients that you can quickly cook into a fresh meal. Ingredients will come in individually packaged bags or containers and a recipe card with detailed cooking instructions. Most meal kit recipes can be cooked from start to finish in 30 minutes. On the other hand, prepared meal delivery services will have done some, or all, of the prep work for you to make your cooking as efficient as possible. Some prepared meals can be cooked in the microwave and some will require a few minutes in the oven or stove. In any case, prepared meals are generally ready to eat in less than 5 minutes. Whether you choose a meal kit or a prepared meal, you can expect chef-inspired dishes made with fresh ingredients.