Skip to content   Skip to footer navigation 

Meal delivery services compared: HelloFresh, Marley Spoon, Youfoodz, The Dinner Ladies and more

We review popular meal delivery services for ease of ordering, freshness, recipe accuracy and more.

a_box_of_produce_and_plated_up_meals_in_bowls
Last updated: 17 October 2024

Sometimes doing the grocery shopping and cooking meals from scratch just isn't an option. You might be juggling work and study, at home with a new baby, recovering from an illness or simply time-poor. Maybe you're sick of trying to decide what's for dinner week in and week out. Or perhaps cooking just isn't your thing.

You could settle for eating toast or takeaways, but an increasingly popular alternative is to use a meal delivery service. So which one is best?

Which meal delivery service is best?

Our testers ordered and cooked meals from Dinnerly, Everyplate, HelloFresh, Make-out Meals, Marley Spoon, Pepper Leaf and QuiteLike. They also ordered prepared meals from Chefgood, Gourmet Dinner Service, Nourish'd, Providoor, Soulara, The Dinner Ladies, THR1VE, and Youfoodz. 

We rated the services for ease of ordering, presentation and temperature on delivery, ingredient freshness, recipe accuracy, taste and appearance and more. 

Prices are the how much we paid for meal plans at the time of writing. For meal kits we purchased a family box which included three meals for four people. For prepared meals we purchased seven meals. Delivery is included in the price, however, discounts applied at checkout are not included in the price. 

It's worth keeping an eye out for promotional price reductions and discount vouchers as they can offer significant savings, at least for your first order.

Food box delivery services

Prepared meal delivery services

What we found

Fiona Mair, CHOICE home economist and one of our testers, found a lot to recommend in the meal delivery services we tested.

"Meal kit services like HelloFresh and QuiteLike are predominantly marketed to time-poor families. But if you have limited cooking skills and want to eat home-cooked food, they can also be a great way to learn how to cook," Fiona says.

135A0227

CHOICE home economist Fiona Mair testing a recipe.

She found that the recipes are generally simple and relatively easy to follow, the ingredients are already portioned, there's usually a utensil or tool list of what you need in your kitchen, plus a list of the pantry staples you'll need. 

"After a month of preparing a few meals from a meal delivery service you'll have a repertoire of recipes under your belt that will give you confidence to shop and cook for yourself. You'll also become familiar with flavours and cuisines that you may not have tried before," she adds. 

When it comes to prepared meal delivery services like YouFoodz and Soulara Fiona says, "these are convenient for people who are time poor and not so interested in cooking a meal". 

You're usually receiving single-serve prepared meals that only require heating in the microwave. You can even make a large order which will help to reduce the price and stockpile them in the freezer for later use.

Food box vs prepared meal delivery services: What's the difference?

There are essentially two types of meal delivery services: 

  • food box (meal kit) delivery services and 
  • prepared meal delivery services. 

To help you decide which would suit you best, we've prepared a general user guide, along with some tips and traps, for each type. 

This information is based on the experience Fiona Mair had when testing the services.

Food box delivery services – a user guide

Benefits

  • minimal food waste
  • easy to follow recipes
  • ingredients local and pre-measured

If you enjoy cooking but meal planning gives you a headache, you're lacking inspiration and sick of always cooking the same boring staples, or you find it hard to make time for the weekly shop, then food box delivery services such as HelloFresh, Marley Spoon, Dinnerly, Pepper Leaf and QuiteLike can be a good option. Each week these subscription services deliver recipes and the precise quantity of the predominantly fresh ingredients you'll need to cook them.

There's minimal food waste associated with these types of services, as you're being supplied with the exact quantities of ingredients required for each recipe. This is particularly beneficial with ingredients you're unlikely to use frequently. For example, if a recipe calls for a pinch of paprika, that's what you'll get in the box. You don't need to buy a whole bottle that you're unlikely to use again. 

Marley spoon_9405

Portioned ingredients for two Marley Spoon recipes.

The recipes are put together to be simple and easy to follow, and obviously cooking with pre-measured ingredients means you can turn the meal around in less time than if you were starting from scratch. Many of these services also aim to use locally sourced Australian ingredients.

Tips and traps

  • When using these types of services you'll need to have a range of everyday ingredients which frequently feature in the recipes. These include pantry staples such as soy sauce, white vinegar, salt and pepper, honey, oil, butter, milk, eggs, flour and sugar – so it's worth checking you have them before your first delivery so you're not caught short.
HELLO FRESH pork veg bolHello Fresh penne pine nuts135A0341

Leftover packaging from one HelloFresh meal we cooked.

  • When signing up to these services, some companies will collect personal information upfront before you can even view what's on offer. Take Dinnerly for example, you can only view menu choices once you've entered all your details including credit card information. In other cases only a minimum amount of details are needed initially and card details are only required once meals are selected. 
  • Subscription-based services usually have pre-selected meals they have chosen for you. If you want to customise your order you'll need to remember to delete the pre-selection meals otherwise you could find yourself being charged for them. 
  • The amount of packaging (each pre-measured ingredient comes in its own bag or container) can be a deterrent. 
  • Choosing a delivery window where you're likely to be home to collect it soon after delivery is important to ensuring food stays within the safe temperature range.

Prepared meal delivery services – a user guide

Benefits:

  • Minimal preparation required
  • Can stockpile meals and keep in the freezer for future use

Services such as Youfoodz, The Dinner Ladies, Soulara, Providoor and Nourish'd sell predominantly fully prepared meals. Ordering is simply a matter of choosing from the range of meals displayed on their websites, and the chilled or frozen meals will arrive at your door in a coolbox on your nominated delivery date.

Tips and traps

  • The meals from some of these services focus predominantly on the protein component, with nary a vegetable in sight. They suggest you add a salad or vegetable side dish – and usually offer these to buy – but this will obviously bump up the total cost. This is worth bearing in mind when comparing meal prices. 
  • Some of these services offer a good selection of freshly prepared, chilled meals, while others sell predominantly frozen meals. If this difference is important to you, make sure you're clear on what they're offering before you order. 
  • The meals on offer are usually "wet meals" like braised meats, curries, pasta, stir fry, rice and stews that are usually covered in a sauce of gravy. This is so the food doesn't dry out when heated in the microwave and so each component can heat as evenly as possible. 
  • Fiona says, "these types of meals that are soft with minimal texture are foods you could quickly become sick of. You may not want to be eating them week on week". 
  • Other services like Providoor and The Dinner Ladies still provide ready-made meals but they are frozen and have options to serve 1–4 people. In some cases these meals aren't complete and you may need to finish them off with pantry staples like pasta or rice and may want to add a salad or vegetables to complete the meal. Heating instructions may require an oven, cooktop or microwave but these options allow for a variety of textures which in some cases lead to better flavour.

How costs compare to supermarket prices

Food boxes

In the past we've compared the price of a HelloFresh box with the equivalent ingredients needed to make the recipes from Coles and Woolworths. 

We found you don't actually pay much less at a supermarket, and sometimes you pay more once you factor in delivery costs if you're ordering online. 

But in reality when doing your weekly shop you're more likely to take advantage of special offers or buy larger packs which are better value for money – a 1kg tub of Farmers Union Greek Style natural yoghurt (65c per 100g) rather than a 240g tub ($1.29 per 100g), for example. And as long as you end up using the leftover ingredients before they reach their use-by or best-before dates and need to be discarded, then it's cheaper to do the shopping yourself. 

Prepared meals 

Some services like Youfoodz and Soulara are available to purchase in select supermarkets. If you can find them in the supermarket you'll be taking away the delivery cost which is added to any online orders. 

Are meal delivery services suitable for kids?

If you're planning on using a meal delivery service to feed a family that includes young kids you might want to proceed with caution. Meals aren't always guaranteed to win over a fussy toddler. 

What about delivery services marketed for weight loss?

Weight loss is a key motivation for many people that want to use a meal delivery service, including popular services like Lite n' Easy, Eat Fit Food, Muscle Meals Direct and Dietlicious (sister company to Gourmet Dinner Service). 

Does Lite n' Easy help you lose weight? See our Lite n' Easy review for the low-down, and read our journalist's experience of a week on a Lite n' Easy diet.

We care about accuracy. See something that's not quite right in this article? Let us know or read more about fact-checking at CHOICE.

Stock images: Getty, unless otherwise stated.