YOUR OWN HOME COOKING RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX
Meal-Kit Services Send You Everything You Need for a Meal
by SANETTE TANAKA
PlateJoy’s Thai steak salad with strip steak, cilantro, honey, sesame seed oil, fish sauce, tamari soy sauce, shredded cabbage, lime, bean sprouts and cashews. F. Martin Ramin/The Wall Street Journal, Styling by Anne Cardenas
Imagine having fresh meals delivered to your door on a weekly basis—but you have to cook it. Meal-kit delivery services send you everything you need for a meal, from the recipe to all of its ingredients measured out.
A number of services that aim to take the shopping hassle out of home-cooked meals have gained momentum in the past year. HelloFresh, based in Berlin and New York, and Blue Apron in New York, each raised $50 million in funding this year.
We tried four meal-kit delivery services to satisfy our craving for home cooking. Some required a weekly subscription, while others allowed us to select individual plates.
All of the services included step-by-step recipes. Three services delivered meal boxes with premeasured ingredients in insulated liners and ice packs, while San Francisco-based PlateJoy sent a paper bag of groceries directly from Whole Foods Market.WFM +0.05% We provided a few pantry items, like olive oil and salt.
Each week, the services offer several new recipes to choose from. The menu choices are primarily based on Western cuisine with little international fare. Some of the companies deliver on only certain days and times, so plan accordingly.
PlateJoy
Delivery area: 10 metro areas
Price: $89 (now $79 under latest pricing model) for three meals for two people. Subscriptions not required; minimum order is $59.
The dish we tried: Thai steak salad
What we liked: Customers can choose any combination of meals, including breakfasts, lunches and snacks.
What we disliked: PlateJoy requires a stocked pantry. We didn’t have honey, almond butter, Thai fish sauce or coconut oil, and had to order them separately from the service.
Of the services, PlateJoy is the most personalized. You can specify detailed dietary preferences such as “paleo,” “gluten free” and “clean eating,” or without gluten, dairy, high acid or soy products, and order half-portions for children.
But PlateJoy was the most expensive service we tried. One reason for that: Because the ingredients come from local grocers, such as Whole Foods Market, and aren’t measured out, you are buying more than the recipe requires. Co-Founder Christina Bognet says the company wants to minimize waste and cut costs by eliminating all of the packaging used to send premeasured ingredients. PlateJoy tracks what customers order and adjusts their next shipment accordingly, she says. “There’s no need to send you oregano every time you order if you already have it,” she says.
Unlike the other three services, the recipe cards were bare-bones, with no cooking tips or timing suggestions. The Thai steak salad took 20 minutes to put together.
Blue Apron’s pan-roasted chicken thighs. The ingredients, clockwise from left: tomato, white miso paste, sherry vinegar; butter; Aleppo pepper, honey, baby fennel, baby zebra eggplants, lemon and chicken thighs. F. Martin Ramin/The Wall Street Journal, Styling by Anne Cardenas
Blue Apron
Delivery area: 39 states and the District of Columbia
Price: $60 for three meals for two people in a weekly subscription
The dish we tried: Pan-roasted chicken thighs with roasted baby zebra eggplants
What we liked: Blue Apron posts all of its recipes free of charge on its site.
What we disliked: The pan-roasted chicken thighs took us close to an hour to prepare and required quite a bit of cleanup.
Customers can enter some dietary preferences—whether they are vegetarian or whether they eat beef, poultry, fish, lamb, pork or shellfish.
The chicken thighs recipe from Michael Anthony, executive chef of Gramercy Tavern in New York, was labor-intensive, but the tastiest dish we tried. There were interesting ingredients like baby zebra eggplants, fennel, Aleppo pepper and miso.
Blue Apron Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Matt Salzberg acknowledged this recipe is “a bit more involved” than Blue Apron’s average recipe, which takes about 35 minutes to complete. Mr. Salzberg says Blue Apron arranged months in advance to have the zebra eggplants grown specifically for that recipe. “You probably wouldn’t be able to buy that in a grocery store,” he adds.
Plated’s Potato-Crusted Pollock with Roasted Corn and Watermelon Salad. The ingredients, clockwise from top left: potato flakes, watermelon, fingerling potatoes, parsley, pollock fillet, corn and jalapeño pepper. F. Martin Ramin/The Wall Street Journal, Styling by Anne Cardenas
Plated
Delivery area: 46 states
Price: $60 for two meals for two people. Minimum order is four meals; subscribers save 20% off meals.
The dishes we tried: Potato-crusted pollock with roasted corn and watermelon salad and roast-beef-style meatballs
What we liked: Both meals took only 35 minutes to prepare, but small touches, like a dollop of horseradish and mayonnaise on the meatballs, kicked the flavor up a notch.
What we disliked: The meatballs came with a prepackaged mix of five spices and the recipe didn’t specify how much of each spice was needed, making it difficult to later re-create the dish on our own.
Plated chefs create seven dishes weekly—four meat or fish dishes and three vegetarian dishes—that users can order.
Each recipe online featured large photos, estimated cooking times, lists of necessary pantry items and cooking tools, and the name of the chef who created the dish.
The food was tasty, but not as creative as some of the other services’ dishes.
As for the mystery meatball spices, Nick Taranto, co-founder of New York-based Plated, says they wanted to keep the recipe simple. “If customers write in, we’re happy to provide details,” Mr. Taranto says.
HelloFresh’s shrimp with farro. Ingredients clockwise from top left: shrimp, garlic, shallot, Dijon mustard, green beans, farro, lemon, basil and grape tomatoes. F. Martin Ramin/The Wall Street Journal, Styling by Anne Cardenas
HelloFresh
Delivery area: 37 states in the U.S.; as well as most of Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Australia.
Price: $69 for three Classic Box (omnivore) meals for two people in a weekly subscription. Veggie boxes cost $59 a week.
The dish we tried: Shrimp and farro bowl with lemon-Dijon mustard vinaigrette.
What we liked: The garlic and onion came peeled, making them easy to chop.
What we disliked: HelloFresh only offers two categories of meals—a Classic (omnivore) Box and a Veggie Box for vegetarians.
The ingredients for the shrimp and farro bowl were exceptionally fresh and high quality.
HelloFresh says it sources its food from select purveyors and local vendors, and bases its recipes around what’s fresh and in season.
“If the corn crop is running a few weeks late, we’ll delay the recipe,” co-Founder Hamish Shephard says.
MEAL KITS
