Best Meal Delivery Services for Families

Blue Apron is my favorite meal delivery subscription overall, and with some of the cheapest bulk pricing of any meal kit service, it gets even better for families.

Blue Apron’s standard menu includes meal kits featuring steak, salmon and shrimp without added costs, whereas most other meal kit services charge for steak and seafood. The original meal kit service sports plenty of kid-friendly meals including cheeseburgers with potato wedges, crispy panko chicken thighs and pork belly ramen noodles. Blue Apron recipes are also some of the tastiest we tried with interesting ingredients, balanced flavors and loads of healthy options.  

Some services such as Home Chef and HelloFresh may have more options per week -- don't worry we have another pick for families with picky eaters -- the quality of food and lower price for a large meal plan ($8 per meal for a 6-serving plan) pushes Blue Apron over the edge as the best meal kit for families in 2024. 

Here's my full review of Blue Apron.

HelloFresh stands out as the best meal kit service for families with picky eaters. Not only are the meals easy and quick with some taking less than 25 minutes to prepare but HelloFresh has a sprawling menu of over 100 recipes and add-ons per week. What's more, those recipes can be tailored to your specific tastes, swapping in chicken for fish or doubling the protein if you have a team of athletes to feed.

Many of HelloFresh’s meals are kid-friendly with options like chicken sausage spaghetti bolognese, Tex-Mex pork meatloaves and crispy parmesan chicken. There are also plenty of vegan and vegetarian options, in case you're trying to stick to meatless Monday or transitioning to a diet with more plant-based food.

HelloFresh also has a full market of add-ons including breakfast items snacks and desserts so you can round out your order and save yourself time grocery shopping in person or online. Most meal plans clock in at $10 per serving but unlike Blue Apron, there isn’t much of a discount for ordering a larger plan.

Home Chef has a sprawling menu of nearly three dozen recipes every week. Many of the service's wholesome meals can be ready in under 20 minutes, with some finished as quickly as 15. There is an entire category of oven-ready meals that need only to be assembled and popped in the oven. On a busy school and work night, having a full dinner on the table with such little effort can make all the difference.

We tested Home Chef three times including several of the oven-ready meals. While not every recipe was a winner, the bulk were good and the speed at which they can be made helps boost Home Chef onto our list of best meal delivery for families.

Home Chef operates much like other meal kit services with a range of plans, most of which clock it at around $10 per serving. You can also make swaps and customizations to meals, making these speedy meal kit services even more family-friendly.

Home Chef even has fully prepared meals (no cooking, just heating) available to add to your order.

Read my full review of Home Chef here.

Mosaic Foods is a fully vegetarian prepared meal delivery service (no cooking required!) -- but trust me, you won't miss the meat. Mosaic delivers plant-based meals in single servings or affordable family-style portions, the latter being a perfect option to feed a crowd with healthy food without breaking the bank.

Mosaic's larger family meals are easily frozen to be thawed out for a quick dinner and include family-friendly options broccoli and cheddar mac, shepherd's pie and eggplant moussaka. There are roughly 10 family meals to choose from and the recipes don't change much from week-to-week. Each one costs $20 and serves four or five, keeping the per-serving cost to about five bucks. 

Single-serving meals are mostly $10 or more but the options are also more plentiful. The healthy prepared meal service offers more than 100 options from smoothies (sourced from Splendid Spoon) to soups, rice bowls, noodle dishes and flatbread pizzas. You can tack on any amount of single meals with your family meals for a stray lunch here or there but I recommend sticking to family-style dishes to keep your family fed with healthy plant-based food for not a lot of dough.

Here's my full review of Mosaic Foods.

If your family digs pasta and rice but you don't love cooking it, stock the freezer with Daily Harvest’s excellent pre-made pasta and rice dishes. They're affordable, completely gluten-free -- including the pasta -- and crafted with superfoods like kale, white beans and lentils.

Daily Harvest rice and pasta meals cost $9.79 per bag. Each is good for two servings but I found them to be more like three. While the recipes are all 100% vegan, you can always add protein yourself such as fish or grilled chicken to round out the meal.

Daily Harvest also offers single-serve smoothies bowls soups and other recipes but these will cost you more like $9 to $12 per meal which might not be the most economical way to feed a large group. Daily Harvest meals come frozen and ready to thaw and eat or save in the freezer for a busy evening.

Read my full review of Daily Harvest here.

If you like the idea of meal kits but don't want to commit to formal recipes every week Hungryroot is the service to pick this hybrid meal kit and grocery delivery subscription sends a weekly supply of meats vegetables cheeses snacks and other items with suggested meal kits to be spun into quick lunches or dinners.

The beauty of Hungryroot is anything you get in your Hungryroot order can be used outside of the meal kits like whole grain wraps, pre-made chicken breast and healthy salad kits. There are also easy breakfast meals like sous vide egg bits and oat bowls to add to your order. 

Hungryroot will curate a list of suggested groceries for you each week but you can always add or remove items that don't work for your week ahead. Hungryroot is affordable too with plans starting at $65 per week. I did the math to see how much Hungryroot costs versus grocery shopping for the same items yourself. The difference was just a few bucks per week but Hungryroot will save you time and energy normally spent on meal planning and grocery shopping -- a major boon for any family.

Hungryroot has some fresh meat and produce but the options are limited so you may need to make a quick trip to the market to get certain items.  

Read my full review of Hungryroot here.

EveryPlate Is the cheapest meal delivery service we tried and their weekly menus are chock-full of kid-friendly recipes every play meal kit meats start at about five bucks per serving making it an affordable way to feed the family. If you're wondering, EveryPlate meal kits cost about the same as buying all the groceries yourself but without the time and hassle.

You won't find as many highbrow recipes on EveryPlate's weekly menu but most of these family-friendly meals take less than 30 minutes to cook. There are also fewer total recipes than services like HelloFresh and Home Chef, but you’ll still find a solid 26 recipes and more than 40 add-ons every week.

EveryPlate meal kits are so easy that you can even get the kids involved and use this user-friendly service to teach basic cooking skills to your young ones.

Read my full EveryPlate review here.