Fall is as good a time as any to get help with one of your biggest weekly chores. These meal delivery deals will help you do it without busting the budget.
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Fall is as good a time as any to get help with one of your biggest weekly chores. These meal delivery deals will help you do it without busting the budget.
David WatskySenior Editor / Home and Kitchen
David lives in Brooklyn where he’s spent more than a decade covering all things edible, including meal kit services, food subscriptions, kitchen tools and cooking tips. David earned his BA from Northeastern and has toiled in nearly every aspect of the food business, including as a line cook in Rhode Island where he once made a steak sandwich for Lamar Odom. Right now he’s likely somewhere stress-testing a blender or tinkering with a toaster. Anything with sesame is his all-time favorite food this week.
A meal delivery service can save you time, help you eat better and even help trim your food budget. Oh, and did I mention they save you time? Meal kits and prepared meal subscriptions are slashing prices for fall, as busy parents consider ways to keep things calm and under control during the busy back-to-school season.
Generally speaking, meal delivery isn’t the splurge it used to be. There are now meal kits as cheap as $6 a serving — even cheaper if you take advantage of a new-subscriber meal subscription deal. Our favorite meal kit service is Blue Apron. You can bag several months of its tasty steak and seafood meal kits for a fraction of the normal cost.
Others, including EveryPlate, HelloFresh, Factor, Mosaic Foods and Daily Harvest, are down as much as 70% as we roll into September. There are also meat delivery services and grocery subscriptions with laughably low sign-up offers to power your family through the busy season.
Don’t even think about paying full price to try a new meal kit service.
Screenshot by David Watsky/CNET
The lowest price we found on meal kits right now is at EveryPlate. This budget-friendly service already offers some of the most affordable meal subscriptions. New customers will get their first box for just $3 per serving when you try its simple meal kits, most of which take less than 25 minutes to cook.
Good Chop has the chops — pork, specifically — along with excellent cuts of beef, organic chicken and a range of seafood options. Good Chop is a subscription meat delivery service with shipments starting at $149 per month for 36 portions of quality meat. You can try it for much cheaper than that.
The deal: Right now they’re offering two free Ribeye steaks per month for one year and $30 off your first box when you redeem the coupon code RFY523. This offer is valid until Sept. 30.
David Watsky/CNET
Omaha Steaks
Omaha Steaks is one of the original meat delivery services. The sprawling site includes premium storage steaks, chops, chicken, fish and loads more. The service also has a bevy of premade sides, desserts including the famous apple tartlet and even breakfast foods to peruse.
The deal: Save 50% sitewide plus an get eight free beef burgers with any order over $159.
Martha Stewart and Marley Spoon
Martha Stewart partnered to create this meal kit service so you can bet the recipes are thoughtful, interesting and tasty. It’s one of the higher-end meal kits with a price tag to match, which is why we recommend trying it at a discount and enjoy weeks of premium meal kits on the cheap.
The deal: Try out Martha’s meal kits and you’ll get $260 off spread across your first five deliveries.
David Watsky/CNET
You won’t see a ton of haute cuisine in EveryPlate’s weekly menu, but there are plenty of satisfying dinners for the cold weather ahead. I tried its pork sloppy joes and the chicken and linguine in a tomato cream sauce. All the meals I made were great, easy to prepare and light on the wallet. Read our EveryPlate review.
The deal: EveryPlate is already our pick as the best meal kit service for families on a budget, but it’s bordering on ridiculously cheap when you sign up now. Depending on the meal plan you choose, you’ll score up to 70% off EveryPlate’s already cheap meal kits when you try them for the first time. That’s rouhgly $3 per serving depending on the plan you choose.
David Watsky/CNET
Daily Harvest sells easy-prep vegan meals, including smoothies, grain bowls, flatbreads and soups. It’s one of the healthier meal delivery services, and it’s affordable, with most meals clocking in under $10 and some, like the pasta and grain bowls, are just $5 a serving. There’s also no subscription necessary if you want to give it a quick test run.
The deal: Save a cool 10% on any order over $100.
Hungryroot
Hungryroot is somewhere between meal kit and grocery delivery services. The quirky food subscription sends healthy foods that can be eaten on their own or spun into recipes via the brand’s gently suggested meal kits. I loved the service when we tested it recently.
The deal: Sign up and get 30% off your first order and a free food gift in each box for life.
ButcherBox
ButcherBox is a meat subscription service specializing in Australian grass-fed beef, although you can also have heritage pork, wild salmon and organic chicken sent in your delivery, depending on the subscription you pick. I did the math and ButcherBox’s premium meat delivery is cheaper than if you were to buy similar high-end cuts at a grocery store.
The deal: Try the meat subscription in September and choose free filet mignons, ribeyes or New York strips ($384 value) in your order for a full year.
Even if you try CookUnity at the discount price for only a week, you’ll be glad you did. My guess is you’ll keep the subscription rolling because this service has some of the best meals we’ve tried. There’s also loads of variety and recipes developed by some big-name chefs.
The deal: Try CookUnity and get 50% off your first week of meals.
For those eating plant-based or looking to add more vegetarian recipes to the weekly menu, Purple Carrot is the one to try. I tried Purple Carrot’s meat-free meal kits, and all the recipes I made were a huge hit, earning it a CNET Editors’ Choice award.
The deal: Try Purple Carrot in September and get a full 50% off across your first box of vegan meal kits.
David Watsky/CNET
HelloFresh has the most options per week of any meal kit service; more than 50 on the standard plan, with lots of substitutions and swaps available. While they can be hit or miss in terms of taste, most are rather tasty and there’s no better service for picky eaters or to accommodate niche diets such as gluten-free, dairy-free and diabetes-friendly. Read our full HelloFresh review here.
The deal: Score 10 free servings spread out across seven deliveries. You’ll also get a free dessert in every box for life.
David Watsky/CNET
It doesn’t get any easier than Factor’s prepared meals: Just heat and eat. Most of Factor’s weekly menu options are healthy and low-carb or low-calorie so you can kick this month off on the right foot.
The deal: Save a total of $135 spread out across your first five boxes of meals when you try the healthy meal service.
Green Chef has some of the best healthy meal kits we’ve tried, using largely organic produce and ethically raised meats. Green Chef is a little more per serving than other meal kits, but you’ll taste it in the final dish. Full review of Green Chef here.
The deal: Save 50% off your first box and 20% off the next seven deliveries.
David Watsky/CNET
Another of our favorite healthy delivery services is ModifyHealth. The company is a great option for those with digestive issues and offers dozens of healthy meals for those keeping to a low-FODMAP, gluten-free, low-carb or heart-friendly diet. The meals are ready to go so you can just heat them and eat them right away, prep-free. Options start at just $10 per serving. Read our full review here.
The deal: Readers who sign up now can get 25% off their first order when they use promo code Thrive25 at checkout.
Brandy Yowell
Gobble is quite similar to the other services, except that many items come already chopped, peeled, marinated and so on — which can save you some prep time. The two meals I received, Yankee pot roast and cacio e pepe, were terrific. Dinner prices are normally a flat $12 per serving, so you do pay a bit extra for that convenience.
The deal: Gobble will send your first six meal kits for $36 total. That’s about as cheap as you’ll find high-end meal kits anywhere. For more, read our Gobble review.
David Watsky/CNET
Dinnerly is one of the cheapest meal delivery services even without a discount code. The quick and easy Meal kit company sends all the fixings for hearty and healthy meals, and the price comes to about $6 per serving for the cheapest plan.
The deal: If you take advantage of Dinnerly’s most popular discount voucher, you’ll get a total of $140 off your first five boxes.
Wild Alaskan Company has a lot of what you’d guess they have: quality Alaskan salmon of the wild variety. You can score bundles of fresh fish delivered to your door at a frequency of your choosing and never be without high-quality seafood. The service starts at $145 a month for 12 6-ounce portions, and there is a rotating menu of add-on specials that includes prawns, red king crab, cold-smoked sockeye salmon and more.
The deal: Save $30 on your first box when you try the seafood subscription. Pause or cancel anytime.
What are the best meal delivery deals?
Make dinner in under 20 minutes with speedy meal kits.
David Watsky/CNET
If it’s the lowest possible cost, EveryPlate, HelloFresh, Purple Carrot and Gobble will send meal kits that are ready to cook, with some clocking in at under $2 per serving. Other popular prepared-meal services such as CookUnity are ready to send premade, ready-to-eat dinners to your doorstep, at per-serving prices that are far cheaper than takeout.
What’s the best meal delivery service?
Cook Unity has some of the best prepared meals of any service we tried.
David Watsky/CNET
I’ve tried most of them and they’re all solid, with differences to consider depending on your budget, diet, taste and kitchen skill level. You can check out CNET’s roundups of the best meal kit delivery services and thebest healthy food delivery services for a more detailed taste. Remember, nearly all of these meal kit companies let you pause or cancel anytime, so the risk and commitment when signing up for a meal kit service is minimal.
Whether you’re looking for ways to eat healthily, learn to cook new recipes or just make fewer trips to the grocery store this fall, a healthy, versatile and budget-friendly meal delivery deal can help you do it on the cheap.
Fresh seafood is an option with most meal kit services.
David Watsky/CNET
These offers were valid at the time of publication, but they can end at any time and may be restricted by geography and other cookie-based conditions in your browser. If you don’t see a deal populate, try in a new window or private browser. In the meantime, if you’ve already tried one or more of these, tell me which ones and what you liked or didn’t like.
My advice: Take advantage of one of these offers (making sure to pause or cancel after, unless you want to continue). You can see which service you like best and get super cheap takeout-style meals for weeks at a time.
Is it easy to cancel a meal kit service?
I restested EveryPlate and it’s still my favorite cheap meal kit service.
David Watsky/CNET
Virtually all of the services we tried allow you to pause or cancel any time just in case you don’t love it, so there’s almost no risk after the deal is up, but you may have to unsubscribe from their email blasts. Most brands just want you to try out the meals and see if you dig them and those brands are willing to make it very easy (and cheap) to do that.
To make things easier, we already tried the top meal kits and meal delivery services so you’ll know exactly what to expect and you can pick the best food delivery deal for you and your tastes.
The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.
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