What’s the Difference with these Meal Planning Services?

Remember the “Beautiful Before”? Before you had kids you’d attempt a filet mignon with a side of seared asparagus and some individual sized lava cakes. You’d walk the isles of the grocery store and read labels and take time to ponder if you wanted to buy that jar of mango tomatillo salsa. You’d willingly hit up your local grocery store, then Whole Foods and maybe the Farmers Market after that.

Then you had kids.

Now your kids only want tater tots and pepperoni pizza without the pepperoni. No. Not cheese pizza. Pepperoni pizza without the pepperoni. Or endless nights of the ol’ “Breakfast for Dinner!” Swap that your kids love but you’re really just doing because your completely exhausted.

Friends, we can’t get back to that beautiful time of cooking but this time as the “Beautiful Now!”
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‍Enter Meal Planning

Thankfully in the 21st century you have loads of options to be creative with how you eat your food. There are so many ways for you to create a great meal plan for your family that is creative, colorful and healthy. It really just depends on how much energy, time and money you have to put into it.

‍As with everything we do here at Honeydew Goods, we only want to promote habits, ideas and products that are good for the planet, doesn’t compromise the things you love (mostly), and are feasible to do at least 50% of the time.

‍So each option we’ll be looking at will have this Sustainable Healthy Diet element to it. This means we’re not only looking at healhty food, but how what you buy impacts the planet and your own health in the long term. To learn more about what a Sustainable Healthy Diet is check out our recent post.

Here are some great things to consider as you tackle the Meal Planning life:

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- What is your weekly/monthly BUDGET you are willing to spend on food?
- What is the QUALITY of food you expect to buy (organic vs. Conventional)?
- How much WORK do you want to do yourself?

Meal Planning is something we’ll never shut up about because of how pivotal it is to your entire well being. We talk about the FIVE life saving reasons to start Meal Planning in this entry. Take a look...it includes saving over $3500 a year….sooooo….do it.

Ok. Onward.


With these three things in mind let’s compare Meal Delivery services, Meal Planning services, and DIY Planning Meals options.
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‍Meal Delivery Services:

Companies like GreenChef, HomeChef, Dinnerly, and BlueApron send you a big ol’ box of food with instructions on how to prepare them. You go onto their site weekly and choose your menu. You can choose how many meals you want them to supplement a week and that determines your overall cost.

There are several benefits to meal delivery services. You choose from a menu of curated options, choose the amount of servings you’ll need and then they package everything you’ll need up other than your basic cooking essentials like oil and baking sheets, and send it to you with instructions on how to cook and assemble everything.

If you’ve never cooked a day in your life and want to learn some basic skills this is a pretty great, albeit expensive, way to do that. You’ll be guaranteed fresh produce and proteins and you can even choose between different dietary needs. I have found that GreenChef has the most sustainable options with Keto, Paleo and Gluten Free menus as their whole business rather than an option like many of the other meal delivery services.

While the Meal Delivery Services world has increased three fold over the last few years and is becoming increasingly popular, there are a lot of drawbacks to these services.

For one, none of these options are meant to be used as your daily meals. They are generally a 4 day supplement to your week. Assume that you will still need to prepare additional meals, or budget in going out to eat the other days. They also send you food based on serving sizes and portion control therefore you won’t have that many left overs. For those of us working from home this is a bit of a hindrance. You will still have to buy breakfast, lunch and snacks options for the week.

After doing some basic math, at the very cheapest level you’ll be spending about $575 a month on 4 meals a week for 4 people in your home. If you’re also having to supplement breakfast, lunch, snacks and three other dinner meals a week, assume that your grocery budget will be around $1200 a month.*

If you're wanting more sustainable meals that are organic expect that price tag to go up considerably.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather travel more than spend that much money on food for my family each month. And it’s actually possible to shave that down quite a bit and still eat healthy, filling meals that will carry your family throughout the whole week.

‍Summary of Meal Delivery Services:

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• BUDGET: For a family of 4 expect to have a monthly grocery bill of around $1200 in order to cover all the meals your family will need for the month.
• QUALITY: You have a large variety of options that range from typical conventional services to ones that give you certified organic and sustainably raised options. Expect this to affect your bottom line. You’ll also always have fresh food because they are supplying it, and you have no need to purchase it on your own….other than for your other meals.
• WORK: The curated meal plans shouldn’t take you too long to assemble. They give you the option to choose between meals based on the time it takes to cook them. Understand that they are just making the actual meals you are buying easier to assemble. You will still need to supplement meals on your own.
  

My analysis is that these options are great if you don’t have any financial limitations and don’t have a lot of time on your hands to make meals. I don’t find this to be a terribly sustainable option for growing families with young, growing kids who eat loads of food. You’ll find yourself at the grocery store more than you expected.
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Meal Planning Services:

A quick search on Pinterest will show you that there are just as many options in this arena like PrepDish,  Emeals, and Custom Keto Diet. So let’s talk about the similarities first. All of the Meal Planning options will give you a menu - some will be through an app so you can pick a menu just like the ones for the Meal Delivery Services but instead of sending you all the ingredients, they tell you what you need to shop for in order to make that meal. Then they’ll walk you through how to cook each item.

So instead of having to come up with what you’re going to be feeding your family, they do all that work for you and you just have to buy the ingredients and put them all together. Companies like PrepDish give you several different types of menus to choose from like Keto, Paleo and Gluten free. They also let you add on a breakfast and lunch menu for a small additional monthly price.

PrepDish is the only one I have come across that actually goes a step beyond all of that. They not only give you the menu for four meals a week, a breakfast and a salad and a dessert for each week, but they also then break it down for you in how to prep everything all during one big chunk of time so that you don’t have to think of it again for the rest of the week.

The benefit to this is that, while you may need to dedicate about 2 hours to prepping your meals for the week, you are eliminating the cooking time on each individual day because all you have to do is grab the assembled items you prepped before and cook them.

The other added benefit to these types of options is that while they give you the shopping list for the serving size they’ve set, you can easily double the recipe if you want so that you have leftovers easily and reduce your total cost of groceries for the week.

Summary of Mail Planning Services:

• BUDGET: These will be considerably cheaper than a Meal Delivery Service because you are paying just for the information, but none of the products. Your monthly cost will range from $10 -$15. Yup that’s it. You’re paying for their curated menu and shopping lists, but no products because you’re having to assemble everything yourself. Understand that you are paying for a service. So while you’ll still have to do your grocery shopping, you won’t be as compelled to impulse shop and you’ll know exactly what you need to buy. You will still have to consider what you’ll be feeding your family for breakfast but this is usually something easy to repeat each day. It is quite easy to stay on a weekly grocery budget of $150-200 with these options. This makes your monthly cost with groceries for everything you’ll need roughly $600-800.
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• QUALITY: This is all up to you. While you get to choose the type of menu you’re using, the quality of ingredients is up to you. You can easily lessen your grocery budget by choosing lower quality foods or shopping at lower cost stores like Aldi. If you’re not able to buy organic meats and vegetables this month, that’s ok! You can still get what you need for those recipes but reduce your bill quite a bit. If you’re just beginning to investigate how your body is affected by organic and sustainably raised foods versus conventional it’s a great idea to stick to the clean 15 and dirty dozen rule.  

• ‍WORK: Yup, these will take more time. If you’re getting one that gives you a menu of options but day of prep, consider that it will take you about 30-45 minutes a day to wash, chop, cook and assemble your meals. If you choose a true planning service that also gives you the instructions for prepping your meals all in one day, you can expect to spend about 2 hours on your prep day and than about 10-15 minutes on the other days to actual cooking and serve the meals. One other BIG thing I love about PrepDish is that you are given a monthly order shopping list for Thrive Market/Pantry Items and Meat and Protein orders for companies like ButcherBox so you can save money by buying your monthly meat and pantry needs ahead of time. This reduces your weekly grocery budget. (Our handy dandy Pantry Inventory Sheets are PERFECT for comparing these lists.)
  
  
• As far as environmental sustainability this is probably the best choice. You’re buying groceries based off curated ingredient lists that are helping you make the most of what you have on hand or having you buy ingredients that will go far and can be used for multiple meals.

‍My analysis is that for those of us who have no time to actually compile our own menu and need some help with the creativity, the list making of groceries and how to actually make the items in a timely manner, these are the best way to go. My favorite of all the Meal Planning services is PrepDish and I have used it for a good three years now. They are the most customizable and give you step by step instructions on the prep day. This option has actually given me back a lot of time with my kids on the weekdays.
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DIY Planning Meals:

This is pretty straight forward my friends. You like to make your own plan, you want to have more control on the actual meals you all are eating because of your own preferences and therefore you do your research for the week and plan out your menu. This option definitely takes a load more time, but you’ll get the most food diversity of any of the options. Your best resources will be Pinterest and Yummly for recipes that can fit any type of dietary restrictions.

I love Pinterest for the creativity you can get from other people who are sharing their own menus. It doesn’t become a bit of a loud space and you have to be prepared to read A LOT of blogs. But you can get some really great diversity in your menu and try things you never would attempt through a service.

Yummly is one of my favorite places to go when I’m looking for a specific type of meal based on the ingredients I have on hand. They are really just a curating resource where you can put in what you’re looking for, give it any dietary restrictions you have and it’ll compile a whole list for you. You’ll have access to the ingredients and time it takes to prepare the meals. Once you find one you like you’ll be redirected to the original blog or platform that the recipe is actually on. This is a free service and one I land on quite a bit.

The other resource that I LOVE for planning my own meals is an app called AnyList where you can easily copy your whole shopping list in one whole list. You can have it then categorized by different stores you shop at and the recipes it goes with. They even have a plugin you can download so that whenever you’re on a website looking at a recipe you can easily import it into AnyList so you have it at your fingertips all the time and can easily import the ingredients you’ll need to buy into your shopping cart. It’s incredibly intuitive.

‍Summary of DIY Meal Planning:

• BUDGET: This is a free service, no subscriptions to anything unless you want to do the upgrades that Yummly and AnyList have but they are definitely not necessary. This just comes down to your grocery list and what you need. One thing to consider with these options is that unless you’re really well organized with the ingredients you have on hand, you may be potentially buying ingredients that aren’t incredibly common in your pantry and therefore add to your overall costs. You’ll need to be a pretty good planner to make sure that you’re using these additional ingredients (think garam masala paste) in future meal options. I’m not giving a financial parameter here but it really is all up to you. If you’re wanting to stay lower cost then you’ll probably be eating vegetarian. If you’re eating sustainably with organic and thoughtfully raised ingredients, it’ll be more expensive. This is pretty subjective.
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• QUALITY: Again this is all up to you. You’re the maker of your meal plan and the things you’ll want to eat and how you want to buy them. There is a lot more potential for the food here to be a real bummer if you choose to feed your family something that doesn’t wind up working out and hasn’t been compiled in a way that communicates the complexity of the process well. But you also know your family the best and potentially will only be picking foods you know will go over well.
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• ‍WORK: This will obviously take the most work because you’re having to compile all the recipes into one place, decide when to make them and figure out in what order you are making them. You’ll still be able to order your groceries so that isn’t an additional time consuming thing. (You’ll definitely want to use your Pantry Inventory Sheets to keep your costs down.)
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• In regards to environmental sustainability this could actually have a higher impact than meal Planning services because you may be purchasing ingredients that are less common for different types of foods that then go bad over time. You also may over purchase what you need because you don’t scale your recipe well.
  

My analysis is that if you have the time to be creative, compile the recipes you need and place them in order of how you’d like to prepare them and when you’re preparing them, this could be the most cost effective. But it requires some level of creativity.
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Let’s Recap:

If budget is no option, go for a Meal Delivery service like BlueApron where they are sending you everything. Just know that you will still be supplementing Breakfast, Lunch and snacks for your family as well as at least 2 additional dinners. You will be spending the most money in this category but potentially the least amount of effort.

If you’d rather take on a little more of the work in getting everything ready, and you want to save money then Meal Prep Services will be the best option for you. If you choose an option like PrepDish you’ll also be saving lots of time by preparing everything in an orderly, efficient way that is already mapped out for you. You’ll also probably save the most money.

For the creative cooker who just needs a little jolt, the DIY Meal Planning option is obviously the best. You might spend some more money than the other options but you’re in charge of the type of foods your family is eating. You’re best friend will be the option to order your groceries and have them delivered or picked up so that you at least save time on the grocery list.

Ok.

This is loads of information!

What do you do for dinners with your family? 

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‍Want to dig deeper?

1. Check out the different services. You can easily sign up for two weeks free from most of the options and at least give them a go. Give yourself grace to figure this out.
2. Consider your weekly schedule and when you would do the prep for your meals regardless of the service you choose. Would it be best for your week if you just prep everything on one day with minor assembly on the dish day, or would you prefer to have a little bit of quite time each day to prepare your meals while everyone gets their homework done, plays or is otherwise distracted? Is that really a thing?
3. Check out the trusty Pinterest and see if you’re more intrigued by creating your own recipes, or using someone’s curated meal plan and recipe list for a season to see if that works for you.
4. Commit! Commit to one thing for a month and see how it goes. Again...it comes back to the budget. Notice how much you spend, or don’t spend. This will be a huge tell on what you want to keep doing. This is the KEY ingredient to a sustainable healthy diet!
   

BONUS POINTS: I really believe that with whatever you choose, figure out a way to get your kids involved in the process. Having little hands help you chop things can be super stressful for sure, but letting them handle the things they are later going to be eating is one of the best ways to teach them about how food affects their bodies and matters for their whole lives. If you let them help you, your giving them some incredible tools for their future!

Check out our post on what a Healthy Sustainable Diet is to understand why it’s worth investing some time in analyzing how and where you get your food and it’s impact on the planet.

You can also download your FREE set of Pantry Inventory Sheets that include sheets for the Freezer, Fridge and Spice rack as well. This is a great budget saver and helps the super planned momma.

(Check our affiliate disclosure here)

*One of the cheapest Meal Delivery Services starts their meals at 8.99 per serving if you choose no add-on or organic expectations. 8.99 x 4 servings x 4 weeks in a month = 575.36. Assume that breakfast and lunch with a combined cost of about $5 per person per day with an average of 30 days in a month for four people equals $600. That puts your budget at about $1,175.36 without any snacks, dinners out or delicious coffees.