Meal kit delivery has become more popular, especially over the past year. With so many companies offering something similar, choosing just the right one is challenging.
We compared Home Chef vs Green Chef, looking at all the important details. Here is how the two compare.
About Home Chef and Green Chef
Home Chef and Green Chef are two of a growing number of companies offering meal kit delivery services with pre-portioned ingredients.
You choose the meals you want from a delicious-looking weekly menu, and they package everything you need to create those meals and deliver them to your door with recipe cards.
Both Home Chef and Green Chef want to make it possible for you to enjoy a healthy, fresh, and fast meal that was cooked in your own kitchen.
Home Chef
Pros
- Home Chef is a more personalized meal kit delivery service that asks specific questions about your taste preferences
- A decent variety of meals each week to choose from on the Home Chef menu
- Easy to use filters for some special diets
- Economica, with free shipping on larger orders
Cons
There is a flat-rate shipping fee of $10 if you order less than six meals- Home Chef tends to use more plastic packaging than other meal kit deliveries
- Few options for special dietary needs, including dairy-free, gluten-free, and soy-free meal choices.
Green Chef
Pros
- First USDA-certified organic meal kit delivery service
- Green Chef has a strong focus on organic, non-GMO, sustainable, and ethically sourced ingredients
- Fresh tasting meals with bold flavors make it hard to get bored with Green Chef
- Good variety of plant-based options, which is often seen with standard meal kit services
Cons
Less economical than other meal kit delivery services- Meal selections are confined to the plan you choose
- Fewer weekly meal options
Dietary Options
Home Chef
close close close close close close
Green Chef
Meal kit delivery services are a great way to add variety and simplicity to your life. For the average person eating a typical diet, there is rarely a problem finding delicious, appealing meal options. If you have special dietary needs or are following a specific diet, you want to know that the service you choose has plenty of options for your dietary preferences.
Let’s talk about how Home Chef vs Green Chef stacks up in this category.
Green Chef is highly focused on clean, healthy ingredients. This makes them a perfect choice for anyone who makes clean eating a priority or wants to work toward healthy eating goals. Green Chef offers three different plans for your dietary needs – Balanced Living, Plant-Powered, and Keto & Paleo.
Green Chef will use it in their meal kits if there is an organic option for an ingredient. Green Chef points out that some ingredients, like sea salt, simply can’t be organic. When organic ingredients aren’t possible, they strive to find ingredients with the highest quality and integrity.
Green Chef offers a good selection of dairy-free and gluten-free options, although there is a small risk of dairy cross-contamination in their facility. Of course, with their specialized plans, there are ample plant-based, keto, and paleo options.
Home Chef is also built off the platform of offering fresh, healthy meal kits to their customers. Home Chef is all about infusing healthy meals with incredible flavor, although this doesn’t always translate to abundant menu options if you have special dietary needs. Options are limited if you’re looking for meals that are dairy-free, gluten-free, or vegetarian.
Home Chef does tag each of their meals with allergen info, but there really isn’t an easy way to filter out meals by an allergen. You can note some things in your preferences, which determines what meals Home Chef recommends for you each week.
Like Green Chef, Home Chef also has several categories for their meal plans. You can choose from calorie-conscious, carb-conscious, vegetarian, and meals that take less than 30 minutes to prepare.
Dietary Options Winner
While you’re confined to your meal plan choice with Green Chef, they do an overall better job of catering to special dietary needs. Green Chef was the first meal kit company to receive a gluten-free certification.
Meal Prep & Variety
Home Chef
- 40+
- 2 meals for 2 people
Green Chef
- 6-8 in each plan
- 3 meals for 2 people
Two main advantages to ordering a meal delivery service are that they ideally simplify meal prep and add loads of variety to your weekly meal rotation. Here is how Green Chef and Home Chef stack up.
Home Chef offers 12-15 meal kit options each week on their general menu. There is also a small selection of oven-ready meals that you can just heat & eat, as well as protein packs that al a carte selections of beef, chicken, and seafood that you can either add to your meal kits or use to prepare separate meals.
As mentioned earlier, Home Chef recipes come in four different categories – carb-conscious, calorie-conscious, vegetarian, and under 30-minute meals. Though they have vegetarian meals for a vegetarian diet, there are no vegan meals.
When you filter by each of these categories, you end up with 6-9 choices. Most people would find plenty of variety in these choices, but the choices might get a little monotonous if you’re ordering many meals per week.
One marketing strategy that Home Chef loses points on is their inclusion of “More Available Options” at the bottom of each page when you use the meal category filters. These additional options aren’t aligned with the filtered category and might be confusing to some customers.
For variety, Home Chef does a good job of mixing it up. They feature dishes and flavors that appeal to a wide range of tastes, with a few bolder options thrown in the mix. Most meals from Home Chef take an average of 30 minutes to prepare, with a few taking just a bit longer or less time. Ingredients are packaged so that minimum prep is required.
With Green Chef, your choices are confined to the plan (Balanced Living, Plant-Powered, Keto & Paleo), with each category featuring about nine meal selections. Unlike Home Chef, Green Chef does offer vegan meals on each weekly menu.
Keep in mind, there is some overlap in dishes between the meal plans, but once you choose a plan, you’re confined to the meals in that plan unless you switch.
Green Chef does an above-average job of infusing each menu with flavor and a variety of choices. There are meals featuring combinations of ingredients you might not have put together on your own, along with traditional American favorites that everyone is familiar with.
Like Home Chef, most Green Chef meals can be on the table in about 30 minutes, with a few exceptions.
Fresh ingredients are included in your meal kit. Most produce arrives intact, not prechopped, to maintain freshness. Other non-perishable ingredients are preportioned for easy meal preparation.
Menu Winner
Both Home Chef and Green Chef offer a good variety of meals. Home Chef wins in this category mostly because they don’t confine your weekly meal selections to a specific plan. They also offer slightly more options overall, along with oven-ready meals and protein packs.
Ingredients
Home Chef
close close close close
- Non-GMO
grass Organic- Grass Fed
- Wild-Caught
Green Chef
Most meal kit delivery services understand that the quality of their ingredients is key.
Green Chef stands out with the distinction of being the first meal kit service to be recognized as USDA-certified organic. All of their ingredients are also non-GMO, which, combined with their stance on organic produce and ingredients, puts them leaps and bounds ahead of many other services.
Green Chef is also committed to things like ethical sourcing of the ingredients used in their meal kits, sustainability, and animal welfare. This is great, but how does it translate into the quality and freshness of their meal kits? Overall, Green Chef customers are very pleased with what they find when they open their box and taste the final result.
Home Chef’s menu also prioritizes using the freshest, high-quality ingredients, but they have less of a focus on using organic and non-GMO ingredients.
Some of the ingredients they use are organic, but at this time, they can’t guarantee this for all of their meal kits. Instead, Home Chef focuses on sourcing the highest quality ingredients and using chef-designed recipes to maximize your meals’ freshness and taste.
Home Chef has partnered with some other companies that are known for quality. For their vegetarian options, they’ve partnered with Beyond Meat, a company that provides non-GMO, soy-free, and kosher plant-based meat alternatives. This is great for those with dietary restrictions.
Ingredients Winner
Both meal kit delivery services are known for the quality of their ingredients, but the accolades in this department go to Green Chef. A combined commitment to using organic, non-GMO, and ethically sourced ingredients that are also at the peak of their freshness wins then the extra points in this category.
Taste & Sample Meals
Home Chef Meals
- Rosemary Crusted Steak and Red Wine Demi
- Scallops and Parmesan-Garlic Risotto
- Honey-Ginger Chicken Katsu
Green Chef Meals
- Sweet Chili Chicken Thighs
- Sage Pesto Baked Cod
- Cherry BBQ Pork Meatloves
Home Chef is known for the well-liked taste of their meals. Their menu is filled with meal options that are both familiar and unique, as well as being appealing to most people, including picky eaters. Home Chef meals are loved by families who are always trying to find dishes that everyone will enjoy.
An example is their Goat Cheese and Lemon Buttered Sirloin Steak. A steak, paired with mashed potatoes and broccoli, is pretty standard fare and something with wide appeal. The addition of the tangy cheese and lemon butter adds a completely new element without being over-the-top unusual.
Two of the vegetarian dishes include delicious meals such as Green Vegetable Medley Tortellini and a Cowboy Poblano Cheddar Impossible Burger.
Home Chef tries their best to make sure you’re going to order meal kits that you’ll truly enjoy. They ask targeted questions about meal and ingredient preferences, so they can recommend meals you’ll love. This also saves you time from having to shift through their entire menu.
Green Chef is similar to Home Chef in that their meals have broad appeal. A Cheesy Chicken Enchilada Skillet is going to be well-liked at many family dinner tables, while dishes like the Almond Crusted Barramundi is one of the menu items that will only appeal to those with more adventurous or sophisticated tastes.
Where Green Chef’s recipes stand out is that their meals all look so fresh and flavorful. It’s impossible to find something on their menu that doesn’t look like it would just be bursting with flavor.
Taste Winner
Home Chef asks the right kind of questions to guarantee that you’ll choose meals you’ll love. This is especially helpful if you’re trying Home Chef for the first time and aren’t yet sure what to expect. The wide range of meal options and creative use of ingredients sets them apart.
Pricing
Home Chef
RECIPES | 2 PEOPLE (Price Per Serving) | 4 PEOPLE (Price Per Serving) | 6 PEOPLE (Price Per Serving) |
2 | $11.99 | $9.99 | $9.99 |
3 | $9.99 | $9.99 | $9.99 |
4 | $9.99 | $9.99 | $9.99 |
5 | $9.99 | $9.99 | $9.99 |
6 | $9.99 | $9.99 | $9.99 |
Green Chef
MEALS PER WEEK | 2 PEOPLE | 4 PEOPLE | 6 PEOPLE |
2 Meals | N/A | $12.99 | NA |
3 Meals | $13.49 | $12.49 | $11.99 |
4 Meals | $12.99 | $11.99 | $11.99 |
What you’ll likely find when comparing meal kit delivery services is that pricing is sometimes difficult to pin down. Many of these companies have a tiered pricing system based on the plan you choose or the number of meals purchased.
For instance, plans that have four servings for three meals a week are going to be less expensive per serving than two servings for three meals a week. There’s also shipping to consider.
The average price of a Home Chef meal is around $9.95. Some meals, like those in their culinary collection, cost more. Currently, Home Chef states that their meals start as low as $6.99 per servingIf you’re able to take advantage of this deal, Home Chef becomes one of the more economical meal delivery services out there.
Shipping costs for Home Chef are dependent on how many meals you order. Shipping is free when you order at least six meals from Home Chef.
The regular price of Green Chef’s meals ranges from $9.99-$12.99 per meal. Their Plant-Powered meal plan is the most economical, with their Keto & Paleo plan costing the most per serving. Green Chef is known for offering some serious discounts, in some cases bringing the cost of each meal down to $5.99
Shipping for Green Chef is a flat rate of $8.99 per box, except for times when they have special promotions for free shipping.
Pricing Winner
Overall, the price of Home Chefs meals is slightly more affordable than those from Green Chef. Granted, with Green Chef, you are paying a bit more for organic, non-GMO ingredients, which might be worth the small extra cost to you. Home Chef also scores extra points for their free shipping on larger meal kit orders.
Packaging & Recycling
Home Chef
Green Chef
Considering the perishability of meal kits, the packaging is important. It needs to keep everything fresh and at the proper temperature during transit, but you also don’t want to deal with tons of excess packaging afterward.
Green Chef does a good job of minimizing packaging in as many ways as possible. They do use a small amount of plastic packaging for things like spices and sauce packages, but they also take steps as a company to offset their carbon emissions and the effects of any plastic packaging they do use.
Most Green Chef packaging components are recyclable, and they provide an online guide to recycling their packaging materials. Something nice that Green Chef does is to clearly label packaging that contains specific allergens. This is great if you have someone in your house with an allergy and you want to minimize the risk of cross-contamination.
Home Chef also does a good job in using mostly recyclable packaging materials. They also provide a thorough guide on the recyclability of their packaging components and instructions on how to recycle or dispose of each.
Where Home Chef loses points here is that they use more plastic when packaging their meal kits than other meal delivery services.
Paper packaging has become more standard for meal kits, but Home Chef has held onto their plastic packaging components. This makes them less environmentally friendly but also more burdensome when it comes to recycling.
Packaging Winner
Green Chef stands out as one of the best for packaging among all meal delivery services with minimal packaging, less plastic used, and a commitment to offsetting their carbon footprint.
Customer Service
Home Chef
check
play_circle Skip a Weekpause_circle Pausestop_circle Cancel
Green Chef
Customer service is one of those areas that you don’t realize how important it is until you have a problem and actually need to talk to someone.
The most important customer service feature for meal kit delivery customers is the ability to pause, cancel, or change their subscriptions. Both Home Chef and Green Chef excel at both.
Both companies seem eager to help customers with any issues they may have. Both also make it easy to take care of editing and pausing your subscription right from the website.
Customer Service Winner
Both Green Chef and Home Chef offer great customer service, which, to be honest, can be hard to find in the meal kit delivery industry. Since these two were so close in this category, we had to turn to customer reviews to determine a winner. Green Chef earned just the smallest lead with the number of customers who have praised their customer service department.
Winner
Green Chef
In the comparison of Green Chef vs Home Chef, it was almost a dead tie. Both companies are great and provide delicious meal kits to thousands and thousands of customers. Still, we had to choose a winner, and Green Chef barely squeaked out ahead.
Still undecided about which meal kit delivery service is best for you? Here are a few points to consider.
Choose Home Chef if you:
- Like the idea of familiar dishes being reinvented with new flavors
- Like more variety in your weekly meal selections
- Have little or no concern about dietary allergens
- Appreciate that Home Chef is a more economical choice
Choose Green Chef if you:
- Follow a special diet, such as Keto, Paleo, or Plant-Based
- Feel that healthy eating is a priority for
- Love bold, fresh flavors
- Appreciate a company that has such a strong commitment to using organic, non-GMO ingredients and supporting ethics and sustainability
- Don’t mind paying just a bit more for organic meal kits