Best Organic
Winner
Best for Kid-Friendly Meals
Most meal delivery services offer family-friendly meals with two or four portions, but what are you supposed to do when you have six people sitting around the dinner table? A meal delivery service for family of 6 is the obvious answer, but do these even exist? The answer is that yes, they do, and we found the best ones that offer family meals for those of us who have more seats around the table.
For busy families, meal delivery services are a welcome reprieve. You get to enjoy a delicious meal with the whole family without the stress of meal planning, prep, or hours spent in the kitchen after you’ve already had a long day.
Still, with so many meal delivery services offering single-serve meals or meal kits with two portions, the number of options for larger families is more limited, but they do exist – you just might have to get a little creative in your approach.
We looked at the best family-friendly options and judged them on the portions offered, taste, quality, price, and convenience. Home Chef is the overall winner for reasons we’ll get into, but Green Chef, One Potato, and What a Crock are great options as well.
Put down that extra-long grocery list and see how these meal delivery services for families compare.
Home Chef
Winner
Home Chef is one of the most popular meal kit services, and they win the top spot as the best meal delivery service for families of six. They are one of the few companies out there that offer meal kits with six portions.
This makes Home Chef more economical than other meal kit delivery services, where you have to order extra just to get the right number of portions, and it creates less food waste. This is a win-win in our book.
Home Chef offers family meals that feature flavors even the picky eaters at the table will enjoy.
A few examples of family meal kits include pretzel-crusted chicken with roasted broccoli and honey mustard sauce, chicken tacos, and roasted sirloin with garlic butter and creamy mashed potatoes. These are the types of meals that the entire family will eat with zero complaints.
When signing up, you’ll be asked if you’re cooking for two, four, or six people. The next question is how many meals per week you’re interested in. You can choose any number of meals, from two meals to six meals per week. Three meals are the most popular option, but five meals per week will mean you have an easy dinner with zero meal planning every night of the typical workweek.
They offer a rotating menu of family meal kits, and you can peek ahead to see what’s going to be on the menu in the coming weeks. If you’re like us and like to get meal planning out of the way, planning for a month at a time is a game changer.
The recipes are mostly easy and quick, with most being on the table in about thirty minutes. We also like that the recipe cards give such clear instructions that even the younger family members can get involved in the cooking.
Like many other meal delivery services, the price per serving varies depending on how many meals per week and the number of portions you choose. The price per serving, not taking into consideration that Home Chef often offers a nice discount for new subscribers, starts at just under $10.
Key Benefits
- One of the few meal delivery services that offer meal kits designed for six people
- Budget-friendly price per serving, considering the quality
- You can exclude some ingredients (but most meals aren’t gluten-free or dairy-free)
- Flexible meal plans
- Pre-portioned ingredients and quick cooking times are perfect for busy parents.
Green Chef
BEST ORGANIC
The next best meal delivery service for families is Green Chef. They offer delicious and easy meal kits that feature mostly organic ingredients, plus they have exceptionally high standards when it comes to sourcing ingredients, and this includes working with farmers to support local communities, along with seeking out partners who are equally invested in sustainable and ethical sourcing.
Green Chef also offers meal kits rather than prepared meals, and the focus of their menu is more on healthy meals. Don’t let the word “healthy” cause you to shy away because you have picky eaters at the table that wants nothing to do with healthy foods.
Green Chef has a way of mastering the partnership of nutritious and delicious meals that the whole family will enjoy. Yes, many of their meals even fall into the kid-friendly category.
Green Chef allows you to choose your preference of meal kit categories, and you can choose more than one. These categories include keto, gluten-free, Mediterranean, and fast & fit. The veggie lovers out there will enjoy that they offer both vegetarian and vegan recipes.
When ordering from them, the meal plans allow you to choose how many people you are cooking for — two, four, or six. Then choose if you want two or four meals per week. Compared to Home Chef, Green Chef doesn’t offer as many options with their meal plans but considering that they offer portion sizes for six, we can’t really complain.
The one downside we found is that they’re not the best at working with dietary restrictions that aren’t already on the menu. They offer gluten-free meals and vegan meals that, by nature, exclude several types of ingredients, but they just don’t have the capabilities to cater to special dietary needs beyond that.
Key Benefits
- Nutritious food and delicious recipes are available in six–serving meals
- The weekly menu has many great meal options, plus special add-ons
- The family meal plan, with six servings and four meals, is the most affordable at $11.99 per serving
- Healthy meals without the hassle of grocery shopping with the kids
- Mostly organic ingredients, with a focus on ethics and sustainability
One Potato
BEST FOR KID-FRIENDLY MEALS
Anyone with kids knows that it’s not always easy finding kid-friendly recipes that the rest of the family will also enjoy. For that matter, it’s a challenge to find recipes that all of the kids will eat without complaint. If this is a struggle that you’re tired of dealing with, One Potato is one of the best meal delivery services for families with kids.
One Potato offers meal kits, but the entire menu is designed around being both family and kid-friendly. A few examples of meal kits you’ll find on the menu include Spaghetti Marinara with Herbed Whipped Ricotta and Caesar Salad.
This is a fancy way of saying spaghetti, which is definitely a kid-friendly meal, but it’s elevated in ways that adults and older children or teens will also enjoy. Standards like tacos, pizza, and burgers are also on the menu.
Another reason that One Potato deserves accolades for being the best meal kit service for families with kids is that in addition to their standard portion sizes, they also offer kid-friendly portion sizes and finger foods.
This is great for picky eaters but also generates so much less food waste. Plus, the recipes are simple enough that even small hands can get in on the fun of cooking dinner with the family. When children learn to create meals, they learn to appreciate all the work that goes into them.
Finally, One Potato offers four different meal plans to accommodate your family. Fingerling is the smallest, and then there is the Yukon, Russet, and Yam. The Yam is the largest and accommodates up to two adults, two teens, and two littles. The Yam also works for two adults and six child-sized appetites.
If you need a little less food, the Russet is good for two adults and four smaller children. Most meal kit services don’t offer you these types of options!
Key Benefits
- Some gluten-free options are available
- Finger foods and child-sized portions are available
- Choose to have two or three meals delivered each week
- Good for getting even the youngest children involved with cooking dinner
- Prices start at $11.77 per serving
What a Crock
BEST WINNING CATEGORY
What a Crock isn’t what you might normally think of when considering the best meal delivery services for families, but they offer something different that busy families might enjoy, which is why we give them an honorable mention on this list.
As you might guess by the name, What a Crock is a crockpot-cooking meal delivery service. The meals are a bit of a cross between a meal kit and prepared meals.
The meals are all assembled, and all you have to do is drop them in your crock pot and forget about it until dinner. It doesn’t get much easier than this when cooking for the whole family.
What a Crock offers tasty meals that have a definite comfort food vibe to them. Some examples include Uptown Beef Stew, Grandma’s Homemade Meatballs, Sloppy Joes, and Shrimp Scampi.
Desserts and proteins can also be purchased on their own. What a Crock lets you decide if you want to sign up for a subscription meal plan or just try out their crock pot meal prep without making a commitment.
Now, for the downside of What a Crock. They don’t actually offer meals for six. Each of the tasty meals is designed for one or two people depending on the size of their appetites.
However, because What a Crock doesn’t require a subscription, you’re not limited to the number of meals you can purchase. It’s easy to just order two or three portions of your favorite family-friendly crockpot meal and cook them all at the same time.
Key Benefits
- What a Crock makes putting meals on the table with minimal effort easy
- Comfort-food style dished the entire family will enjoy
- No fussy recipe cards or meal preparation – just dump and go
- For three meals of one to two portions each, prices average out to starting at about $6-$7 per serving
- No subscription required
Buying Guide
Number of Portions
One of the main details we looked at when choosing the contenders for this list was whether the meal delivery service offered the option of six portions for a single meal. With the exception of What a Crock, the answer is yes across the board.
If a meal delivery service doesn’t offer the number of portions you need, get creative and order doubles of your favorite meals. It might also be helpful if the meal delivery service you choose doesn’t require a subscription since ala carte meal delivery typically offers more customization options, including extra perks like letting customers choose delivery date and frequency.
Portion Sizes
It’s never fun to spend a hefty chunk of change on trying a new meal delivery service, only to find out that the portion sizes are way too big for the younger diners at your table or maybe not big enough for the more substantial appetites (teenagers, we’re talking about you).
It’s always smart to ask how many people this meal delivery service feeds and assess whether you really need that many portions – or if you need more.
With every meal kit delivery service on this list, with the exception of One Potato, you’ll receive adult-sized portions. If you’re a family of six with four small children, you likely don’t really need the six-serving meal plan unless you want leftovers.
Kid-Friendly Meals
Before you order anything, take a close look at the menu. Whether it features kid-friendly recipes are the number one clue as to whether it’s one of the best meal delivery services for families.
Keep in mind that “kid-friendly” doesn’t have to equate to bland and boring for adults. Meal delivery services like One Potato, Green Chef, and Home Chef all do a great job of offering dishes that appeal to everyone at the table.
For example, a quinoa veggie stir-fry is healthy and appreciated by adults, but with the right flavors, a child won’t necessarily notice they’re eating something different from their favorite fried rice. Something like Mac & Beef Taco Pockets is a fun and enjoyable take on the typical taco. Sweet potato carrot poppers are a fun and healthy snack food that is also family-friendly.
Ease of Preparation
The best meal delivery services for families are going to ease the burden of putting a delicious and healthy meal on the table. To accomplish this, you need easy, no-fuss preparation – after all, this is why you’re turning to meal delivery services in the first place.
The ideal situation would be to have family-sized, fully prepared meals, but this just isn’t something we see much of in the meal delivery industry. Most prepared meal delivery services offer portions for one person or sometimes two.
This is why the meal kit option is so popular among busy families. It still involves a bit of cooking, but the shopping and prepping have already been taken care of. With most of the meal kit services on this list, meals take about 30 minutes or less from stovetop to table, and even the youngest at your table can lend a hand with the kid-friendly recipes. One Potato is especially good in this area.
FAQs
u003cstrongu003eu003cstrongu003eWhat is the best meal delivery service for large families?u003c/strongu003eu003c/strongu003e
The best meal delivery service for large families is one that offers at least six portions, and customizable meal plans don’t hurt either. Home Chef is a great option for larger families, as is Green Chef. These meal delivery services offer larger meal plans and recipes that appeal to picky eaters of all ages.
u003cstrongu003eWhat is the best meal delivery service for kids?u003c/strongu003e
There are some really great meal delivery services for kids, but One Potato is the best if you want to feed the rest of your family and not just the little ones at the table. One Potato offers meal kits with easy-to-follow recipe cards, plus portion sizes for both kids and adults.
u003cstrongu003eDoes HelloFresh have a family plan?u003c/strongu003e
HelloFresh is one of the top meal delivery services in the country, and they do offer a family plan. However, even though they offer family-friendly recipes and a reasonable cost per serving, the largest meal plan they offer includes four portions. If your family is larger than four people, you would need to double up on the meal kit in order to have enough food.
Key Takeaways
- Meal delivery for larger families should include at least six portions and save you time from meal planning to grocery shopping.
- Home Chef is the best meal delivery service for larger families, followed by Green Chef and One Potato.
- Meal kits are more popular for family-friendly meal delivery than prepared meals.
- What a Crock is a great option with practically zero prep, but you do have to double up to have enough portions.
- Look for meal kits that cater to your family’s special dietary needs, whether it’s low-carb, plant-based, low-calorie, or there are specific food allergies you need to avoid