Most Variety
Winner
Best Meal Kits for Families
Meal delivery services in the UK are a convenience that you want and need in your life. The best meal delivery service can save tons of time, whether it’s time spent creating a meal plan, grocery shopping, or time in the kitchen. It’s often the case that meal delivery services can help you tighten up those healthier eating habits, too.
We’ve taken a close look at the most popular meal delivery services in the UK to find the best. These include booth meal kits and ready-to-eat meals, so there’s something here for everyone – no matter your personal preferences or skill level in the kitchen.
Green Chef
BEST MEAL KIT DELIVERY SERVICE (RECIPE BOX SERVICE)
Green Chef is a leading name in meal delivery services around the globe. They offer high-quality meal delivery kits that focus on the freshness of quality ingredients, numerous healthy diet options, variety, and great taste. Their consistent, great reviews land them a top spot on almost any list of best meal delivery services.
With Green Chef, you choose from one of six different plan options – each focused on specific types of healthy meals. Choose from keto, low-carb, pescatarian, flexitarian, vegetarian, and vegan options. Once you choose your plan, then decide how many meals per week you want and if two or four servings of your favourite meals are best for your household and lifestyle.
There’s a good selection on the Green Chef menu, with a sampling of dishes that include Sri Lanka Inspired Prawn Curry, Pesto Baked Chicken Thighs, Lemon Sea Bass With Saffron Cream Sauce, Vegan Pork Sausage and Mushroom Burger, and Pork Steaks in Sage Brown Butter.
Most meals can be on the table in thirty minutes or less and require minimal culinary skills, although there are a few outliers on the menu.
Key Details
- Fresh ingredients that you craft into home-cooked food
- Six healthy plans to choose from
- Choose to have two, three, four, or five meal kits delivered each week
- Ingredients are fresh, never frozen
- Good variety of meals, most able to be on the table in 30 minutes or less
- Restaurant quality meal delivery kits
- Healthy meals that can help you lose weight – although weight loss is not the focus of Green Chef
- Each meal serves either two or four people – you decide, so there’s less food waste.
Hello Fresh
BEST RECIPE BOXES FOR FAMILIES
Meal services are great, but what happens when you’ve got a table full of picky eaters and several different tastes at the same table? Feeding a family isn’t always easy, but we found Hello Fresh to be one of the best meal delivery services for families just like yours.
Hello Fresh offers recipe boxes that are well-liked by even the pickiest eaters (most meal delivery services don’t offer this), and they even have a specific category of tasty meals that are designated as family-friendly.
To sign up for your plan, choose how many people are at your table – two, three, or four. If you have more than that, there’s a way to add portions by increasing the number of meals per week you receive. The subscription meal plans are flexible, and you’re free to choose from a great variety on the menu.
Other meal plans include mostly meat for the carnivores out there, calorie-smart meals for weight loss, veggie (mostly vegetarian meals and not so much vegan food, but there is a mix), pescatarian, and quick cook (also great for families!).
Samples of meals that your entire family will love include meatball marinara fries, creamy mushroom rigatoni, speedy sausage linguine, and pork and cheesy mash pie.
Key Details
- Recipe box food delivery for the whole family
- Easy to prepare meals, with quick cook options available
- Flexible meal plans & subscriptions
- Good variety
- Several plans for healthy dietary lifestyles
Gousto
BEST VARIETY
We like Gousto for a handful of reasons, but first, let’s talk about the variety. Gousto offers more than fifty different recipe box options each week. Additionally, they offer a ton of filters that make it easy to sort through and find the meals you want with little effort. However, we have to admit that we quite enjoy looking over the entire menu while our mouths water.
We think Gousto qualifies as one of the healthy meal delivery services, with meal boxes that are designed with fresh, healthy food and recipes that require little in terms of culinary skill.
Some meals can even be on the table in about 15 minutes, with zero meal prep, thanks to Gousto’s ability to portion and pack the ingredients with precision. We also like that food waste just doesn’t seem to be a thing with this recipe box service.
For the filters, calorie-controlled, healthy choices, ten-minute meals, plant-based meals, gluten-free options, and dairy-free meals, among others. We wouldn’t say that what Gousto offers is really fitness food, but there’s definitely enough healthy food there that you can make it work for just about any type of healthy dietary lifestyle.
Key Details
- Recipe box meal delivery
- Fast, easy recipes
- More than fifty recipes each week, spanning multiple styles of cuisines and dietary needs
- Some dietary allergies and avoidances are catered to
- Flexible subscription
- Limited kitchen skills needed
Allplants
BEST PLANT-BASED MEAL DELIVERY SERVICE
Of the meal delivery services we’ve looked at, Allplants stands out as the best meal delivery service for those following a plant-based diet. We love that they use non-GMO and mostly organic ingredients and that each of the delicious meals is chef-prepared and nutritionist-approved.
This isn’t vegan junk food by any means – it’s real plant-based, nutritious food that’s free of additives, preservatives, and all the other stuff you don’t want in your food.
The individual meals arrive frozen, which is a shift from what we typically see with plant-based meals. Each chef-prepared, freshly cooked meal is frozen to preserve the flavor and nutritional integrity of the dish. If the idea of a frozen meal turns you off, we suggest at least trying Allplants – there’s no commitment, and if you love them, you can subscribe.
A few samples of the plant-based, ready-made meals include vegan pasta dishes with fresh pasta sauces, protein power Buddha bowls, and sauteed mushroom truffle orzo.
You can choose meals a la carte or opt for one of their specially designed bundles – like the gut health booster bundle or the bumper bundle that includes breakfast and lunch.
Key Details
- Plant-based meal delivery service
- Meals are naturally dairy-free
- Some nut-free and gluten-free meals are available, but they are prepared in a shared facility.
- Choose a la carte meals or bundles
- Subscribe for savings or buy when you want
- Chef-prepared and nutritionist-approved
Après Food Co.
BEST ORGANIC MEAL DELIVERY
Apres Food Co is a vegan, healthy food delivery service that goes above and beyond what it means to offer clean, organic, healthy food to the community. These London-based standards for ingredient sourcing are impeccable.
Each meal is handmade, certified organic, and developed by a functional nutritionist. Pasture-fed meat and sustainable seafood are also on the menu at Apres Food Co.
Customers can choose from a la carte options or choose one of the bundles. The a la carte menu features mains, sides, and desserts (something that a lot of meal delivery services don’t offer). The selection isn’t huge in any category, but the quality is so on point that you don’t need an extensive selection to keep you happy.
For the bundles, there are options like the Get Well Soon Bundle and New Parent Bundle. How wonderful would it be to gift these bundles to someone? There is also a Blissful Sleep Bundle, Stress Relief Bundle, Gut Health, Brain Power, and Weight Management Bundle. They’ve really covered all the bases here.
Key Details
- Apres Food Co offers premade entrees, sides, and desserts that are all organic and responsibly sourced.
- Choose from a la carte items or opt for a pre-selected bundle
- Great for gift-giving
- Meals designed by a functional nutritionist
Fresh Fitness Food
BEST FITNESS MEAL DELIVERY
Fresh Fitness Food wins our vote for best fitness meal delivery, hands down. We’ve all had those healthy frozen meals from the freezer section that only let us down in terms of texture and flavor. It’s no fun to eat for health when it tastes like that! Fresh Fitness Food changes that.
This is real, natural fitness food that has been crafted into delicious meals. This is body food, brain food, muscle food, and mood food. You feel good when you eat it, which is important for any health journey.
This company also offers several healthy plans that can be custom-designed, along with nutritional support. The Build Muscle plan is essentially a low-carb plan that loads up on clean, lean proteins and healthy plant-based foods.
Fat Loss helps you trim calories and manage macro-nutrients, and the General Health plan is great for maintenance and eating healthier overall.
Key Details
- Healthy plans
- Personalized plans help you achieve your healthy goals through good nutrition.
- Good variety on the menu
- While ingredients aren’t organic, they are top-quality
- Never frozen, premade healthy meals
Runner Ups
Chefly
Chefly is a meal delivery service that’s growing in popularity across the UK. They offer meals that support healthy eating with mostly organic ingredients, no preservatives or unnecessary ingredients like refined sugar, and balanced nutrition.
Chefly delivers meals fresh, and each one is fully prepared and ready to heat and eat in three minutes or less. They offer a good selection of nutritionally balanced meals – about thirty each week, so there are lots of healthy ready meals to choose from.
If we had one complaint about Chefly, it would be that they don’t offer much in terms of vegan meals. There are a few on there, but honestly, they feel a little like an afterthought. This is too bad because we really appreciate their commitment to fresh, quality ingredients and would love to see more options that don’t showcase an animal protein as the star of the show.
A few examples of Chefly meals that you can enjoy with zero meal prep include Lamb and Vegetable Tagine, Tandoori Chicken, Steak and Mash, Veggie Satay with Egg Fried Rice, and Spicy Beef.
Customers can choose multiple meals from the menu each week. Plan options include four, six, nine, or twelve meals per week, and you’re free to choose anything on the menu. We also like that they’re not restrictive like other meal delivery services that limit selections based on the plan you choose.
Key Details
- Healthy ready meals can be heated and on the table in three minutes
- Mostly organic ingredients
- Nutritional information is easy to access
- Subscription service with weekly deliveries
- Menu of nearly thirty dishes each week
- Each fresh-cooked meal stays fresh in the refrigerator for about a week
- A limited selection of options for vegans and special diets
FAQs
What is the best meal kit delivery service UK?
It really depends on what you are looking for. If recipe boxes that allow you to cook from scratch with ease are what you’re looking for, then Green Chef is a great choice. The recipes taste great, and the food is fresh and healthy. For ready-made meals, Tastily knocks it out of the park.
u003cstrongu003eDoes the UK have Meals on Wheels?u003c/strongu003e
Meals on Wheels is available in the UK for individuals who meet certain qualifications. Currently, those qualifications are that a person be 55 years of age or older and be living with either dementia, a physical disability, or a learning disability.
Key Takeaways
- Green Chef is a great choice for recipe boxes, while Tastily offers delicious oven-ready meals.
- For variety, Gousto can’t be beaten, and Allplants earns top marks for plant-based delivery.
- Most meal delivery services offer multiple plans to fit your lifestyle
- Always give the menu a good look over to make sure the menu options fit your tastes and preferences
- Hello Fresh is a more affordable meal delivery service if you’re on a tighter budget