The 7 Best Meal Delivery Services for Families
Updated: Oct. 23, 2023
The last thing that busy parents need is a never-ending grocery list to keep track of. We've found the best meal delivery services for families of all shapes and sizes.
Our editors and experts handpick every product we feature. We may earn a commission from your purchases.
Imagine pulling up at home after a long day and finding a perfectly-portioned dinner right on your front porch. Suddenly the soccer car pool and late Zoom meeting don’t seem so overwhelming because you’re about to have a family meal ready in 30 minutes.
The best meal delivery services for families take away the stress of meal planning, grocery shopping and all the chopping. This leaves more time (and energy!) to gather around the table together.
How to Choose a Meal Delivery Service
Here’s what to consider when choosing a meal kit:
- Price: If a meal subscription kit is going to work for your family, it needs to fit your budget.
- Familiarity: Each subscription kit on our list offers kid-approved recipes with familiar foods and easy flavors.
- Taste: Even though the recipes are kid-friendly, they’re flavorful enough for the adults in the house, too.
- Ingredients: We searched for companies that offer fresh, responsibly sourced ingredients.
- Flexibility: Life happens, especially when you’re responsible for other humans, so each meal kit needs to be flexible. Feel free to pause your subscription, skip a week or cancel at any time.
EveryPlate
If you’re looking for a simple, affordable way to try meal subscription kits, check out EveryPlate. It’s a super-flexible option with simple recipes. Perfect for the new chef, EveryPlate offers classic, vegetarian, family and easy meal plans.
The app is easy to use and allows you to skip weeks or cancel without hassle. The pre-portioned ingredients are always fresh, and the colorful recipe cards make following the recipe easier than ever. And we love that you can add on extra protein like ground beef or chicken breasts to keep on hand for busy nights. Speaking of, have you tried these meat delivery services?
Some family-friendly options from their menu include Cajun chicken sandwiches and loaded baked potato chowder.
Dinnerly
Not sure you can fit a meal kit into your family’s tight budget? Start with Dinnerly. This affordable option is flexible enough for any family and helps you to save money with its pre-portioned, fresh ingredients. (No food waste!)
Dinnerly is able to keep costs low with digital recipe cards and fewer ingredients per recipe.
We’re betting your kids won’t be able to resist popular recipes like Mexican pulled pork tacos and French onion chicken and gnocchi—our Dinnerly review confirms it.
Mosaic Foods
Mosaic Foods is a vegetarian frozen food delivery service making veggie-packed meals the whole family will love. And before you go saying, “I can’t get my kid(s) to eat a single veggie, let alone a veggie-packed meal,” don’t worry, Mosaic’s got you. The beauty of Mosaic’s plant-based meals is their ability to sneak in veggies, so kids don’t even know they’re there.
Taste of Home‘s Associate Shopping Editor, Madi Koetting, tried one of Mosaic’s family casseroles and says, “As a kid at heart, I appreciate Mosaic’s ability to make it taste like I’m not eating a whole plate of veggies.”
Some family meals, like the vegetable pot pie, are more veggie-forward than their pasta options. Yet, there’s still at least four veggies in each meal, so you can feel good about the whole family getting in their daily greens—no fuss required. The best part of all? Meals come ready to bake and serve, so you can spend more time with the kiddos than cooking in the kitchen.
Home Chef
Home Chef offers both meal kits with recipes and premade meals. You can even find their meals in Kroger grocery stores. Home Chef is ideal for the family looking for more variety. They offer new recipes each week!
They also allow you to fully customize your box based on how much you want to spend. Just fill out their questionnaire about your tastes, serving needs and dietary preferences; then you’ll receive personalized menu choices. You can also choose between 30-minute prep, 15-minute prep or ready-to-eat meals.
We love their oven-ready and grill-ready meal kits that go straight to cooking with no chopping or prepping needed. The menu of kid-friendly meals includes recipes like cheddar apple pork meatballs and one-pan southwest-style beef and cornbread skillet.
Yumi
Yumi is a meal delivery service for babies and toddlers. It offers a customized organic menu based on your little one’s stage of development. This super-convenient option introduces 3 to 4 new flavors each week as your child tries new foods and textures.
The custom meal plans are designed by Yumi’s in-house nutritionists and pediatric experts. The ingredients are even sourced from organic farms.
If you have ever made your own baby food, you know how time-consuming it can be. This simple service takes care of all of that chopping, steaming, slicing, boiling and baking. And you can skip a week any time you need.
HelloFresh
HelloFresh offers seriously delicious meals that can be thrown together in 30 minutes. Each meal is tested over 200 times to make sure it’s delicious and easy to prepare. As a former recipe tester for HelloFresh, this writer can attest that the company is tireless when it comes to making sure that chefs of any experience level can easily follow their recipes and create something tasty!
The meal plans are flexible and are easy to cancel or skip. You can even tell them which foods your family (or let’s be honest, your kids) won’t eat to ensure that each meal is a winner.
Some kid-friendly favorites include nacho pork burgers, Mexican street corn pasta and onion crunch chicken. See what one Taste of Home editor thought in her HelloFresh review.
You can also check out these smoothie delivery services to help get your diet on track.
Blue Apron
Blue Apron is one of the original meal kit delivery services. They offer everyday favorites, health-conscious choices and premium dishes for special occasions. The meals all take about 30 minutes to prepare.
Blue Apron has customizable meal plans too, with options like plant-based, WW-approved, diabetes-friendly and carb-conscious. We love that ingredients are responsibly-sourced, too.
Each of their recipes is simple enough for kids to want to try and flavorful enough for the parents to savor each bite. Some customer faves include creamy tomato Fettuccine, sheet pan panko chicken and Italian-style pork meatloaf. (Veggie lovers, learn more about produce delivery services!)
Want more fun product picks and money-saving deals from our shopping experts and Test Kitchen? Sign up for the Stuff We Love newsletter.Â
