What’s the cheapest meal kit for your dinner plate?
Meal kits experienced a surge in popularity when the country first went into lockdown two years ago, and for some households they’re still a good option to solve the ‘‘what’s for dinner?’’ question.
We’ve compared the prices of four of New Zealand’s most popular meal kits to see how they stack up.
My Food Bag
My Food Bag also has three other offerings: Bargain Box, Fresh Start, and Made.
It also offers vegetarian, plantbased, gluten-free, and gourmet meals.
The gluten-free plan was the most expensive. For four people over five nights, the meals total $215.99 or $10.80 per plate. For four people and five nights the Bargain Box comes to $149.99 or $7.50 per plate.
Kete Kai
Their slogan is ‘‘so cheap you think Karen in accounting stuffed up, or Mark in marketing is missing a digit’’, which is somewhat true with servings priced at as little as $4.60.
For five meals for four people, the box comes to $105, or $5.25 per serving. If you order for six people, it comes to $140, or $4.67 a serving.
The company also gives $1 from each meal kit donated to the community, and with each meal box ordered another is also given to someone in need.
HelloFresh
HelloFresh offers three boxes – classic, vegetarian, and the family box – and has different recipes including family friendly, caloriesmart and gourmet.
For four recipes to feed four people each time, it came to $143.84, which averaged $8.99 a serving, but a $10 delivery free brought it to $153.84.
Woop Box
Woop is the most expensive meal kit out of the four.
It has five plans to choose from, including vegetarian and glutenfree options.
Its classic box, which includes four meals for four nights, came to $220. Unlike the other meal kits, Woop supplied most of its vegetables and sauces as precooked and ready-made, and required fewer items that you might already have in the pantry, so the cooking time was almost halved compared to My Food Bag and Hello Fresh.
It also focused more on sustainability, with a recycling programme through which customers can return all clean packaging for recycling.