Who doesn’t love a home cooked meal?
Beyond Meat Burgers made at home, photo: Fresh Prep Facebook
While enjoying Vancouver’s excellent restaurant scene is certainly perk of living in the city, sometimes you just want a home cooked meal.
But who has the time?
Sure you can whip up something quick (breakfast for dinner anyone?), but that doesn’t exactly get you or your family excited to dig in. Alternatively, you could put some serious effort into creating something from scratch only to realize that you could have actually saved money by dining out at your favourite neighbourhood spot.
Fortunately, Vancouver is now home to several AWESOME meal kit delivery services that let you prepare incredible family meals for a fraction of the cost and time you’d normally spend when cooking at home. With so many options now available to us, we’ve decided to highlight some of the key differences between Vancouver’s three most popular meal kit delivery services; Fresh Prep, HelloFresh and Goodfood.
Here’s what you need to know.
HelloFresh
Maple Soy Salmon, photo: HelloFresh Facebook
Facebook Review: 4.4 / 5
Whip up tasty meals with simple recipes and pre-measured ingredients every week! With HelloFresh, you can choose from either a Pronto Plan (quick and easy), a Vegetarian Plan (for the omnivores) or a Family Plan. Meals range from $10.83 – $12.33 per serving, and are delivered to you in an insulated cardboard box with ingredients packaged individually. The Berlin-based meal kit delivery service delivers food via FedEx to your home or work.
Goodfood
Goodfood offers a ton of smoothie flavours, which include fruits, vegetables, nut butters and superfoods. Photo: Goodfood Facebook
Facebook Review: 3.8 / 5
Goodfood is a Montreal-based meal kit delivery company that offers customers original recipes and high-quality ingredients. Like most meal kit services, you can choose from a variety of healthy, delicious meals each week, with options that accommodate most dietary preferences. Unique to Goodfood however, is their breakfast menu, which is primarily comprised of ready-to-blend smoothies. Simply dump the pre-measured and prepared natural ingredients into your blender, add your liquid of choice and get blending, you’ll have breakfast within a matter of seconds, for about $5.99 per serving.
Fresh Prep
Beef with Shanghai Noodles, photo: Fresh Prep
Facebook Review: 4.7 / 5
Fresh Prep isn’t only the highest rated of the three, it’s also the only Vancouver-based meal kit delivery service on the market. They also offer a weekly rotating menu of 10 recipes created by chefs and nutritionists. All of Fresh Prep’s meals are designed to go from ingredients to tasty meals in 30 minutes or less, and are made from ingredients that are locally sourced whenever possible— that’s why they’ve got “fresh” right in their name!
Recipes range from comfort food classics to internationally inspired fare, with options available for almost every dietary restriction, satisfying both meat-eaters and vegans. Fresh Prep only uses meat that is free of unnecessary hormones and antibiotics and seafood that is Ocean Wise recommended, making it a great option for anyone that thinks about the quality of their food.
They also offer snacks such as locally made cookies, nitrate free jerky and more through their newly-launched add-ons menu, which offers additional portions of protein, cold-pressed juices and Fresh Prep exclusive products like salads and power balls. This will help get you through busy weeks without relying on those frustrating “I just need one thing” grocery store runs after work.
Korean Style Pork Tacos with Creamy Slaw and Basil, photo: Fresh Prep
Fresh Prep ingredients are chopped and prepped in advance making Fresh Prep a cinch for even the most inexperienced at home chefs. All food is delivered fresh in reusable cooler bags. The company also has a recycling program for all their soft plastics and their own fleet of drivers (most competing brands rely on third-party delivery services such as Canada Post and UPS to complete their orders). With food coming straight from Vancouver, Fresh Prep is able to offer more consistent customer service than other companies currently operating in the city.
Best of all, Fresh Prep wants to offer V.I.A. readers an exclusive deal…
Receive 75% off your first Fresh Prep delivery of a 2-person 2 recipe plan (valued at $36.75) by using code SCVIA19. Visit freshprep.ca/SCVIA19 to get cooking today.
