Meal Delivery Services- Are they worth it?

Delivery services such as Blue Apron, HelloFresh, and Amazon send meal kits with all the necessary ingredients and instructions to make a meal that they claim will be fresh, delicious and healthy. However, how much are you willing to pay to get ingredients dropped at your doorstep instead of going to the grocery store.

With wind chills getting into the negative teens this past week in Pittsburgh, I decided not to go out into the cold and tried out Blue Apron. You select two meals ahead of time that you want delivered. I chose shrimp diavolo pasta and chorizo tacos. You get two servings of each, so essentially 4 meals. The price was $9 per serving plus $10 for shipping, so in total it was just shy of $50.

Was it worth the money?

Each meal took about 30-40 mins to make and tasted very good! However, I don't think it was worth that much money. There was nothing really exceptional about the recipes or the ingredients, and while it was good and fun to make it wasn't worth $50. I felt I could have gone to the store and gotten the ingredients myself and made something just as good.

My advise is to take the extra hour and plan the ingredients you need ahead of time for your recipe and head over to the grocery store. Keep the extra money and go out to dinner for something a little better than Blue Apron.