Preparing a meal from scratch can make you feel like a superhero of sorts. However, cooking your favorite meals can also become monotonous and time consuming, especially if you are busy with other family duties.
You can get some great recipes online to switch things up, but making new recipes week after week can take up a lot of time searching on Pinterest or cookbooks, while also requiring more time at the grocery store as you check and double-check your list.
This is why family size meal kits make the most sense for busy parents.
Below I’ve collected a variety services that allow you to customize your meal kits to account for small, to medium-sized family. If you’ve got five or six grown kids, sorry. Costco is the way to go, otherwise you’re going to spend $100 or more per meal using a meal kit!
Sunbasket is currently my favorite option for families. Why? They simply offer the best tasting food in my opinion. But of course, opinions vary, and you might have to try a couple of services to find out what your kids & family like best.
The cheapest option is going to be Platejoy (shown below), but it’s not a “meal kit” per se. Rather, Platejoy creates recipes for you, then does your online shopping and delivers groceries to your door.
Because you aren’t paying for the standard meal kit experience, you pay less overall. You still get the fun of new recipes every week, and the time-saving aspect of having food delivered though, so this is a great option for someone on a budget. They also have extensive meal plans for anyone with food allergies or specific dietary requirements.
Some of the kits below let you toggle “servings”, while some let you toggle “number of persons”. It may take a couple weeks of delivery to get the portions perfect, but you can always save extra for leftovers, or supplement with a dessert until you get it just right. Let’s get started!
For many young professionals and couples, this awesome new idea has made their cooking life a lot easier. Delivering two to three servings of vegetables and meat with a delicious recipe attached means you can cut back on shopping time and recipe searching duties.
But there’s rarely enough for an entire family to eat. Feeding two hungry adults and a couple of kids takes more than one small pack of ground beef and a few broccoli sprigs.
The fact is, most of these meal kits only enough for two to three people eating small portions! Luckily, some services have begun to offer family sized meals, catering to three to six people. Many also have options for specific dietary needs like egg-free, gluten free, dairy free, paleo, and more.
Family Size Meal Kits
Green Chef
Green Chef is a USDA organic certified meal kit delivery service and is the first to receive gluten-free certification. They deliver fresh pre-portioned, healthy natural ingredients to your doorstep every week.
They have one of the most extensive varieties of meal plans available, outpacing most competitors. Green Chef’s plans include gluten free, keto, vegetarian, vegan, Mediterranean, and fast & fit. As such, they cater to most diet types, along with many meal preferences.
The delivery service offers generous portions that should fill you and your family up. The meals are easy to prepare and take between just 30 and 40 minutes to make. They also chop and dice ingredients for you and even mix sauces, saving a lot of time and effort.
I know this from experience too. You can see more details in my review of Green Chef. But, in general, this is one of the more appealing services. The main disadvantage is that they do have a lot of packaging. Still, much of the packaging can be reused or recycled, which cuts down on waste.
The amount you pay varies depending on the total number of servings per week. For example, three meals for two people averages to $13.49 per serving, while four meals for six people averages to $11.99 instead. To cancel the subscription or change your order, you need seven days’ notice.
The presence of both four-person and six-person meal plans is particularly impressive. Most services stop at four people and mightn’t contain enough food for a large family.
The meals themselves are a good balance of complex and simple. For example, one option is tandoori chicken. The flavor is one that many kids would find appealing, although there are adult-focused ingredients as well (including almond-raisin quinoa). The assumption is that both adults and kids will be eating the same meals.
Martha & Marley Spoon
When you hear Martha Stewart, you most likely think, of the fantastic cook. Martha has recently teamed up with Marley Spoon meal kit service to ensure you can cook just like her. The food delivery service brings you fresh and sustainably sourced ingredients for Martha-inspired meals. Their offerings include grass-fed beef, Berkshire pork, American-caught shrimp as well as artisanal cheeses. They also cater to carnivore, vegetarian and gluten-free diets.
Unlike most other prepped ingredients delivery services, Marley Spoon is also available in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Australia. However, they do not deliver all over said counties and even in the US. You will need to confirm from their website whether they ship to your area.
They have two plans: a two-person box and a family box. Both boxes allow you to choose from two to six servings per week. You can also plan your meals up to five weeks in advance and have up to five days to review your order once you make it. The company is very green and has minimal packaging. They even offer tips on how to recycle each packaging item.
The minimum you can order is four servings. For the two-person box, you will pay $65.95 for two meals, $95.91 for four, and $125.87 for six. The family box contains four servings per dinner. For $95.91 you get two meals a week. You will part with $155.83 and $220.55 for four and six meals a week, respectively.
The service also uses tags to help people pick the best meals. This includes tags for meals that are dairy-free, spicy, gluten-free, require less than 30 minutes, and also those that are kid-friendly. That last option is powerful. It helps make sure you get meals the kids will actually eat. Meals that require less than 30 minutes of work are also perfect for busy families.
PlateJoy
PlateJoy is a service designed to save you money, energy, and time. They aren’t a “kit” like the ones above. Instead, the company uses your preferences to create a customized meal plan for you and your family.
To do so, they use 50 data points to work out the best meals for you specifically. This includes considering whether you want kid-friendly options and whether you tend to batch cook. PlateJoy also offers free dietary advice from a professional nutritionist.
However, the service is also a little different. They generate a list of groceries and a couple of grocery stores near you (via Instacart) with different offers. The meals are customized to include ingredients, portions, cooking and prepping time allowances within your range. As such, it functions as a digital pantry and is more complex than the other services.
The pricing of every element varies depending on the number of adults and children you are serving and the estimated portion per person. They offer small, regular, and large options for every meal, making it perfect for families.
There are two packages on offer, either a semi-annual or an annual subscription. The semi-annual subscription goes for $69 (about $11.50 per month) while the yearly service goes for $99 (about $8.25 per month). The pricing is because you are still paying for the ingredients in a separate step.
What are some of its downsides? Unlike most meal-kit services, PlateJoy does not provide prepared ingredients. The service also only offers the ingredients available on Instacart in 31 US states. But, if you don’t mind this step, the style does make things easier.
After all, you can also purchase whatever ingredient you want from whatever grocery store, within your desired budget without any limitation and have it delivered to your doorstep. You also have more options to tailor the ingredients, which may be appealing.
Good Eggs
This company started out in San Francisco and expanded its market to other parts of the United States. A plummeting profit almost led to their shut down in 2015, due to the expansion to various states. Today, it stands out as a leading meal-kit delivery service.
The Good Eggs website oozes an aura of professionalism at first glance. You can find your way around this online market and make your order in a jiffy. Good news!! You can order anything; you don’t have to order an entire package. Their services are available in most Bay Area Zip codes from 10 am to 9 pm every day of the week. Just place your order by 1 pm, and it will be at your doorstep on the same day. There is now nationwide delivery as well, allowing you to get some of the company’s kits regardless of where you live.
They have a variety of delicious meals to choose from. Some are sold individually (often giving you three servings per meal), while others are sold as part of a collection of meal kits.
The kits aren’t specifically designed for families or for kids, which means that you’re getting adult-focused food. Still, some of the dishes will work well for kids. You do get to see the meals in the kit before you order, so you’ll know whether a kit is right for you. There is even a selection of 15-minute pizzas.
Beyond this, you can explore their market for different types of produce and even go for bulk options such as the family brunch with fish. They offer generous portions as well. Your order comes in a sturdy cardboard box that is partitioned into sections and kept cool for a few hours with the help of ice packs. The service gets consistently good reviews and is a very flexible option.
HelloFresh
HelloFresh started when two friends were having a conversation about meals and busy lives. They concluded that life hassles have made it difficult to eat healthy meals and thus HelloFresh came into being. This meal kit service picks fresh and wholesome ingredients out, pre-portions them, and ships them to your home. You will still enjoy cooking but without having to go to the grocery stores.
The company now offers six distinct plans, based on meal style. These include: Veggie, Meat & Veggies, Fit & Wholesome, Quick & Easy, Family Friendly, and Pescatarian. The plans are used to prioritize the recipes that HelloFresh shows you and you can choose just one of them or multiple.
However, regardless of your plan, you can still see all the available meals each week and choose your favorites. It’s also possible to swap sides and proteins to create a better match.
Though the food is delicious, the recipes are fairly basic and unsurprising for meals stated to be prepared by chefs. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Simpler recipes are often good for novice cooks and families with picky children. This is also a relatively inexpensive service, which may be another reason to consider it. I tried this service myself, so you can see more details in my full HelloFresh review.
HelloFresh plans cater for two or four people and can give you anywhere from two to six meals each week.
HelloFresh currently offers around 30 meals each week and you can choose which ones you receive. The price is based on the number of people and meals in your plan, rather than the specific meals. You’re normally paying between $9.29 and $9.79 per serving, although the price can get down to $8.99 and up to $12.49 for some plans.
Sunbasket
Sunbasket has a strong focus on healthy meals. It allows you to specify many preferences, including the type of diet you follow (like paleo, gluten free, carb conscious, etc.) and other specifications (like whether you want high protein meals, high fiber, and what ingredients you want to avoid).
Then you choose the number of people you’ll be serving (two or four) and the number of meals per week (two, three, four, or five).
According to the company, quality is at the heart of all their ingredients. You also get to choose all of the recipes. This makes it easy to find meals that your kids will actually eat. ]
The downside to this family plan is that it feeds four. If you are a family of three, you can refrigerate what remains to consume later. But, there are no options for larger families. You can also find out more details about precisely what you get in my Sunbasket review. In that post, I talk about my personal experiences with the meal kit service, including the parts that I enjoyed and the parts that I didn’t.
The price is influenced by the specific meals you choose. This can be as low as $10.99 per serving, but some meals cost more than $15 per serving. Most are somewhere between $12 and $13, plus delivery. This is a little bit high but at least, the dreaded question ‘what are we having for dinner’ becomes unnecessary.
Blue Apron
Blue Apron must be the most famous meal kit service out there. With the amount of advertising they’ve been doing, that’s not surprising. The company is easy to use and offers delicious meals. Following their recipes isn’t any problem at all, as the instructions are clear.
When ordering, you start by stating your preferences, like Chef Favorites, Wellness, Fast & Easy, or Family Friendly. These are used to determine which meals the company recommends for you.
There are two plans to choose from – a two-person and a family plan. The family plan is designed to serve four people. It offers two, three, or four recipes each week for between $7.99 and $9.49 per serving, depending on the number of meals you order. Shipping is free in each case.
Once you have checked out, you are able to choose what meals you want. These are based on the weekly menu – and there is a limited selection for family meals (thankfully this has expanded since I last tried Blue Apron). The limited selection may be completely fine if you don’t have picky eaters. But, if your family members have strong preferences, the selection may simply be too limited.
This is also a service that I reviewed myself. I’ve even gone back to them multiple times, which says something about the quality of their food. Blue Apron still isn’t my favorite meal kit service but it is a decent one – and a good place to begin. My main issue was that some of their meals were boring, similar to things that I could make myself.
There is also very little customization. You can select the meals but that’s really it. The main specialty diet options are for vegetarian or ‘wellness’ meals and they’re only available for the two-person meal plan, not the family one.
Gobble
The biggest thing that makes Gobble stand out is the ease of cooking. Meal kit companies are all over the place when it comes to time. Some are simple and easy. Others require multiple steps and some fairly complex cooking processes. With Gobble, all meals take 15 minutes (or less!) to prepare.
They really do too. I tried Gobble out for myself and wrote a review on it. I found the meals truly were easy and fast. I personally love cooking, so the style felt a little bit like cheating to me. In all honesty, I’d rather go for meals that are more complex and take a bit more work. But, it’s easy to see how Gobble would be appealing if you’re short on time.
Gobble is extremely relevant for families because you can add on more servings – all the way up to 12 servings per meal. Most of the other kits on this list only support a family of four. But many people do have larger families.
Besides, the meals are all very fast to prepare. That’s always a good thing with a family. Cooking dinner is often the last thing on your mind when you get home – and I’ve seen some meal kits take close to an hour to put together.
Another feature is kid-friendly meals. This includes options like baked mac and cheese, which would be perfect in many situations. You could even choose to order a kit for the adults and another for the kids. After all, they only take 15 minutes to prepare.
Ordering is simple enough and you do get to choose your meals each week. There are only two plans, and each gives you three full dinners each week. One plan is for two people, the other for four. The meals average out at between $11.99 and $16.99 per serving, depending on your choices. Of course, the total price will change depending on whether you add any extra servings, snacks, or desserts.
Home Chef
Home Chef is a solid choice for families because they don’t venture too far into “cultural” foods that a lot of kids don’t like. While other services travel around the world and have you make things from Africa, Asia, and all the spice that come along with that, Home Chef pretty much sticks to familiar favorites.
That being said, they aren’t boring! I really enjoyed their meals like pork chops with pine nut compound butter with kale and parmesan or shrimp lo mein.
The smallest setting they have for meals is two meals per week for two people, but you can expand it up to six meals for six people! That’s a pretty large food delivery, so it’s perfect for bigger families or families with big appetites.
At about $10 per portion, it’s right in the middle-range for prices, and you won’t get much of a discount for ordering in bulk. This company would be great for a healthy-living-style adult who wants to meal prep for a couple of days in the week, or for someone with kids who aren’t terribly adventurous but like more than just plain spaghetti.
EveryPlate
EveryPlate offers incredible dinners for as little as $4.99 per serving. So unlike other meal kits which can get really pricy sometimes, EveryPlate makes it affordable for everyone. Since everything comes pre-portioned you practically save money by only getting what you exactly need. You also save time because they make sure their dishes are simple, doable, and will take no time to prepare.
They have a flexible meal kit subscription service, you can skip a week or cancel your subscription up to five days before your next delivery is scheduled. Their four-person plan costs $71.88 for three meals a week, which averages to $5.99 per serving. At four meals per week, the average is $5.49 instead and for five or six meals, the average is $4.99. There’s also a fixed weekly shipping fee of $8.99. This plan actually has adult sized portions that can be enough for a family of five.
Nutritional information for the meals are provided in estimates per serving. Since they purchase ingredients from several different suppliers, nutritional details may vary slightly. They also provide allergen information on the recipe detail page as well as on information cards in the actually delivery package. Unfortunately because their priority is to keep prices low, they don’t cater yet for special diets like keto, gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan, paleo, or low carb.
EveryPlate offers a range of 16 diverse and delicious recipes every week. Meal comes with easy-to-follow instructions for filling, classic, and home-style recipes. All the ingredients are carefully packed and insulated to ensure freshness. They teamed up with nationally recognizes suppliers to ensure only quality ingredients are delivered to your doosteps.
EveryPlate has quite a reputation with over 8,500 positive reviews on their Facebook page and with an average of 4.4-star rating out of 5.
Purple Carrot
Purple Carrot is a plant-based meal kit service that is geared specifically toward the vegan community. They offer breakfast, lunch, dinner, and packaged snacks.
There are no set menu plans. Instead, you choose the specific meals you want, either as two-serving or four-serving meals. However, the selection isn’t huge, often just giving you six different four-serving meals to choose from each week.
Their meals on average, contain 500-800 calories per serving and include complex carbohydrates from vegetables, seeds, legumes, nuts, and fruits, and healthy fats and ingredients like tofu. Nutritional details for each meal is readily available on their menu page.
Purple Carrot’s four-person plan costs $88 for two dinners per week (first week discounted price is $68) or $132 for three dinners per week (first week discounted price is $112).
There is no membership fee and you’re free to cancel any time. Upon completion of signing up for a subscription, you’ll receive automatic weekly Purple Carrot deliveries. You can skip any deliveries that you’re not too keen on receiving, or add an Extra to your weekly order after checkout.
As to meal planning, if you’re feeling adventurous or experimental just leave it to their culinary team. They will curate meal plans each week composed of new and flavorful dishes but then again, you can always choose your meals. Just make edits to an upcoming order before 11:59 PM EST Tuesdays, the week prior to your next shipment. You can choose recipes according to cuisine, ingredients, dietary needs, or dish type.
It’s even possible to order a custom box with some meal kits and some pre-prepared meals. Doing so gives you even more flexibility than normal.
Delivery from Purple Carrot is always free and most of their packaging is recyclable. They even provide information on how to recycle their packing materials. Meals are packed and protected in an insulated box equipped with non-toxic ice packs to ensure quality and fresh ingredients – they recommend cooking the meals within three to five days upon receipt for optimal freshness.
Dinnerly
Dinnerly ensures that more people who enjoy homemade cooking but still want to stick within a budget afford meal-kit services. It’s perfect for busy individuals or homemakers because they have simple, fast recipes with only a few ingredients per dish. They also have an app for both iOS and Android available through iOS App Store or Play Store. I actually did a review about this meal kit delivery service here.
Each week, they offer 16 different dishes that include vegetarian, dairy-free, low carb, and healthy options. They put up the menus four weeks in advance so you can plan ahead what you want to have or if by any chance you would like to skip a week. As for breakfasts, lunches, and desserts, the recipes aren’t available every week. Although during special occasions like Mother’s Day or Thanksgiving, for instance, they do offer brunch and desserts.
From $4.99 per adult-sized serving, Dinnerly meals is truly affordable. Their subscription is very flexible allowing you to skip any week or pause subscription if you wish to.
There are also plenty of options for subscription length and size. You can choose between a two-person and a four-person box, then select anywhere from two to six meals each week. The four-person version averages $8.63 per portion when you order two meals per week and $5.50 per portion when you order six meals per week.
There is also the option to make your box vegetarian at no extra cost.
Dinnerly uses the same quality ingredients as the other meal kits but to make it more affordable for the average consumers, they take the simpler approach. They use simple packaging, digital recipe cards, and fewer ingredients per dish. They also opt-out on fancy marketing campaigns. They have an Ingredient Hub, where they list all the recipes and the ingredients with the allergens and specification as well as to what else do the facility it was made from has.
Dinnerly is up for earth-friendly choices, their boxes, as well as the separator inside the box, are SFI certified which means that they are made of paper sourced from sustainably managed forests. Bottles and containers are made of recyclable plastics. They are available for deliveries nationwide covering 93% of the US population.
Hungryroot
Hungryroot is not exactly a ‘meal kit service’ but a personalized grocery service that helps you eat healthy easily. By telling them a bit about yourself, they can then deliver you healthy groceries with chef-designed recipes. By taking the quiz, they will learn more about your goals, how many people you’re feeding, any dietary needs you may have, and what you like to eat for dinner. They will then create a grocery plan and fill your cart with suggested groceries along with recipes that fit your needs. You can either take their suggestions or choose from their more than 100 top-rated products.
Their team of food sourcing and personalization experts looks for the most nutritious options available out there. They believe that health is personal and in addition to that, all the food they carry is free of partially hydrogenated oils, artificial sweeteners, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial colors, and artificial preservatives.
Their meal plans start at $65. However, the prices vary dramatically depending on the number of people you’re feeding, the number of meals per week, and the specific ingredients that are included. Thankfully, there’s plenty of flexibility, making it easy to tweak the box as needed. You can also include breakfast, lunches, snacks, and sweets in the box, rather than just focusing on dinner. It’s a great plan for families, as you can go up to eight servings per recipe.
The delivery fee for plan sizes that are less than $70 is $6.99 but it’s absolutely free for plan sizes that are more than $70. Their shipping materials are recyclable. The box, paper cooler, and food protector can be recycled with your cardboard and paper materials, while the Enviro Ice can be used for plant food when diluted in water.
Hungryroot is great for busy people who find grocery shopping and meal planning a super time-consuming task yet they enjoy cooking and would love to eat more healthily. They make it easy and hassle-free to restock your fridge every week and feed you with really great recipes that will make cooking and dining even more exciting.
These family meal kits can be really fun to experiment with. They’re a great way to spend time with the family, and begin teaching your children a useful life skill. No matter who you are or where you live, you have to eat. Knowing how to cook delicious meals for yourself is something they’ll be able to enjoy for the rest of their life.
This is also a great way to ease them into the idea of taking over responsibilities at home! Being responsible for cooking one meal per week from their favorite meal kit program could be fun for them, and free up some of your time.
What Are The Largest Meal Kits?
Most of the companies on this list only go up to four servings per week. However, these are typically adult servings, so you might be able to feed five people if you have young kids in the family.
The main exception is Home Chef, which provides meals for up to six people per week. There’s also Hungryroot. While this isn’t a traditional meal kit service, it does go up to an impressive eight servings per recipe.
Are There Any Other Options?
Contact The Company Directly
If the company you’re interested in doesn’t have exactly the right plan, why not contact them? Some may be willing to create custom plans or may have extra options that they don’t advertise. One commenter on this post mentioned being able to do so with the now-defunct Plated. Other companies may have similar flexibility.
Double Up
Four or even six servings per meal mightn’t be enough if you have a large family or a couple of hungry teenagers. One way around this is to use a service that lets you choose your recipes – then double up on some meals.
For example, HelloFresh allows you to order up to six meals per week for either two or four people. You could easily order two kits each of three different meals per week. If you were on the four-person plan, this would give you enough food for eight people.
If the company doesn’t allow you to double up like this, you might need two separate memberships instead. But, again, try reaching out to the company before doing so. They may have some ways to make the process easier.
Buy Kits From A Store
Some local stores also offer meal kits. It would be easy to double up on these kits – simply by grabbing two of each type rather than one. There might even sometimes be larger meal kits than the ones featured on this list.
Try Another Type Of Service
Meal kit services tend to focus on small families, so why not try a different type of service instead? A meal planning service like Platejoy can work well. After all, companies who aren’t prepping and shipping ingredients themselves have much more flexibility in their plans. You could also look for services that ship out spice mixes and recipes, then allow you to do the rest yourself (like Spice Madam). The recipes these provide can often easily be expanded to feed a large family.
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I need one that caters for 6 ppl 2 adults and 4 extra hungry teenagers
Home Chef can expand to up to six people! Get $30 off here.
No idea if you’ll see this, but after years of looking, we finally discovered home chef. They let you do any multiple of two servings. We used to do hello fresh, and it worked fine when our younger two kids would only eat 1-2 a serving. But now that they are older, we really needed 6 servings of everything, and home chef allows that.
Same here, for 6 people. Seems like the only family plans I see are for 2 adults and 2 kids.
Home Chef can expand to up to six people! Get $30 off here.
Home Chef is super expensive. I can buy groceries for cheaper than what they offer. It would be awesome if it wasn’t almost $230 a week foe a family of 6, and that’s only for 4 nights of meals.
Yeah, all meal kits are quite expensive compared to groceries, especially if you are cooking for six. Meal kits are more about saving time, and less about saving money.
I spoke with Plated they said they can customize for 6 people, if you contact them directly after signing up. It’s something they do on a case by case basis.
Nice!
I have four adults and a teenager (in other words 5) plated is the only service I found To work – I would order 3 servings and a separate account of 2 servings. Sadly they are shutting down their deliverY after thanksgiving so searching for something else. A plan that offers 2 servings and 3 servings. Any ideas?
Wow. Didn’t know Plated was calling it quits.
I really like Platejoy for the most expandable meals, but they aren’t a traditional meal kit service. Otherwise, Sun Basket is my top choice. They have lots of add-ons you can do.
I haven’t seen a thing for a family of 3 on any of the websites. Is there such a setup?
Thank you for this very relevant info! It helps my husband and I, who now have an empty nest and want to stay on task and eat well.
Our extended family is taking a longer vacation out of town this summer and we’re looking for some healthy meal solutions that also save space for everyone. Your research will really come in handy! Kind regards and cheers to you from the ATL 🙂