When I get home from work, the last thing I want to do is cook dinner.
Though I carefully plan the next week’s dinner menu each weekend when we do our grocery shopping, I often find it hard to muster up the energy to actually make the meals that involve more prep than boiling a pot of water or heating up a dish in the oven.
So, we frequently end up resorting to pasta, whatever’s in the freezer and takeout. In other words, we sacrifice nutrition for convenience, and end up wasting money on food in the process.
This is why I’ve been intrigued lately by the slew of meal delivery services that have cropped up nationwide in recent years aimed just at people like me. With names like Munchery, Blue Apron, Plated, HelloFresh and Home Chef, these services specialize in delivering healthy, well-balanced chef-quality meals – cooked or uncooked, depending on the service — right to their customers’ homes.
However, these services aren’t cheap, so I set out finding ways to use them for less. In the process, I discovered the five ways to save on meal delivery services that make up today’s hint and that I recently covered at U.S. News Money’s The Frugal Shopper blog.
To be sure, whether these services are worth the money will of course depend on whether you like their food and the limited meal options many have available (so picky eaters, at least some of these services many not be for you).
But if you’re short on time or energy, and have a little wiggle room in your food budget, meal delivery services may at least be worth a try, especially with my five cost-cutting strategies. My five tips include knowing where to find discounts, knowing when to order and using your network to save. You can read more about these five strategies in the full post, 5 Ways to Save on Meal Delivery Services, over at The Frugal Shopper blog, where I’m a contributor.
Have you tried any of these services? Share your experiences, as well as your tips for serving healthy dinners with little prep, below.
Photo: Munchery meals
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[…] Want more information on grocery delivery? If you’re in the Bay Area, check out littlelane’s favorite grocery delivery services. And don’t forget that there are other options for saving time on meal prep, including meal delivery services and meal “ingredient box” delivery. […]