How to Decide Which Meal Prep Service is Right For You

Answer these questions FIRST

In a world overwhelmed by food choices we can have delivered to us, it can be tough to decide if having someone else prepare and deliver your food is worth the money. After all, it certainly feels like it’s cheaper to go to the grocery store yourself and then spend some time prepping and cooking, especially since you have control over what you buy and how much you spend.

The devil is in the details, always.

In this post, I’ll answer some of the most common questions and concerns regarding meal prep services, as it’s important that the right person matches the right service, so they get exactly what they need.

After all, it’s an investment on your part and you want it to pay off.

Goals

The first and most important question to answer is “what is your goal”?

Saving time?

Controlling calories?

Hate cooking?

Maybe it’s a combination or all of the above.

For most of The Strong Kitchen’s customers, they want nutritious food that helps them look and feel better as a top priority. It’s like going to the gym, your detailed goals might change but everyone there wants to look and feel better in some regard.

We’ve found most meal prep services fall into one of three categories:

1. Tasty food with a wide variety that saves you from cooking but has no clear nutrition guidelines or calorie control. Essentially this service makes quality food but is not designed to maximize your health. These services often cost the most meal to meal, use higher quality ingredients and focus on making food that simply tastes good. Popular with families and those who possibly need choices for kids, vegetarians and vegans where food sourcing trumps calorie control.
2. Extremely rigid calorie and macronutrient control, usually using minimal seasoning, lower quality ingredients and steeply discounted when purchased in volume. These services often ship meals frozen as well. The typical demographic would be a bodybuilder or athlete who wants a strict plan with taste and quality being a low priority.
3. Hybrid services that set clear calorie and protein goals but fit a wide variety of food sources and options into those guidelines. These services are designed for the average person who needs nutritional support but still wants quality food, seasoned well with a solid variety. These services often cost slightly above average so they can deliver quality within those nutrition guidelines. The Strong Kitchen is this type of service.

It's vitally important to decide which service fits your needs best first, so your expectations match the service delivered.

Variety and Meal Options

The next major factor is matching your own taste and food preferences to the type of service you think fits you best.

From being In this industry for years, most services fall into two major categories for providing variety:

1. Larger static menu – This type of menu design offers a large array of meals every week, sometimes 20-40 options, with the menu only changing once or twice per year. This option is great for those who feel they need many options to choose from each week but don’t mind that the overall options stay the same for long periods.
2. Smaller rotating menu – This type of menu, like The Strong Kitchen provides, has fewer meals available each week (usually around 10) but with a changing menu that rotates through a larger overall variety of meals week to week. This option is great for those who like fewer overall options but want each week to offer something new.

One of the reasons The Strong Kitchen offers a smaller menu each week is twofold: With large menus, it becomes very difficult to make every meal the same level of quality, taste and popularity as more options demand more back-of-house work often leading to a few great meals and numerous “just ok” meals.

Secondly, the illusion of choice trips many people up as they think they need 20 different meals each week when in fact they order the same 4-5 each time. Think of a diner menu; you have 60+ choices to choose from, but you likely order the same thing every time you go!

Cost

Often the deciding factor for potential customers is “what can I afford”?

We stress that if you want to compare apples to apples, make sure your home prep has the same standards as a meal prep service.

For example, if you decide to make meals at home, do they:

1. Offer the same calorie control and protein content as a meal prep service?
2. Can you make the same variety as a meal prep service?
3. How many groceries go bad or sit in the fridge untouched after shopping?
4. Do your meals stay fresh as long as a meal prep service?
5. How much time are you willing to invest to ensure your home-prepped meals match the same standards and offerings as a meal prep service?

If you order from a meal prep service, you might get 5-7 weekly choices of each protein, starches and veggies. Not many people prep that variety at home, which is one of the primary reasons for cooing burnout…getting bored.

Secondly, the time investment can be quite large. Shopping, prepping, cooking, cleaning up and packing takes hours, even for a skilled cook. If you LOVE that, go for it. If it simply becomes more work or a distraction, it might not be worth it.

Lastly, the cost to match the food variety and volume from prepping daily meals, at retail prices, is quite high. Meal prep services are often able to cut some overhead because of wholesale pricing, volume production and efficiency.

We find the value trade of spending money on a service in exchange for hours back each week, with zero work or decision making is enormous.

Deciding for Yourself

Ask yourself three big questions:

-What are my goals?

-What sort of food, flavors and variety do I need or want?

-How much can I spend and how valuable is buying back my time worth?

P.S Think freshness!

We don’t mind telling you that when ordering from meal prep services, the freshness factor is a major concern. Food prepped ahead of time has a shorter shelf life even when refrigerated, especially in snap-on-lid containers. Some companies solve this by freezing their food but that degrades quality. Also consider the size of the company. Are they delivering in refrigerated vans? How does the food stay fresh in transport?

The Strong Kitchen had these problems, which is why we know they exist! We didn’t want to freeze meals to extend shelf life because it hurts food quality so much. So our solution was to use a Modified Atmosphere Packaging system which removes oxygen from the food container and adds Co2 and Nitrogen, extending the shelf life, improving  taste, texture and quality. This allows customers to order 7 days of meals without anything spoiling, no freezing required.

Next, we needed to resolve our transportation. Delivering solely in cooler bags means shorter delivery routes, less service area and a ticking clock for food temperature control. To solve this we invested in refrigerated vans so meals stay under temperature control from the time we cook them to when they reach your door.

These were major problems to solve for us and we would encourage you to ensure services you look at are solving them too!