Food delivery services are taking the work out of cooking
Food delivery and food box schemes are taking the work out of cooking for busy families around the country.
Rather than doing a weekly shop, people are turning to services that offer ready-packaged meals solutions delivered on their doorsteps.
These services meet a complex demand; more families are looking for easy meals when they’re short on time and energy, but don’t want to eat expensive and unhealthy takeaways night after night.
From healthy frozen meals to fresh ingredient boxes complete with recipes, here are some of the most popular food delivery services on the market today.
Cook
Founded in 1997, Cook’s philosophy is to create delicious meals for your freezer, prepared by hand using the same ingredients and techniques you would use in your own kitchen. Forget the factory line – every meal on Cook’s menu is prepared in their kitchen in Kent by a small team of passionate chefs. Meals can be cooked in the oven or microwave and you can order online for delivery or browse at one of their stores nationwide. A range of sizes mean they also cater to families of all shapes and sizes – there are meals for one, two and four to choose from.
Hello Fresh
Hello Fresh is slightly different in concept; this service sources ingredients in the quantities you need them so you can cook at home. This is perfect for people who love to prepare food but don’t have time for everything in between – each week the ingredients and recipes are delivered straight to your door, so all you need to do come meal time is follow the simple instructions. This is a subscription based service; you sign up for 3 or 5 meals a week for 2 or 4 people and go from there. Hello Fresh even has some famous fans – Jamie Oliver has created weekly recipes for the service, too.
Gousto
Like Hello Fresh, Gousto is a recipe kit subscription service. From the website you can choose from a number of delicious recipes developed by chefs. They deliver pre-portioned ingredients and recipe cards to you so you can cook the meals yourself from home. Gousto is all about ingredients; they only work with trusted suppliers to use organic vegetables and high welfare British meat.
Oakhouse Foods
Like Cook, Oakhouse Foods offers ready-made frozen meals for delivery. They have a huge range of meals ideal so you can pick or choose what you like, or a wide range of meal boxes and sets for specific needs. There are meal options for diabetics, gluten free and low salt, along with general easy-order packs that offer a week of mains and offer plenty of variety.
Have you ever tried a food delivery service?
Rachel - Silversurfers Assistant Editor
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Two things hit me straight away. One was the eye-wateringly high prices. Apart from the very expensive ready meals, for 'convenience' they also offer groceries. A loaf of ordinary sliced bread for more than £2? Shredded Wheat cereal at twice Sainsburys price? No thanks!
I did a whole series of price comparisons with both Sainsburys and M&S top of the range ready meals. Oakhouse were more expensive by a large margin on every item. Their minimum spend for free delivery is £30. Even having to pay for Sainsburys delivery, they came out way cheaper.
I can't help thinking that Oakhouse are deliberately targetting people who could find it hard to go out to shop and overcharging them unashamedly even for the most basic items.
I also noted that the brochure contains no detailed nutritional information, or calorie counts and even the website does not have good info on allergens. You have to to work out for yourself that an ingredient in bold type on a list is a potential allergen.
Older people who maybe are unable to use the internet, will not have sufficient information from the brochure to make wise choices about the food they buy without actually seeing the packaging - I am only guessing that this includes the nutrition info - the website doesn't show this is the case.
If I had to spend just one week living on their food, I would spend over 50% more on 7 main courses and a few basics, and as yet, I can't comment on the quality, I rather doubt that it would be better than M&S or Sainsburys Taste the Difference premium range to be honest!
Thanks, I'll carry on shopping in person and cooking from scratch and if I'm ill, I will get a delivery or ask someone to collect my order using Click and Collect. I advise others to do the same. Even my friends and neighbours here who aren't internet users, have children or relatives who will shop for them or put an online order for them.