Eating healthy is a challenge for many people in spite of their wishes. With the majority of us leading extremely busy lives, the lack of time for smart meal planning and grocery shopping is the main reason for that. Prepared meal kits offer a great solution for this problem. You can see how well they work from the fact that already the meal kit delivery service industry is worth over $2.2 billion globally and it’s constantly growing. At its current growth rate, it’s estimated that meal kits will take up to 1.3% of all global food and drink sales as soon as 2020. This is definitely going to help more people improve their diet. Therefore this industry can become a major player in the fight against the global obesity epidemic.
What Prepared Meal Kits Are and Where You Can Get Them
Meal kit delivery services are based on the subscription box model. But they are far more convenient because of the contents of the boxes that you get delivered to your doorstep. They are exactly what it says on the tin, meaning kits that contain all ingredients necessary to cook a meal. Some of the ingredients are prepared to facilitate and speed up the cooking process. The kits also contain instructions and other handy materials necessary for beginner cooks.
Prepared meal kits are most popular with the millennials, the generation renowned for being extremely busy and overworked. The reason for this is simple, these kits are extremely convenient. Simply put, they relieve you of the need to go grocery shopping. They also make meal planning and cooking much easier. All you need to do is to pick the dish that you feel like enjoying, and all the rest will be delivered to your door.
You don’t even have to be home to receive the package. It can wait on the doorstep for your return from work. All fresh ingredients are packed in ice and will be perfectly fine.
Due to the subscription nature of the service, you can plan your meals for the week, simply by choosing them using a mobile app. They will be delivered to you, so you’ll be able to enjoy a fresh meal every day without wasting time on shopping and prepping the ingredients.
Today these services are available in all major urban areas of Canada, and some companies even deliver all over the country. Prepared meal kits can be a great solution for the residents of more rural areas, who can’t get easy access to some of the more exotic ingredients. According to MyUniversityMoney’s meal kit analysis, the best companies that offer these services in Canada today are Fresh City Farms, Hello Fresh, Miss Fresh, Good Food, and Chef’s Plate.
How Expensive Are Prepared Meal Kits & Why?
Meal kits are more expensive than doing your grocery shopping on your own. Forbes offers a detailed cost breakdown per dish to prove this fact. On average, a meal kit costs between $10 and $13, and if you are a smart shopper, you can get the same value of products for about $5.
That difference comes from the fact that creating prepared meal kits isn’t easy. All ingredients need to be sourced, prepared in a certified facility by qualified professionals, packaged, and delivered. All this extra work rakes up the value of a kit. But you shouldn’t forget that these products help you save some money as well. You do not only get top-quality fresh ingredients that might be too expensive to buy not in bulk. You also save on the gas as you don’t need to make extra trips for groceries. Don’t forget that your time is worth money as well, and you get to save a lot of it by using meal kits.
Benefits of Prepared Meal Kits That Make Them Worth the Extra Costs
The most important benefit of using meal kits is that they make it so much easier for a person to stick to a healthy diet. First of all, all the meals offered by these services come with a detailed nutritional breakdown. Therefore, they help you control your daily calorie intake without risking any nutritional deficiencies.
They also contain fresh and healthy ingredients, which you might not bother to include in your daily meals otherwise. However, their convenience is what makes prepared meal kits truly great. With a kit like this, you can cook a healthy meal in under 30 minutes. This means that using them is a great motivator to skip on takeout, which is always more expensive and often less healthy. When you have a pick between an expensive food delivery and taking 15-20 minutes to quickly put together a healthy meal that costs twice less but it no less convenient, which would you choose?
Home-delivered prepared meal kits are currently revolutionizing the food industry in Canada and the world as a whole (CBC News). They definitely offer a variety of benefits, and people recognize this as these services become more and more popular.