The New Meal Kit Service for the Budget-Conscious: Introducing Dinnerly

I’ve tried several different meal kit services over the past 2 year years. They all promise to make putting a meal together so much easier for you, and overall, they do deliver on that promise. All of the ingredients you need to put together 2-3 meals shows up on your doorstep, and all you need to do is follow the directions provided to get dinner on the table. No need to plan a menu or shop for the groceries.

HOWEVER…there are 2 main problems that I’ve encountered with these meal kits. First, sometimes in an effort to provide their clientele with impressive dishes, these companies opt for unnecessarily complicated prep. For example, I do not want to make my own pesto, even if the fresh ingredients will yield a more intense flavor, when it’s already 5:30 and my kids are staring at me with growling tummies.

The other main problem is that the cost is just not sustainable. When a meal costs around $10/serving, as the dishes in these meal kits tend to, I might as well just go to a place like Panera for dinner. I won’t spend much more, and I won’t have to do any cooking or cleaning up.

But there’s a new game in town, a meal kit service called Dinnerly. This company seems to have focused its energy on solving those 2 key problems that busy parents like me seem to have with the other meal kit services. So they offer 30 minute or less meals that come in around $5/serving. That’s undercutting their competition by 50%!

Our family got to try out a box from the very first weekly offering of the company in Tennessee. I was impressed with the quick delivery to my door (2 days) and in particular, how freezing cold my meat was (I have received meat from another company…TWICE…that I was VERY nervous was too warm to still be safe, so great packaging and quick delivery is essential for meal kits).

We had enough food to prepare 3 meals for 4 people in this kit, and those meals were as follows:

Grilled Onion Turkey Burgers with Pepper Jack & Sweet Potato Fries (our favorite!)
Grass-Fed American Chop Suey (made way too much food for us, and surprisingly, the kids didn’t like it)
Harissa-Spiced Chicken with Potatoes, Onions and Spinach (I could take or leave the spinach in the dish, but overall, great flavors)

The food wasn’t the best I’ve had in my entire life, but it fell right in line with the types of things we like to cook on weeknights, and the ingredients were in line with what we like to buy (I noticed grass-fed beef, as well as organic canned tomatoes). I enjoyed it and would order it again before going back to the the other kit services I have personally tried.

So how does this company offer a similar service as other meal kit services at half the cost? I have a few theories on places where costs are cut. First, you have to go online to get your recipes instead of getting them delivered on pretty card stock in your kit. For me, that’s no big deal, though I wish they had an app to make it easier to pull up the recipes on your phone, since the phone or tablet is easier to take into the kitchen with me than the laptop. I also think that they aim to make simpler recipes, which might mean fewer ingredients or even less exotic ingredients, and that helps keep costs down a little bit more.

So when it’s all said and done, it’s not restaurant quality food, but it is classic weeknight fare, and it did make life less hectic the week we had the box, because I didn’t have to make a trip to the store, pull together a menu, or do anything complicated with meal prep. Dinnerly is most definitely worth a try!

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