Plated vs HelloFresh Review and Comparison – Everything You Need to Know

The comparative study of Plated vs HelloFresh is unlike any other, and that’s because the Plated experience is also one that includes easy grocery shopping along with new, delicious recipes. Meanwhile, HelloFresh is the obvious choice as the best meal kit delivery service.

You would expect HelloFresh to outperform Plated since the former is way more popular and it’s a simple subscription-based meal delivery company.

Plated, however, is an equally competitive food service. Although it may not be the most convenient option as HelloFresh, there’s a lot of ground to cover in terms of comparison and which one is better.

If you keep on reading, you’ll find out more about both companies and their meal offerings.

Do Meal Kit Delivery Services Save You Money?

When you start cooking from scratch, you have a couple of things to think about. For instance, you have to decide which recipes you’re going to make for the coming week so you can head to the grocery store to buy the individual ingredients.

If you’re like most people who cook food from scratch every day, preparing them at the end of a long and tiring day can be more difficult. Meal kit services provide meals that are ready in minutes which sounds more tempting for your daily dietary needs.

But are meal kits budget-friendly?

If you don’t have time to plan your meals, grocery shop, and prep the ingredients, a meal kit helps you save money and provide a healthy pre-repped meal in under 30 minutes.

How much you save with a meal kit delivery service depends on how much you spend on groceries every week. It also depends on the number of meals you eat per day and how many people you plan on feeding at home.

A good meal kit delivery service charges $9–$12 per serving per meal. If you’re ordering for a few nights of dinners, you end up paying less per serving, which means you save more money in the long run.

The average household spends at least $70 per week on groceries, which covers the ingredients you need for cooking meals from scratch and some snacks. If you plan on subscribing to a meal kit delivery service for every week’s meals, you skip going to the grocery store, which saves you money.

Some meal kit delivery companies offer interesting snacks and desserts as add-ons that you can indulge in once in a while to avoid snacking on unhealthy foods you bought from the grocery store.

Do Meal Kit Delivery Services Save You Time?

According to meal kit companies like Plated and HelloFresh, fully preparing a meal should take between 20 and 50 minutes, but it largely depends on the recipe as well.

This is faster than preparing meals from scratch. All the food prep and portioning of the ingredients are taken care of. You just have to prep some of the meals by chopping, mixing, and cooking the ingredients.

If you’re normally used to spending at least an hour preparing and cooking a meal in the kitchen, the easy-prep meal kits of Plated and HelloFresh will save you time. They come with all preportioned ingredients. Plus, you don’t have to spend time brainstorming new recipe ideas every night as this alone will save you 20–30 minutes every day.

Are Meal Kits Easy to Cook?

You can whip up delicious and easy-to-make recipes, even as a beginner, with meal kit delivery services. Even for seasoned home cooks, these recipes are designed to reduce your cooking time by more than half.

Each recipe comes with easy-to-follow recipe cards, full of important details about the recipe such as an ingredients list, nutrition facts, and step-by-step photos and instructions.

You are required to perform basic cooking skills like sauteing, roasting, and simmering which are simple to execute. Even if some of these techniques are new to you, the recipe instructions make things very clear and accessible for you to follow.

One of the most challenging parts of cooking a meal is timing. Meal kit delivery services take care of that by allowing you to choose meals and sides that require less cooking time. Most of the recipes encourage multitasking to save more time. This might be a tad bit difficult to beginners to handle, but with practice, you’ll soon find your way through and try new techniques to make the recipes more flavorful and easier to cook.

Apart from ease of cooking, another benefit to subscribing to a meal kit delivery service is that they preportion the ingredients to avoid food wastage. You no longer have to throw out expired groceries once you’ve subscribed to a meal kit company. Their ingredients come in tiny bottles of ingredients that are individually packed according to the serving size you select.

What Do Meal Kits Taste Like?

Meal kits come with preportioned ingredients and cooking instructions for all the recipes you choose to add to your cart. The recipes vary according to cuisine, cooking difficulty, and dietary considerations.

Meal kit delivery companies like Plated and HelloFresh offer a mix of homestyle, restaurant, and gourmet recipes. So, you are most likely to find a lot of recipes that you probably won’t cook from scratch such as thin-crust pizzas, soups, flatbreads, tortillas, quesadillas, bowls, and a wide selection of premium recipes.

All the meal kit recipes are tested for flavor, freshness, and nutrition. You can select as many servings as you want, and all the ingredients will be preportioned to avoid food wastage.

Simple recipes for breakfast, snacks, and desserts are also part of their menu palate. You can indulge in healthy and preservative-free items such as chips, cookies, and sugary treats made from natural sugars.

Pros and Cons of Subscribing to a Meal Kit Delivery Service

Pros:

• Versatile and restaurant-inspired meal kit recipes.
• The healthy meals accommodate different dietary categories like keto, paleo, low calorie, low carb, etc.
• The fresh ingredients are preportioned and easy to make.
• Little to no food wastage after every meal.
• Eco-friendly and minimal packaging that is easy to recycle.
• You can store the meal kits in the fridge for up to 7 days.
• Diet-friendly recommendations for people with dietary restrictions.
• You can cancel or pause your subscription at any time.
• Quick and consistent doorstep delivery for weekly orders.

Cons:

• Can be a bit pricey for single and two people meals.
• It does require a basic level of cooking in the kitchen.
• Shopping for food items like salt, pepper, and cooking oil is required.

Plated Meal Delivery Service – An Overview

Back in 2012, two Harvard School Business classmates, Nick Taranto and Josh Hix, founded Plated, a convenient meal kit delivery service that quickly rose the ladder in the industry.

As a result, they achieved widespread attention after appearing on popular platforms like TechStars, Beyond the Tank, and Shark Tank where they struck a six-figure deal with investor Mark Cuban.

Due to unfortunate circumstances, the deal fell through the cracks, but this did not discourage them, and they continued to push their way through.

By 2013, Plated successfully managed to deliver over 100,000 meals to customers in the Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States. By 2015, the company managed to earn over $100 million in revenue.

In 2018, Plated was acquired by Albertsons, a prominent American grocery chain, for a whopping $200 million. Despite this acquisition, Plated went through some significant business changes. Their original offers have been discontinued, but all of Plated’s recipes are available on Albertsons websites, including Safeway, Jewel Osco, and Tom Thumb. You can add delicious meal recipes through these websites easily.

What’s more is that Albertsons had also introduced Plated’s ready-to-cook meals in select stores. If you live in Austin, you’ll find plenty of Albertsons’ stores nearby. This is where you’ll find Plated’s ready-to-cook and less-prep meals for busy weeknights.

Through this acquisition, new doors have opened up for Plated as a meal delivery service. Partnering with grocery stores, people have better access to Plated’s delicious meals. What Plated has become now since its launch in 2012 is a huge step toward success as it has managed to exceed all expectations with regard to what a meal delivery service can do.

HelloFresh Meal Delivery Service – An Overview

HelloFresh was started in 2011 by Dominik Richter, Thomas Griesel, and Jessica Nilsson. The company was founded in Berlin, Germany, and soon became one of the largest and most widespread meal kit delivery providers in the United States. HelloFresh also delivers meal kits to other countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, and parts of Europe.

Something you didn’t probably know about HelloFresh back when it first started delivering orders is that cofounders Richter and Griesel had hand-delivered the meal kits to their first 10 customers.

By March 2018, HelloFresh acquired Green Chef, which is an organic meal kit delivery service. Through this acquisition, HelloFresh was able to produce more organic and diet-friendly meal kits with a wide-ranging menu for people on different diets such as vegan, gluten-free, paleo, keto, etc.

HelloFresh is also popular for its eco-friendliness by producing meal kit recipes that produce 85% fewer carbon emissions. HelloFresh’s Climate Labeling initiative has turned many heads and is now prominent in other countries alongside Germany, such as European countries, Australia, and New Zealand.

Plated vs HelloFresh – What Are the Subscription Options?

Plated

Plated takes care of meal planning most efficiently and accurately. You can search for new and interesting meal choices by ingredient, recipe, diet, and specialty stores. Plated automatically grouped ingredients by recipe so you don’t have to plan your meals. The meal kits are organized, diet-friendly, and straightforward to unpack and cook at home.

To subscribe to Plated’s meal plans, start by adding recipes to your weekly cart. The ingredients needed for each recipe get automatically saved in your cart during checkout. You can increase or decrease the quantity of the ingredients based on your personal needs.

Based on your eating preferences and diet plans, meal kit customization is smooth and easy to understand. Finding meal recipes and adding the ingredients to the cart have never been this simple and fast.

Plated also features its Marketplace with different specialty stores where you can hand-pick grocery items from. You can order ingredients in bulk or according to meal recipes easily based on your delivery location. Plated ships directly to your doorstep, just like an online shopping service.

If you want to experience browsing meal recipes, not ingredients or specialty stores, Plated provides an option for that as well. Their Meal Recipes menu lets you filter meal kit recipes by diet and meal types.

The diets Plated supports are low carb, low calorie, keto, flexitarian, paleo, vegetarian, pescatarian, and vegan. You can also filter by meal type including soups, stews, chilis, under 30 minutes, breakfast, and desserts.

HelloFresh

HelloFresh features a Meal Recipes menu with a wide variety of world cuisines and dishes. You can also filter the meal recipes by ingredients, meal type, cooking difficulty, equipment, and diet.

The meal ordering process of HelloFresh meals is easy to understand and quick. They take care of meal planning and portioning of the ingredients based on the serving size you select.

All the ingredients are organized according to recipes and packed together in a weekly box. The meal kits are preportioned and some are pre-prepped for your convenience. The meal kits only require you to chop, mix, and cook the ingredients according to recipe instructions.

HelloFresh caters to a wide variety of world cuisines including American recipes, Italian, Asian, Mediterranean, Mexican, Korean, Indian, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Thai, French, Cuban, and so on.

They also allow meal customization according to the different types of dishes such as tacos recipes, burgers, pasta, healthy bowls, flatbreads, stir-fry, meatballs, noodles, risotto, skillet, soup, skewers, quesadilla, meatloaf, fajita, sandwiches, and so on.

The degree to which you can customize their meal kit recipe menu to select diet-friendly and delicious recipes is impressive. HelloFresh boasts more than 2,000 different types of meal kit recipes, all accessible with the click of a button.

To subscribe to HelloFresh’s meals, you have to start by selecting the number of servings you want per meal and the number of meals you want per week. The minimum order value for each weekly order is 2 meals per week for 2 people.

Similar to Plated, HelloFresh makes the meal ordering process highly flexible and well-planned. You won’t run out of options to try at any given week. The menu palate is not only health-conscious but full of mouthwatering flavors and special ingredients.

Plated vs HelloFresh – How Much Do the Meals Cost?

Plated

Plated’s pricing depends on the number of meal kit recipes you add to your weekly cart. But the typical price range for Plated meals is between $9.95 and $11.95 per serving. The minimum number of meal kits you can order at a time is 4 meal recipes per week, which include 2 different recipes for 2 people.

Plated’s shipping charge is $7.95 on every order. All their meal orders include a shipping fee, but you can reduce the per-serving cost of their meals down to $9.95 by adding more meals to your weekly cart.

HelloFresh

Unlike Plated where you have to sign up to check the actual prices of the meal kits and ingredients, HelloFresh’s meal plan pricing is accessible to all. You can take stock of the number of recipes per and find out the per-serving cost based on the number of servings you select.

While checking the meal prices, you can select your meal preferences from Meat & Veggies, Veggie, Family Friendly, Fit & Wholesome, Quick & Easy, and Pescatarian. The cost per serving for all these meal plans is the same.

Keep in mind that HelloFresh charges a shipping fee of $10 on every order no matter how large your order is. Even with ordering the highest number of meals you possibly can with HelloFresh, which is 24 meals per week, a $10 shipping fee is applied during checkout.

Here’s the breakdown of their meal plans:

Plated vs HelloFresh – How Long Do the Meals Take to Cook?

Plated

Plated offers easy-to-follow recipes with photographs and an ingredients list for meal preparation. Some tips also follow including different ways to prepare the meal, how to season the meat, how to chop the vegetables, etc.

The ingredients are bagged individually and grouped by recipe.This is easier than packing all the ingredients together as most meal kit companies do. This way, you’ll be able to organize the recipes fast and store them as they are packed in the fridge.

Some ingredients, like shredded cheese, grated carrots, and seasoned meat, are also prepped and packed, which makes assembling all the ingredients for a recipe easier and quicker.

The cooking time listed for each recipe is accurate and consistent. None of the recipes take longer than advertised. You can pick the recipes according to the cooking time displayed, ranging from 10 minutes to 40 minutes per recipe.

Plated does feature a “Quick & Easy” meal category on its menu with meal kits that take less than 30 minutes to prepare. Snack and breakfast items have an even shorter prep time, starting from 5 minutes to 20 minutes. So, you’ll have plenty of options to pick from when considering time and cooking effort.

HelloFresh

HelloFresh provides a wide variety of recipes, starting with easy-to-follow recipes to some “gourmet” recipes that take a little longer to prepare. You can compare and select the recipes based on their cooking time which is mentioned for every recipe.

Overall, HelloFresh’s meal recipes take 30 minutes or so to prepare from start to finish. Simple recipes like pasta dishes are easy and fun to prepare, taking not more than 30 minutes per serving.

Gourmet options with premium ingredients like salmon or beef do not involve complicated recipes. The step-by-step instructions are very user-friendly and convenient to follow. If you’re vegetarian, HelloFresh does offer many plant-based options as alternatives to meat.

Basic cooking skills like sauteing, simmering, tossing, and microwaving are essential. If you know how to cook vegetables and work with a skillet or frying pan, nothing else is required of you because even the most “gourmet” recipe on HelloFresh’s menu requires basic cooking techniques and minimal prep work.

Plated vs HelloFresh – What to Expect from the Vegetarian/Vegan Menu

Plated

Starting with Plated, right at the beginning itself, you’re asked to mention whether or not you’re a vegetarian. All Plated meals are tasty (easy-to-follow recipes indeed), including vegan and vegetarian options.

What I really liked about Plated is that it simplifies the process of filtering the menu depending on your diet plan and other dietary preferences. There are separate tabs like low-carb, low-calorie, vegetarian, gluten-free, paleo, etc.

Unfortunately, there’s no “vegan” filter to be found anywhere. Nevertheless, there are a good number of vegan meals. Even so, Plated is not the best meal delivery service for plant-based eaters simply because vegan-specific recipes aren’t a part of the menu, which can be disappointing for potential customers following a plant-based diet plan. However, you do have the Vegetarian option to choose from on the menu.

Plated Vegetarian Meals:

• Baked Ranch-Crusted Tofu with Brussels Sprouts and cauliflower
• Veggie Ground Stir-Fry with Carrot and cilantro-tossed Rice Noodles
• “Currywurst” Vegan Sausage Wrap with Red Cabbage, Pepper & Apple Slaw

Plated Vegan Meals:

• Tofu with Cilantro-Orange Zucchini & Bell Pepper Sauté over Rice
• Quinoa-Butternut Squash Stew with Peanuts, Raisins, Spinach & Cilantro
• Spicy Vietnamese-Style Veggie “Meatballs” with Broccoli Slaw & Peanuts

HelloFresh

HelloFresh is entirely different in that its meals are properly labeled. And “Veggie” and “Vegan” tags are a part of the list, alongside others like “Calorie Smart” and “Carb Smart.” Therefore, you can select recipes according to your diet, appetite, and personal preferences.

HelloFresh offers many meal plans, two of which are the following:

• Meat and Veggies: A basic plan that consists of a wide range of recipes that include fresh vegetables and meats.
• Veggie: This is the plant-based-only meal plan for vegetarian meals, but it’s not necessarily vegan.

With HelloFresh, disappointingly, veggie and seafood lovers don’t get more than just a few options each week. For vegetarians, 4–5 plant-based recipes are the norm, which seems good enough if you’re just starting to cook vegetarian meals or wish to add more veggies to your weekly routine.

As for the plant-based proteins in vegetarian dishes, they come from chickpeas, beans, and nuts. Some of the plant-forward meals are also vegan:

• Sweet Heat Vegan Cauli Bowls with Cabbage-Carrot Rice & Pickled Cucumber (vegan)
• Vegan Thai Ginger Curry with Creamy Coconut Veggies, Lime Cauliflower Rice & Peanuts (vegan)
• Zucchini & Tomato Flatbreads with Lemon Ricotta, Fresh Parsley, Honey & Chili Flakes (veggie only)
• Mushroom & Chive Risotto with Garlic Herb Butter (veggie only)

Plated vs HelloFresh – What’s the Nutritional Breakdown of Meals?

Plated

If you’re someone who makes it a point to read the nutrition values of every food that goes into your system, Plated meals’ macro breakdown available on the page of each recipe is very useful. However, the nutritional breakdown is not printed on the recipe cards delivered with your weekly Plated meals.

Also, Plated does not let you know how much sodium is added to the food. That’s another thing I didn’t like. But it’s not like any of the dishes are particularly salty, so that’s a huge relief in case you get bloated due to excessive salt intake.

Moving on to the macro breakdown, the information regarding that is accurate and correct. The serving sizes and macro sets match well too. So, there’s no need to weigh or measure the food before you devour it.

Here’s the nutritional breakdown of some of Plated’s meals:

Lunch/Dinner:

Breakfast and Dessert:

HelloFresh

HelloFresh offers different meal plans that you can choose from based on your dietary preferences. The HelloFresh menu, however, doesn’t accommodate too many diets. They have a Veggie meal plan which, unfortunately, consists of animal by-products like cheese. As for the fully vegan meals, the options are only few.

HelloFresh’s Fit & Wholesome recipes have comparatively lower calories. But that depends on what is low calorie for you. Does 650 calories per serving seem like a lot? They probably would be based on your consumption of other foods during the day. Typically, HelloFresh meals include between 650 and 1,200 calories per serving.

What’s also necessary to note here is that HelloFresh is not the most suitable choice for those on a strict low-carb or keto diet. There are a few “Carb Smart” options on the HelloFresh menu. Even so, these meals still contain about 30–40 grams of carbs per serving.

All recipes are labeled properly. One of the tags used is “Mediterranean” as well, which is also perfect for weight loss, but the options here are also limited.

HelloFresh lists the potential allergens for every recipe, although there’s no specific or separate gluten-free or allergy-free menu. Regardless, HelloFresh is a fitting choice for you even if your eating pattern is flexible.

Chicken and Meat:

Seafood:

Plated vs HelloFresh – 2 Very Important FAQs

1. How Are Plated and HelloFresh Weekly Meals Packed?

What’s in the Plated box? Firstly, your weekly Plated order is delivered fully intact, meaning there will be no dents, holes, or rips in the box. Even the packaging of the meals inside earns full points. The meats are packed in separate, vacuum-sealed, Ziplock plastic bags. And then everything is kept fresh and cool using foam insulation and ice packs.

As for all the meals, every serving is packed individually, which does away with any confusion about where the ingredients are. The sealed packaging is airtight, so you don’t have to worry about anything leaking or spilling out.

The recipe cards are also tucked in somewhere among all the ingredients. These cards come with pictures and detailed cooking instructions, along with serving size information, a list of ingredients, cookware needed, and more.

The only major setback I found here is that there are no nutritional value details to be found anywhere on the recipe cards or the mobile app of Plated. So, if you’re into counting your macros or have certain, specific dietary preferences/restrictions, this could be problematic.

The nutrition facts, however, are available on the website, which means you can go online to check the nutritional content.

Plus points for the recyclable foam layers and ice packs. Most of the food items provided by Plated are packaged using reusable plastic bags or paper bags. The thicker plastic complies with high ecological standards, and these bags can be easily reused.

It’s now time to praise HelloFresh’s packaging. Environment-friendliness is at the heart of the brand’s packaging approach. They do an excellent job just by using minimal packaging materials, hence less to zero waste. Everything is recyclable – cooler bags, ice packs, plastic bags, insulation foam, liners, paperboards, cardboard boxes, and paper bags.

Adequate insulation is wrapped around the many ingredients inside the box, and ice packs are placed properly to keep them safe, fresh, and cool for long hours.

Paper bags store all the non-meat food items, while plastic bags contain the meats. The latter is kept away from the former using cardboard liners and with ice packs for preserving the quality of the raw, uncooked meat.

HelloFresh also includes recipe cards, which you’ll find outside the insulation so they remain dry.

2. Are Plated and HelloFresh Meals Allergy-Friendly?

Plated offers meal options that many with specific dietary and taste preferences are likely to find gratifying. This includes vegetarians, nonvegetarians, and also pescatarians. You could be a picky eater and still find Plated’s meals appealing or fit into your weekly diet. It’s only that vegan-only recipes are not a part of the Plated menu, which is disappointing.

The meal plans included are as follows:

• Vegetarian
• Meat
• Seafood
• Low Calorie
• Low Carb
• Gluten-Free
• Family-Friendly
• Dessert

You’ll find on every recipe page details about its nutritional value, such as the number of calories per serving along with protein, carbohydrates, sugar, fat, and potential allergens.

Plated is also a great choice for a weight loss diet plan. Since there is a wide range of meals to select from, you can add to your weekly order recipes that meet your dietary demands. To make the process more streamlined, Plated has filters like vegetarian, paleo, low carb, and low calorie.

Even “family-friendly’ is a filter, which is perfect if you want super healthy and tasty meals for kids. The only drawback, as mentioned before, is that there’s no “vegan” option. Vegan recipes are a part of the menu, but the service doesn’t particularly cater to plant-based eaters.

Also, if you’re looking for low-sodium meals, you may not like the fact that Plated doesn’t offer any information regarding the sodium content in their recipes.

Moving on to HelloFresh, here are the meal plans they’ve designed to accommodate several dietary preferences:

• Meat & Veggies
• Family Friendly
• Quick & Easy
• Veggie
• Fit & Wholesome
• Pescatarian

One of the very few cons of HelloFresh is that they don’t have a lot of options for veggie and seafood lovers. For vegetarians, just 4–5 recipes to choose from every week is a limited experience. But it’s enough for those who want to add some plant-based meals to their meat-focused daily diet.

As far as diet-friendliness is concerned, HelloFresh is not the best for catering to any specialized diet plans. They do, however, offer some low-calorie, pescatarian, and vegetarian choices.

The variety of the menu is satisfactory in that you can which recipes are a suitable option for you. But if you’re following a strict diet like keto or paleo, it’s not so good.

At the same time, there aren’t any gluten-free meals. Allergens are listed, but there are no specific allergen-free filters or recipes. But those on a weight loss diet might find the Fit & Wholesome meal plan very useful. It’s superb for a fitness-oriented diet, and if your calorie deficit game mode is on, then HelloFresh’s meals are ideal.

Speaking of which, the per-serving calorie count doesn’t usually exceed 650 calories. Plus, all HelloFresh meals are approved by professional dietitians.

Plated Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Easy-to-prepare, tasty, new dishes every week.
• Proteins are antibiotic-free and natural produce is organic.
• Flexible meal plans to suit dietary needs and preferences.
• Extras like desserts are also available.
• Responsive and quick customer service.
• Good for weight loss and for those interested in cooking delicious, unique dishes.
• Neat, recyclable packaging is used.

Cons:

• No vegan-only options on the menu
• A bit too pricey for just 2–3 meals per week
• No information about the sodium content/value

HelloFresh Pros and Cons

Pros:

• The menu variety is huge and meals are easy and quick to prepare.
• Efficient, eco-friendly packaging and very little food waste.
• It’s a budget-friendly meal kit delivery service.
• Groceries are also available.
• Calorie-smart and carb-smart recipes.

Cons:

• A limited number of veggie and seafood meals.
• They don’t cater to any specialized diet plans.
• The $10 shipping fee is separate.

The Bottom Line

If you take into consideration an important factor like menu variety, Plated offers way more recipes than HelloFresh. So, that makes up for the lack of common dietary filters on Plated. On the other hand, HelloFresh has only 22–25 meals on its weekly rotating menu.

If you look at meal pricing, in that case, HelloFresh is a more suitable choice. For 3 meals per week, HelloFresh is an affordable option as opposed to Plated’s more expensive meal plans.