Vegan Meal Delivery Services

So in a bid to try and make healthy eating easier I thought I'd try a few meal delivery services. Unfortunately there are not many that offer both gluten free AND vegan, but many offered one or the other. There are quite a few on the market that offer vegan/gluten free prepared meals but I specifically just wanted ingredients and recipes to prep the meals myself. I like to know what's going in there :)

It sounds ridiculous but after my research of all the places out there, Purple Carrot and Hungry Root were the only two that really had GF/Vegan options. Fresh and Lean seemed like a great option if you want pre-made meals (everything is vegan and gluten free)-around $10/meal, as are Territory, Splendid Spoon and Veestro. I also loved the idea of Sakara bowls but they were so expensive that I bought thri cookbook "Eat Clean, Play Dirty" instead!

Purple Carrot

I had SUCH high hopes for this one since it's ALL vegan and had lots of gluten free options so it was such a disappointment with the service didn't stack up.

 I ordered online and it gave me a delivery date. When the delivery didn't show up I messaged their online chat which is pretty quick. They told me because of the national holiday it was running a little late and they mentioned that it was communicated on the website, I hadn't noticed it and there was no communication to me directly but ok that's fair I thought. 

I ended up paying three times for only one box. First and third box never showed, second box came, was missing an ingredient but other then that pretty decent food. They finally refunded me for two of the payments but only the discounted ones. So I ended up paying full price for my only box, even though the first one was supposed to be discounted. I liked how the food was grouped together per recipe, the instructions were fairly easy but there was some prep involved. The recipe book was lovely and glossy and could be repeated by buying my own ingredients (which I have for one recipe many times now).

So the bad taste in my mouth wasn't left by the food but because of my bad customer service and delivery experience. The food was actually really good. A little calorie heavy considering the serving size but delicious and easy to follow instructions with a lovely glossy recipe book that can be used again. 

Cost: $14.50 per meal

PROS: Great Food, 100% Vegan

CONS: Expensive, Unreliable, Terrible Customer Service

Hungry Root

I was actually impressed with the amount of options for vegan/gluten free. The menu lets you hone in on every ingredient used for the dish to see what's in it which I like.

I got my first box when they said I would so already I felt like they were a step ahead. Recipe page wasn't as fancy as the Purple Carrot one but that's not really where I need my money to go anyway. 
The packaging was easy to understand and I could group the items for each recipe easily in the fridge. Each deliver comes with free almond chickpea cookie dough which was so good, my son stole it. 

It was missing an ingredient but it was an easy one to replace (rice) and they kindly put a small credit on my account. Customer service was easy because they have a number you can text 7 days a week.

The recipes were simpler to put together but there was a small amount of cooking/prep. I like the 2 person meals because I can take the second one for lunch the next day. They give you a printout of the meals, ingredients and each recipe prep instructions.

First order was discounted and was $75.01 for 6x 2 person meals. Second box was $115.02, so $9.50 per meal)

I ended up editing my meal plan to 4x lunch & 4x dinner which was $86.95 (anything of $70 is free shipping) so $10.87 per meal).

I was able to go in and change the meals I was receiving, plus how many I was getting so I ended up getting 3 2x person meals (so 6 meals altogether) which cost around $12 per meal.

I like that you can choose between two different shipping days (for one weekend it was handy since we were going out of town I had it changed to mid week).

The quality of the food is ok, I wasn't a huge fan of their premixed items like sauces. I just didn't think they tasted good and I kept having to change them up a bit. Having said that they have given me some great ideas and certainly saved me a ton of time since almost everything is less than 4 ingredients and less than 30 mins cooking time.

All in all it was a decent experience. I did it for a few weeks and the ease and convenience of the dinners was my favourite part but I didn't love it enough to keep up with it. I'm a frugal DIY girl at heart after all and taste matters!

Cost: $11-12 per meal

PROS: 

• Super Easy and Time-Saving
• Good Amount of Vegan/GF Recipes
• Reliable and Great Customer Service
• Good first time discounts

CONS: 

• Food was honestly not that great, I wasn't really impressed with any of the recipes or their brand name items (except the cookie dough)
• Although it was cheaper than the others it's still a lot to spend per meal when you're getting 3-4 ingredients you could pick up from the supermarket for 1/3 of the cost