The 3 Best Meal Kits for Busy Families, According to Moms

Delivery meal kits — like Blue Apron, Sun Basket, HelloFresh, and others — are certainly tempting. And once you have a family, the promise that you won’t have to spend your entire Sunday meal planning and grocery shopping is especially alluring. Meal kits can also inspire you to learn new techniques and try new recipes — two other things that are hard to do as a parent who’s spending all her free brain space remembering where the kids left their lovies.

Are meal kits useful solutions for busy moms? Can they replace meal planning? I talked to my mom friends and tried some out myself in order to come up with this list of meal kits that are the most kid- and family-friendly.

This meal kit service gets rave reviews from my most foodie-minded friends, who said they like the freshness of the produce (more than other services) and variety of the recipes better than Blue Apron and HelloFresh — although one friend rotates between all three week to week based on whichever recipes she likes best.

Most of the moms who suggested this service say they like to use it in moderation to spice up dinnertime periodically when they’re needing inspiration. I personally found myself skipping steps and simplifying recipes to make prep time go faster — but have taken away a few techniques and like the variety.

This company delivers healthy, microwaveable kids’ meals right to your door. For families with picky eaters who don’t want to eat what the parents are eating — or if the kids have to eat during an earlier shift before the adults eat — this can be a real solution. One friend likes that they’re lower in sodium than other services and another says these meals feel like a good healthy option.

To be honest, most of my value-conscious friends consider the meal kits more of a treat than an ongoing solution, as it’s cheaper to buy your own groceries and make your own food. Plus, the recipes can be a little more interesting and complicated than the usual go-tos, which means they usually take longer to prepare and can sometimes be rejected by the kiddos. But if you want to give them a try, the ones mentioned above are the ones to sign up for.

What about you — have you used meal kits to feed your family? Which one(s) do you like?