You’ve heard the name but how does it compare against the competition? We show you why Green Chef is one of the top meal delivery companies of 2018 and worth serious consideration.
Introduction
Green Chef is a meal kit delivery company, meaning instead of pre-cooked food they delivery pre-cut, pre-portioned ingredients fresh, which you the consumer then cooks in your own home.
There are many benefits to the do-it-yourself approach, chief among them being that meals will always be steaming hot and as fresh as possible.
Sure, pre-cooked meal delivery companies have some tasty options, and their delivery technology is always improving, but you can’t beat the freshness of a home cooked meal. This is where Green Chef really shines.
Quality and variety have earned the company recognition and praise from media outlets including Ellen, Vogue, Real Simple, Parents, People, Forbes, Buzzfeed, SELF, and Mashable.
Menu Overview
Primary diet options include Omnivore, Paleo, Keto, Vegan, Gluten-Free, Vegetarian, and Carnivore meal plans. There is also a family-sized Omnivore plan and family-sized Carnivore plan.
The meals look absolutely scrumptious. Of course, much of this comes down to how well the chef prepares the ingredients, but there is no denying the potential for greatness is there, right out of the box.
The baked cod with miso sauce looks absolutely delightful complete with carrots, cauliflower, red bell pepper and nutritious black rice.
We are suckers for Italian cuisine and this eggplant rollatini has got us salivating!
Fully Accredited Organic & Gluten-Free
Green Chef has received a lot of well-deserved hype as being both the first USDA-certified organic meal kit delivery company as well as the first company to receive the Gluten Intolerance Group’s official gluten-free certification via their GFFS program.
Sure, a lot of meal prep and delivery companies claim to have organic and gluten-free offerings, but rarely, if ever, do they have full USDA and GIG certification.
These certifications require rigorous testing and can cost companies a good amount of time and money to acquire. Green Chef deserves praise for going the extra mile in being back up their organic and gluten-free claims with 3rd party accreditation.
7 Primary Diet Options
Aside from being organic and gluten-free Green Chef also segments their meal kit options by general diet type. There are options for meat lovers, which would be great for weightlifters or bodybuilders called “Carnivore” as well as options for people looking to lose a little weight and get toned including “Keto” and “Vegetarian” options.
Selecting a diet type is the first step in getting signed up and started with Green Chef so you’ll want to give this some considerable thought before proceeding. You can always change your diet for the next meal delivery cycle. Personally, we’d like to give them all a try!
After selecting the number of persons/servings you need and your diet type Green Chef then automatically calculates the optimal delivery option.
The number of boxes and servings per box will vary depending on number of people/servings you require. Servings start at 1 person and go up to 4 people.
The menu selection and ordering process can thus be completed in 4 simple steps:
- Sign up and create a user account with your email and password of your choice.
- Choose the number of people you are ordering for.
- Choose the diet type you want (Vegan, Carnivore, Omnivore, etc).
- Checkout and submit payment
Overall the menu get’s an A+ for quality, given both the flexibility in diet type as well as being organic and gluten-free.
The simple sign up and selection process is a breath of fresh air as many other delivery companies over-complicate ordering with too many options and poorly structured checkout processes.
Is The Meal Selection Too Simple?
If there is anything to criticize, and you have to be really picky, is that perhaps the options are a little too simplified.
What if you want a vegan lunch and a carnivore dinner?
What if you want to order for 2 people for the weekdays but 4 on the weekends?
These types of customization aren’t readily available during the ordering and checkout process.
Still, if we had to choose between infinite options + confusion or fewer options + seamless ordering, we would definitely choose the easier option.
Perhaps the best way to summarize Green Chef’s menu and ordering process is to compare Apple’s operating system to that of Android.
Sure, Android may offer more customization but that comes with a cost of fragmentation, late rollouts for some phones and occasional confusion.
We like iPhones and we like how Green Chef has organized their user funnels.
Pricing Options
Pricing options vary greatly as you have to multiply the total number of servings/people (1-4 people) by the number of diet types (of which there are 7), on top of which you have to add two “Family” plans.
So the cheapest price would be the Vegetarian plant for 2 persons at $10.49 per meal/serving, which equates to $71.94 for the box (6 meals total) including shipping costs.
We feel like $10.49 per meal is VERY reasonable, especially considering with the vegetarian diet EVERYTHING is USDA-certified organic. How many other places can you get an entirely organic meal for under $12?
On the other end of the spectrum, the most expensive option for a 2 persons would be the Paleo and Keto diet options, which come in at $14.99 per meal/serving or $98.94 per box (6 meals total), including shipping.
This makes sense as Paleo and Keto diets are more restrictive and comprised of higher price-tag ingredients.
Green Chef Pricing Options
| Vegetarian | Vegan | Omnivore | Carnivore | Gluten-Free | Paleo | Keto | Family Sized Omnivore | Family Sized Carnivore | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost in USD Per Meal/Serving | $10.49 | $11.99 | $11.99 | $13.49 | $13.49 | $14.99 | $14.99 | $11.99 | $12.99 |
| Total box cost in USD (6 servings per box) *including shipping | $71.94 | $80.94 | $80.94 | $89.94 | $89.94 | $98.94 | $98.94 | $104.92 | $112.92 |
How Does It Compare?
Pricing for various Green Chef options are just about middle of the road, if not slightly on the higher end of the pricing spectrum, compared to their main rivals like Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Blue Apron and Plated.
Consumers should keep in mind though the fact that Green Chef has put their money where their mouth, er, brand name is, and gotten USDA certification for their organic meals as well as official gluten-free certification.
This all takes time and energy and ultimately money, so for the value the pricing is very fair indeed with all the certifications and quality taken into account.
Aggregate Reviews
When it comes to making purchasing decisions it is always good to ask your friends and co-workers if they have any recommendations.
Similarly, when shopping online it is good to get reviews and ratings from as many diverse sources as possible to form a more well-rounded opinion.
Green Chef has overall pretty solid reviews across various websites and review platforms. Just a few of the most popular mediums include:
- Better Business Bureau: A+ rating from the BBB itself and a 3.68 out of 5 stars from BBB user ratings.
- Yelp average score of 3/5 stars based off of 308 consumer reviews.
- An overall score from Consumer Reports (consumerreports.org) of “excellent”.
- A Sitejabber average consumer review score of 2.5/5 stars based off 44 reviews.
- Green Chef has also received positive commentary from Ellen, Vogue, Real Simple, People, Buzzfeed and more.
Overall Aggregated User Review Score
Overall, aggregating the scores, which were mostly “slightly above average” with the exception of Sitejabber, Green Chef gets an aggregate score of 4/5.
This is solid enough to warrant anyone interested in giving it a try in our opinion.
Pros
- USDA Certified Organic
- GFFS Certified Gluten-Free
- Easy To Use Menu
- 7 Healthy Popular Diet Options
- Fair Pricing
- Eco-Friendly Packaging
Cons
- Some May Find Easy To Use Menu Limiting
- Not the Cheapest Option
- Subscription-Based Pricing, No One-Off Purchase Option
- No Dessert Options
Are Coupons Or Discounts Available?
Coupons and discounts are definitely abundant with Green Chef. In addition to seasonal promotions they offer up to $50 off your first purchase.
This discount is automatically applied to your order on the checkout page and is a nice introduction to the service.
There are also coupons available via other 3rd party websites, many of these are simple $40 or $50 off your first purchase, which since the site automatically (as of publishing) adds that, there isn’t a terribly high incentive placed on these 3rd party discounts.
The best promotions we could find were on sites like Groupon, which offered up to 61% off.
To get access to future promotions it would be a good idea to sign up to Green Chef’s mailing list to get news and discounts sent directly to your inbox.
Mr. Meal Delivery Summary
Overall we have to admit we are quite impressed with Green Chef. We like their healthy options and ease of ordering.
While we’d prefer the ability to make a one-off purchase and not subscribe right away, we understand we could also just cancel and that would be alright.
The ease of ordering is refreshing, especially compared to the growing number of meal kit delivery companies that seem to be offering too many different customization options which just makes the whole ordering process confusing.
What Do You Think?
Have you tried Green Chef? Do you have some insight that you would like to share with our readers? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, we’d love to hear them.
The more we share the more people can make informed buying decisions with confidence!