🍳 Is meal delivery worth it when factoring in my time?

Deciding whether to pay for an online meal prep company or cook your own food comes down to the value of your free time. While delivery services offer massive convenience, they carry a premium price tag over a standard grocery run. Use this calculator to determine if paying for meal delivery is actually worth it when you factor in the hours you spend in the kitchen.

Meal delivery services provide excellent food quality compared to typical frozen dinners, but they are not exactly cheap. As Joey Suggs explains, the factory meals, if he would have not had a discount, would have come out to weekly about $145 for 10 meals.

Megafit was slightly higher, bringing his average right around to $15.50 per meal. Enter the price of the service you are considering below.

Making your own meals is strictly cheaper on a cash basis. As Joey Suggs notes, when it comes to cooking at home, typically he spends anywhere from $100 to $140, and that gets him around 10 meals. So anywhere from that $10 to $14 per meal mark.

However, you have to value your labor. As he points out, cooking takes up to 2 hours, and packaging everything is messy, which takes another 30 minutes or so. If you genuinely enjoy cooking, your time cost is zero. If you hate it, your hourly rate applies.