Whether you’re at a restaurant or shopping for groceries, there’s usually no shortage of vegetarian and vegan options to choose from. Meal delivery services are no exception: Plenty of programs — ranging from popular meal kits like Hello Fresh to ready-made meals like Splendid Spoon — offer flexible plans to fit most dietary restrictions, whether you’re gluten-free or don’t eat meat. Meal delivery services that include vegetarian and vegan plans can provide you with easy-to-cook or ready-made meat-free meals and prevent you from having to sprint to the supermarket each week.
“Nowadays, there are meal delivery services specifically catered towards more challenging dietary restrictions —[they] can make it easier to find meals you can safely tolerate when you can't always rely on unfamiliar restaurants,” said Lisa Moskovitz, a registered dietitian and CEO of NY Nutrition Group.
If you’re ready to shop but don’t know where to start, we spoke to nutritionists and recipe developers about meal delivery services that they think are worth considering and compiled their favorite ones that include vegetarian and vegan plans.
Each of the following meal delivery services was recommended by our food experts. All of them are either all plant-based vegetarian or vegan services or they offer specific plans to fit one of these lifestyles. To make your browsing easier, we note the starting price, serving size and number of meals provided by each service.
Blue Apron is a meal kit service that offers a number of weekly menu items based on your selected meal plan. Its vegetarian plan offers nutritionist-approved recipes made with fruits, vegetables, grains, seeds and more, which can be created with or without dairy products, honey and eggs, according to the brand. The plan serves two people and includes two to four meat-free recipes per week (depending on your plan preferences), most of which the brand says can be prepared in 25 minutes to 35 minutes. Ben Leonard, a chef with online cooking classes platform Homemade, previously told us Blue Apron can be a good option for beginner cooks that are hoping to “learn from the beginning and hone their basic skills.”
Sunbasket offers both meal kits and pre-made non-frozen meals (although you can freeze some of them to cook later, in line with the brand’s cooking instructions). The brand “has a variety of options that can be modified for carnivores and strictly plant-based eaters alike,”Moskovitz said. One of the service's 10 meal plans is the vegetarian plan, which features a variety of dietician-approved recipes and pre-made meals to choose from that are focused on protein, good fats and fiber, according to the brand. If you don’t feel like committing to just one type of plan, Sunbasket lets you mix and match its Fresh & Ready plan with over a dozen meal kits from its weekly rotating menu.
“[HelloFresh] offers quick and easy chef-curated recipes, they use fresh, sustainably sourced ingredients and [they] offer vegan and vegetarian options,” said Lisa Young, adjunct professor of nutrition at New York University. The meal kit service offers over 30 recipes to choose from each week, and you can customize your plan with protein-specific preferences: beef-free, pork-free, seafood-free and veggie. Though choosing the veggie preference doesn’t change the weekly rotating menu HelloFresh provides, it does ensure that you automatically receive meat-free meals for that given menu week.
The brand offers 10 veggie meals (including one vegan meal) within its Classic Plan each week — vegetarian recipes can also be made vegan by opting to remove certain ingredients like cheese or yogurt, according to the brand. The veggie and vegan meals are labeled under each recipe, so you can see which recipes fit your dietary needs when crafting your menu each week.
Splendid Spoon offers more than 50 healthy, ready-made vegan meals and snacks — including smoothies, soups and noodle bowls — that contain no meat, dairy or animal byproducts, according to the brand. You can choose between multiple meal plans, including a Breakfast plan that includes five smoothies, a Lunch option that features five soups and grain bowls or a combination of the two.
“I recommend Splendid Spoon for anyone who wants healthy meals in a flash — they taste as healthy as they are, which is a downside for some and a bonus for others,” said Resnick, who was sent a few boxes by the brand to try out. While you can’t customize the number of meals you get per plan, Splendid Spoon does let you choose how often you want to receive your meals: weekly, biweekly or monthly. You can also choose the On-Demand Box, which lets you order food in bulk.
Purple Carrot offers both prepared meals and meal kits, both of which the brand says are fully plant-based and vegan. Resnick called the meals a perfect mix of “familiar and innovative” and noted that because it’s a plant-based service, “it’s an easy way for people to add more plant foods into their diets without having to fully convert to veganism.” You can customize the number of prepared dinners you get per week — which range from six to 10 frozen meals — or choose three or four recipes from its weekly rotating menu for meal kits each week. Deliveries take place on Mondays, Tuesdays or Wednesdays depending on your shipping location, and you can choose to skip a delivery on any given week.
Price shown for 3 meals of 2 servings each
Plantable offers all vegan, plant-based meals among its two available programs: The Reboot, its signature 28-day program that provides your choice of 48 chef-prepared entrees, and The Quickstart, a seven-day reset program with up to 12 entrees. “The meals are fully prepared with real, whole food ingredients and they're designed to fill you up while also tasting amazing,” said dietician Abby K. Cannon, founder of Abby's Food Court. The meals — which include breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks — are delivered frozen, and Cannon noted they come in a compact container so “they're easy to store in the freezer for when you need a delicious meal fast.” The service also offers an A La Carte program that lets you build a custom box of your 12 favorite meals on the menu.
Factor provides a weekly rotating menu of over 27 pre-prepared meals designed by dieticians — you can choose the service’s Veggie + Vegan plan for plant-based recipes that are free of all animal products, including meat, fish, eggs and dairy, according to the brand. Young recommended this service specifically because it caters to a number of diets and dietary needs, including keto, paleo, low-carb, vegetarian and high-protein. You can choose from five plans, ranging from four meals per week up to 18 meals per week.
“The food quality has been excellent, and while your options are a bit more limited if you have a nut allergy like me, I still find great options on the menu every week,” noted Select writer Justin Redman, who uses Factor. Resnick added that the service “is incredibly reasonably priced for the quality of health-oriented food they offer.”
All of Sakara Life’s ready-made meals are vegan, plant-based and gluten-free, as well as organic and dairy-free, according to the service. “Sakara is very popular among my clients because of [its] varied menu, top-quality ingredients and delicious taste,” Moskovitz said. Programs include the Signature Nutrition Program, which comes with up to three meals per day and your choice of two, three or five days, and the 30-Day Reset, a four-week program that lets you choose at least two meals (breakfast, lunch or dinner) for up to five days per week. You can choose to do a one-week trial program if you’re just getting started, or you can pick a recurring subscription program that automatically renews each week with a set menu of meals that rotates weekly and seasonally.
Moskovitz praised Freshly’s flexible plans and easy, reliable meals, noting that they “score high in the taste department.” The service’s plant-based plan offers between four to 12 pre-made “Purely Plant” meals per week that have no meat and no dairy (however, the brand notes that not all products marketed under the “plant-based” product line are vegan). All of the meals are chef-prepared and single-serve (with some multi-serve sides and proteins to share), according to the brand. Freshly says its meals notably aren’t frozen and typically have a refrigerated shelf life of about three to five days.
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Mili Godio is an associate reporter for Select on NBC News.
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