Home Chef vs. Blue Apron
Home Chef and Blue Apron are two meal kit delivery services. I have tried them both in my quest to find the best service for my family’s needs. After seeing what both have to offer, I can say than Home Chef provides higher value, at least for me. While both companies are more similar than different, there are some slight differences in quality, packaging, and even how the printed recipes look.
Let me be clearer why I prefer Home Chef over Blue Apron. First of all, I and my husband tried it more times than Blue Apron. And you know, when you try something that is not broken, it doesn’t make sense to fix it by switching to something else.
If I gave more chances to Blue Apron, I might start liking it better, who knows.
Overall, Blue Apron is almost as good as Home Chef; it’s all in the small details. Both delivery services ship meal kits in insulated brown bags, but Home Chef packs each meal in a separate and nicely labeled brown bag, so there is no guessing involved about what ingredient belongs to which recipe.
Blue Apron sends their ingredients in a jumbled mess and it’s up to you to assign them to different recipes. They also use bigger packages and waste a lot more plastic.
For example, 4 eggs arrived packed in 2 huge packages, one of which slipped from my hands when I tied to carry them both and 2 eggs broke.
That’s not a big deal because I had eggs at home, but when I found some type of raspberry vinegar leaking from its plastic bottle,
I had no substitution for that. In short, Blue Apron should put a little more care in their packaging.
Home Chef is currently offering $60 off your first 4 boxes. Blue Apron has an $80 off 4 boxes special going on for July 4th. This is all good, but overall Home Chef meals are a little cheaper at $6.99 per serving. Blue Apron offers $9.99 per serving if you order meals for 2 people and $8.99 if ordered for a family of 4.
Home Chef offers 2 or 4 meals per week for two or four people, while Blue Apron has 2, 3, or 4 meals for families of four and 2 or 3 meals for couples. Blue Apron includes free shipping with all orders and Home Chef does the same, except for the cheapest 2 meal plan for 2 people.
Both companies offer vegetarian options and let you skip or cancel whenever you want. Blue Apron is WW approved and has meat, fish, Beyond Meat, and diabetes friendly dishes. Home Chef serves meat, fish, vegetarian meals, and low calorie options. Variety wise, Blue Apron wins, but Home Chef offers more choices per week with 38 options. Blue Apron offers 11 standard recipes for 2 people, 6 recipes to choose from for 4 people, and 3-4 vegetarian plans. Both companies are flexible and offer customization.
This covers all the basics. Now let’s take a look at recipes themselves, which is where I see the most difference. Home Chef has a huge beautiful picture on one side of recipe to show you how the food should look like. Blue Apron also has a picture, but it’s much smaller and somehow it makes a difference. Right under the picture Home Chef lists nutritional information, which is missing from Blue Apron, tells what’s in the box, and what you will need to produce. It’s usually pots, pans, salt, pepper, and oil. You can find expected cooking time and wine suggestion on both recipes.
Blue Apron also offers its nutritional information, but on a separate printout for some reason. This makes two papers to keep track off. Blue Apron doesn’t inform about how many days your ingredients will keep fresh and doesn’t suggest difficulty or spiciness levels.
On the other side of the recipe you will find preparation and cooking steps for both. There are pictures and clear explanations, but for some reason I found Home Chef’s instructions easier to follow.
All in all I like both, but Home Chef just has pays attention to detail and thus is more pleasant to use. I think I will remain a Home Chef girl in the future!