Meal delivery kits have become the new way to do the weekly shop. They promise pre-portioned ingredients for creative and easy recipes that are delivered to your door.

This means they can help us to avoid wasting money on groceries and unused foods each week, by providing us only  with the ingredients that we need. And as they supply the recipes too, you can get some meal inspiration along the way.

It’s a great idea but does it really work? Here we examine 2 top plant-based grocery delivery services, Hungryroot and Purple Carrot.

Both of them feature in our Best Meal Subscription Box shortlist as well.

Although both are plant-based, Purple Carrot serves exclusively vegan meals with incredible colors and creativity.

While Hungryroot has plant-based dishes but also those with meat, fish and dairy in them as well. Here’s how they stack up against each other.

• What are Plant Based Meal Kit Deliveries?
• Hungryroot vs Purple Carrot Comparison Table
• Purple Carrot – Who They Are and Are They Worth It?
• Hungryroot – What Meals do They Offer and What do Customers Say?
• Which is Better, Hungryroot or Purple Carrot

What are Plant Based Meal Kit Deliveries?

Plant-based meal delivery services offer you weekly deliveries of ingredients for recipes that you have selected each week. These could be for any meal that you choose, including breakfast, lunch, dinner and some also provide snack and dessert options too.

You’re also provided with the right quantity of ingredients to make your chosen meal so that you have just the right amount. The recipes provided can help you to plan for exciting and healthy meals each week, without the hassle. These weekly grocery deliveries offer you:

• Creative recipes which are quick to make.
• Ingredients for these recipes, pre-portioned to just what you need.
• Many put an emphasis on sourcing fresh, quality ingredients.

What’s Wrong with Ordering my Own Groceries?

Ordering our own groceries means you can add in whatever you want, but there are a few niggling issues that come up for a lot of us each week.

1. Wasted foods. A lot of us end up throwing out food that we weren’t able to use that week as it has expired. While it may not seem like much if you add it up the cost of disposed ingredients each week can become a surprisingly large sum over the year (as well as being a waste of good food).
2. Meal planning takes time. The alternative to this is for us to have our own recipes, quantified for the number of people in our household and to create a meal plan for each day of the week. This can work but it does tend to take 1-2 hours each week to find new recipes, adjust the quantities, source the ingredients and add them to a meal planner.
3. Inspiration. We’ve all fallen into the habit of making the same meals over and over again as we’re all comfortable with them. Meal services that provide different recipes each week mean that your meals can get changed up, without your having to go our and research new ones to try.

It’s for these reasons that meal kit subscriptions have seen such a huge growth in customers in recent years. They aim to offer the convenience of healthy, inspiring recipes at home, with minimum inconvenience to yourself and without the wasted groceries.

Here’s how 2 top meal delivery services Hungryroot and Purple Carrot compare to each other:

Hungryroot Review

Hungryroot was founded in 2015 and since then has grown at an incredible pace. It was started by Ben McKean who wanted to help people make better food choices by offering a customized grocery service.

Hungryroot say that they don’t consider themselves a meal kit service or a grocery service, but something in between. You get quality ingredients that you can use however you want.

They provide recipes for the ingredients if you want to follow them. If not you can use the ingredients for your own recipes too. And they also give you the option to add on or swap out groceries at the end of the order.

Although they are not an exclusively vegan service (they have meat and fish dishes), their meals are generally plant-based.

Their ethos is governed by 3 main criteria that they aspire to:

1. Foods are nutritious and made from whole ingredients.
2. Recipes are quick and easy to prepare, all take under 10 minutes to make.
3. Food and recipes taste great.

Prices start at $59 per weekly delivery and you can skip or pause your subscription at any time. After you have placed your order you can pick out extra groceries yourself to add to them.

30% off + free gift: Hungryroot

Is Hungryroot Vegan?

Although it isn’t an exclusively plant based grocery service, it has a large selection of vegan ingredients and recipes. For example it has a cream pasta sauce made from cashew nuts instead of cream.

It’s therefore best known as a plant-based meal kit service and it’s meals are based around vegan recipes.

As well as offering meat and fish options, it also caters for a large number of other dietary requirements with plans that are:

• Dairy free
• Gluten-free
• Egg-free
• Shellfish-free
• Peanut free
• Tree nut-free
• Soy-free
• Pescatarian
• Vegetarian
• Vegan

They also allow you to include combinations of the above. You can see all the options and get started with their quiz here:

Start a Hungryroot Meal Plan

While they offer meals that don’t contain these ingredients or allergens, it’s important to note that they do not operate a nut-free facility. So meals could be prepared in the same facility where foods with nuts or other allergens are prepared.

Is Hungryroot Organic?

Although not all their ingredients are organic, they source organic produce where possible.

You can find the full list of their organic and non GMO ingredients on their website. Some examples of their organic ingredients are their tofu and chicken sausage products among others.

They also commit to having ingredients that are:

• Free of partially hydrogenated oils
• Free of artificial sweeteners
• Free of high-fructose corn syrup
• Free of artificial colors
• Free of artificial preservatives

Here’s a full list of their foods here: Hungryroot Fresh Healthy Foods.

You can add individual ingredients to your order which will have the foods needed for your chosen recipes.

30% off + free gift: Hungryroot

Is Hungryroot Really Healthy?

Yes, recipes are well-balanced, varied and with a large selection of vegetables included in each dish. The meals are created with health and wellness in mind and are made with wholesome ingredients.

Their happy customers rave that their meals are healthy and that they love the variety of the recipes, as well as how tasty they are.

How do I start with Hungryroot?

You start by answering a few quick questions about yourself and what meals you want them to provide for you. Here are the steps you go through:

1. Dietary Requirements. Your dietary requirements along with any allergies or intolerances that the plan should take into account.
2. Meal Quantities. How many meals and snacks you will need each week and for how many people. You select numbers of each meal: breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. You can choose if you want these every day, some days or skip meal options.
3. Desserts. You choose whether you want desserts included. These tend to be healthier dessert options with some nutritious ingredients included in them too.
4. Approve your selections. Here Hungryroot calculates your groceries and gives you an itemized bill with how many groceries you will be getting. To help you out they show you this in 2 formats:

By Serving:

• Number of lunch servings each week.
• Number of dinner servings each week.
• Number of ‘ready to eat’ foods: breakfasts, snacks or sweets.

By Recipe:

It says at the bottom how many different recipes you’ll be getting and how many servings of each.

You can adjust the servings you want here. They then ask you to pay, after which you can see the exact groceries and recipes you’ll be getting. You can also add groceries onto the order after checkout.

You can see a list of all their foods: Hungryroot Fresh Healthy Foods.

Or you can get a personalised quote by starting to build your meal plan: Hungryroot Meal Plan.

30% off + free gift: Hungryroot

How Many Meals Do you Get with Hungryroot?

How many meals you get depends on what you have requested.

You have the flexibility to get meals every day of the week, for some days of the week or for no days of the week.

You can also specify whether you want 1, 2 or more servings for each meal.

Each meal is delivered as portioned ingredients with a recipe card. Each recipe takes under 10 minutes to make which is something a lot of their reviewers love about the service as well.

Can you Lose Weight on Hungryroot?

If you struggle to stick to a diet or meal plan, Hungryroot could help you lose weight by providing you only with the ingredients you need, with nothing extra.

Since you don’t have any extra snacks or sweets lying around, it can take away the temptation to go for those.

Instead you would have Hungryroot’s healthier snacks to enjoy. Even their sweets are made with healthier ingredients – like their almond and chickpea cookie dough.

While you still need to plan your own portions for your own requirements, Hungryroot can help you to eat healthier by giving you a meal plan that you enjoy.

If you have great tasting food every day, you can be be less likely to grab the fast food or sugary snacks, and instead be more satisfied with the meals.

How Much Does Hungryroot Cost?

Lunch and dinner meals are between $8.49 and $9.99 per serving, depending on how many you order. The more you order the lower the price within this range.

Breakfasts, snacks and sweets on the other hand are all $3-5 a serving, depending on how many people they’re for.

Weekly deliveries start at $59 a week and shipping is $6.99 initially but is offered for free if you spend $70 or more.

The exact cost for your box would depend on how many meals and servings of those meals you want delivered each week.

As an example I’ve included my quote here which was for 2 people with some of the week’s breakfast, lunch, dinners and snacks.

In total it was $144.07 For:

• 10 meal servings (4 lunch and 6 dinner servings)
• 4-6 breakfast servings
• 5-7 snack servings
• 2-3 sweet servings

On average this is $5.54-$6.86 per serving across all the different food categories.

30% off + free gift: Hungryroot

Hungryroot Reviews

Hungryroot has scored an average of 4.4 stars out of 5 from 2124 reviews from 2 sites, including their Facebook page and Trustpilot.

Most of their customers commented that the food was:

• High quality
• Healthy food
• Really easy to prepare (under 10 minutes)
• Good quantities per serving
• Delicious taste
• Many plant-based recipes but they also offer recipes with meat and dairy too

Some felt that a few things could be improved like the customer service, or being able to customize their order even further and having a greater variety of recipes.

There were a few cases were users didn’t like the items substituted in their order when additional groceries that they had selected were not available.

Is Hungryroot Worth It?

Hungryroot offers the convenience of a pre-planned meal service by delivering quality ingredients in the right portions and easy instructions for the meals.

If you think about how much of an ordinary weekly shop can go to waste, or how many evenings you have to pop out to the corner store to get ingredients which are sold more expensively, not to mention the time saved planning meals each week, then cost-wise it can make a lot of sense.

You are given only the ingredients that you need for the recipes that you wish to make for that week.

The ingredients delivered are wholesome, fresh foods which are put together into tested recipes. It can be a great solution for those of us who are short on time.

If you’re busy with work or family and need to have homecooked meals whipped up quickly, then this service could be a great help.

$20 off your first order: Purple Carrot

Purple Carrot Review

Purple Carrot is a plant based meal kit delivery service which aims to offer creative and delicious recipes that you never imagined, all from a plant-based diet.

It was founded in 2012 by Andy Levitt who used a plant-based diet to help with Crohn’s disease 2 years earlier. He found the results the diet had both on his general well-being and directly on his case of Crohn’s disease so dramatic that he founded Purple Carrot.

All their recipes are based on the premise of delicious, plant-based recipes. But they also have some which are particularly protein-full, for athletes or those who wish to keep their protein levels high. There are also gluten-free options too.

$20 off your first order: Purple Carrot

Is Purple Carrot Organic?

Currently a number of Purple Carrot ingredients are organic but not all. These are the non-produce items such as the beans, nut milks, tofu, tempeh, vegan cheeses and yogurts which are all organic.

The rest may not be organic due to their not always being able to source them but they say that this year in particular they will be striving to increase the number of organic products on offer.

Their ingredients are all:

• Plant based and entirely vegan.
• Preportioned to create delicious and healthful meals.
• Offered with recipes so that you can get inspired and enjoy a varied plant-based diet.
• Meals can be prepared in under 30 minutes.
• Boxes are delivered weekly with all the ingredients that you need to prepare your chosen recipes.

$20 off your first order: Purple Carrot

Can you Lose Weight on Purple Carrot?

As it’s a health-based meal kit, it’s possible to lose weight on Purple Carrot if you wish to.

You are given set recipes in set portions so it can stop you from grabbing unhealthy meal or snack options on the days that you haven’t had time to get a meal ready.

The set portions can also help with portion control, although they do provide enough food to be a generous portion so you may want to adjust the portions to your weightloss plan.

You can also filter meals for ‘high protein’ which can help you to build muscle if you’re exercising.

$20 off your first order: Purple Carrot

How to Get Started with Purple Carrot?

It’s a quick 3 step process to get set up, after which you can make tweaks to your meal selection and add on items too. These are the 3 steps:

Step 1: Select what you care about the most?

• High protein
• Chef’s choice
• Gluten free

Step 2: Advise how much time you want to spend on cooking. As little as possible or you’re OK with a little more. All recipes should be able to be prepared under 30 minutes.

Step 3: choose an initial meal plan. The choices are:

• 2 serving plan which offers either 3 or 4 dinners per week.
• 4 serving plan which offers either 2 or 3 dinners per week.

Check out: You then check out on this basis.

After checkout: after checkout you can then customize your order by:

• Choosing your recipes
• Adding breakfasts and snacks if you wish.

Orders are delivered weekly but you can also skip or cancel your box at any time.

You can see this week’s menu to get an idea: Purple Carrot Weekly Menu

$20 off your first order: Purple Carrot

How Much does Purple Carrot cost?

Each serving costs between $9.99 – $11.99 depending on how many servings you order. The more servings you get the lower the price they can offer. So for example:

2 serving plan: 3 or 4 dinners a week (each dinner has 2 servings). This works out at $11.99 per serving.

4 serving plan: 2 to 3 dinners per week (each dinner has 4 servings). This works out at $9.99 per serving.

Shipping is free with both options.

Once you’ve chosen your plan and checked out, you can select your recipes from a choice of 8 each week, and add breakfasts, lunches and snacks to your order.

You can get a personalised quote: Purple Carrot Meal Plan

$20 off your first order: Purple Carrot

Purple Carrot Reviews

Purple Carrot scored 4.2 stars out of 5 from reviews online.

Customers said they loved:

• Having an exclusively plant-based meal kit delivery that tastes great.
• The color and flavor of the meals.
• Creativity of the recipes.
• Freshness of the ingredients.
• That you can see what your menu options are a month in advance
• Timely delivery.
• Great customer service.

Some said the recipes took a little longer than predicted but that the end result was worth it.

A few people seemed to have some confusion with their order or with what they ordered. It’s not clear if this was an error from their side or something wrong with the ordering system. Either way Purple Carrot customer service seemed to resolve most of them.

The majority of reviewers were very happy with the meals and especially appreciated getting a plant-based grocery delivery service with creative recipes.

Is Purple Carrot Worth It?

Yes it’s definitely a service that’s appreciated by its customers because of the creativity of its recipes, the variety of the ingredients and the fact that they’re exclusively plant-based meals.

It’s rare to see so many colorful and original plant-based recipes. Purple Carrot definitely delivers when it comes to creating healthy meals and is a great option for those looking for inspiration.

The price is slightly higher than Hungryroot’s but not by much. Most of their customers noted how amazing the recipes are and even how full they felt afterwards.

Which is Better Hungryroot or Purple Carrot?

Both Hungryroot and Purple Carrot are established meal kit delivery services with great reviews from a lot of their customers. Each offer plant-based recipes with pre-portioned ingredients. While Purple Carrot offers exclusively plant-based recipes, Hungryroot offers vegan, vegetarian and meat recipes too.

If you have specific dietary requirements or allergies then Hungryroot may be the better option for you as they allow you to add in a range of dietary options for your meals including nut and shellfish allergies. Purple Carrot only offers the option of vegan recipes (as all are plant based) and gluten-free recipes as well as a ‘high protein’ content option. Otherwise you have to filter the meals according to the ingredients that you want to avoid. Neither service prepare meals in a nut free facility which may be a concern if you suffer from severe allergies.

In terms of the plant-based recipes on offer, Hungryroot does have recipes with a faster prep time of 10 minutes or less. While Purple Carrot recipes can take up to 30 minutes, but the recipes are really colorful and varied as well as original and creative.

Whichever you choose to try first, I hope that they bring some exciting and tasty flavors to your weekly dinnertimes, and that they save you time on the meal prep and shopping each week.

Hungryroot FAQs

Does Hungryroot have meat?

Hungryroot does have meat and fish options, along with a large selection of vegan and vegetarian recipes and ingredients.

How is Hungryroot delivered?

Hungryroot delivers your ingredients in a cardboard box with ice packs and insulation.

How long does Hungryroot last?

The ingredients can last up to 48 hours during transit because of the packaged insulation. And it’s recommended that you transfer the perishable content to the refrigerator once you have received your delivery.

Purple Carrot FAQs

Does Purple Carrot do prepared meals?

Yes, they have prepared meals in addition to their meal kits. All you need to do is heat them up (less than 5 minute) and it’s ready to eat!

Is it easy to cancel Purple Carrot?

Yes, you can easily cancel your Purple Carrot subscription at any time through your online account. Just remember to cancel it before your next shipment has been processed.