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In a sea of competitors, Home Chef has emerged as a leading meal kit delivery service, emphasizing flexible, customizable meal plans with speedy recipes tailored to your taste. The service launched in 2013, just a year after Blue Apron, and was acquired by grocery giant Kroger in 2018.  Home Chef is a subscription service for weekly meal kits, so there is no option to buy just one or two meal kits online. New customers sign up via the website or app, and a short quiz helps determine which meal plan is best for you, as well as which recipes and ingredients should be avoided.  Then you’ll choose

We’d suggest Home Chef for anyone who is trying to learn to cook from scratch or lighten their meal-planning or grocery-shopping load. Because many of Home Chef’s meals are fast and easy to prepare and can feed up to six people, it is one of the best meal kit services for families or people new to cooking. It’s also good for people who are fairly specific about what they like to cook and eat, since you can make so many changes and swaps. Because Home Chef makes it so easy to skip weeks — and won’t charge you for doing so — it’s great for those who travel or have unpredictable schedules.

Though Home Chef offers calorie-conscious, carb-conscious and vegetarian meals, based on the three vegetarian meals our wellness editor tried, she wouldn’t say Home Chef is healthy. She wishes her recipes had less cream, cheese and pasta, with more of a focus on healthy grains and produce. However, this depends on the recipes you get and your dietary preferences. As a result, she recommends checking the nutrition facts for each recipe online.

Home Chef’s meal kits are purchased per kit, and you can order up to 6 per week. The per-serving price is $10 to $12 for nearly every plan. The larger plans cost $10 while the smallest — two meals with two servings each — costs $12. This puts Home Chef right in the middle when compared with other services. Home Chef is a few bucks more expensive per serving than Blue Apron and EveryPlate, but cheaper than premium services like Sunbasket, Marley Spoon and Green Chef.  New customers get 30% off their first order, which brings the price down to $7 per serving, plus free shipping (which is origina