Whether you’re eating at a restaurant or shopping for groceries, there’s typically no shortage of vegetarian and vegan options to choose from. Meal delivery services are no exception: Many popular meal kits and ready-made meals offer flexible plans to fit most dietary restrictions, including vegetarian, gluten-free and dairy-free diets. Meal delivery services that include vegetarian and vegan plans can provide easy-to-cook or ready-made meat-free meals and prevent you from having to sprint to the supermarket each week.
If you’re ready to sign up for a meal delivery plan but don’t know where to start, I spoke to nutritionists and recipe developers about services they think are worth considering and compiled their favorite ones that include vegetarian and vegan plans. I also rounded up meal delivery services I and other NBC Selected staffers have tried and love.
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Best vegan and vegetarian meal delivery services
“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,” says Lisa Moskovitz, a registered dietitian and CEO of NY Nutrition Group.
Each of the following meal delivery services comes recommended by our food experts and/or NBC Selected editors who have tested them. All of them offer either completely plant-based vegetarian or vegan services, or they offer specific plans to fit one of these lifestyles. To make your browsing easier, I note the starting price, serving size and number of meals provided by each service.
Best overall
Sunbasket has 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). NBC Selected reporter Zoe Malin tried Sunbasket for a week and loved how varied the options were for her gluten-free and pescatarian diet. “I can usually only eat one or two offerings off a meal delivery service’s weekly menu. But with Sunbasket, there were almost too many delicious dishes to choose from,” she says. Malin also loves the service’s pre-made meals, which taste like homemade meals without needing to put in the work, she says.
Sunbasket has a variety of options that you can, depending on whether you eat meat or strictly follow a plant-based diet, says Moskovitz. One of the service’s nine meal plans is the vegetarian plan, which comes with a variety of meal kits 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.
Best for beginners
Blue Apron has 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 five meat-free recipes per week (depending on your plan preferences), most of which you can prepare in 25 to 35 minutes, according to Blue Apron.
Best budget-friendly
“HelloFresh offers quick and easy chef-curated recipes, they use fresh, sustainably sourced ingredients and [they] offer vegan and vegetarian options,” says Lisa Young, adjunct professor of nutrition at New York University. I tested HelloFresh and it quickly became one of my favorite services — I love that the recipes are easy to follow (which, as a non-cook, is key for me) and the meal options are both tasty and varied.
The meal kit service has 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.
Best health-conscious
Splendid Spoon has a menu of more than 50 healthy, ready-made vegan meals and snacks to choose from, including smoothies, soups and entrees, all of which have no meat, dairy or animal byproduct. You can order subscription boxes of five meals or more. The service also offers a five-day detox program, in which you get five days worth of meals.
“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,” says Ariane Resnick, a special diet chef and certified nutritionist. The brand sent me a few options of their smoothies, entrees, detox shots and soups to try out, and I loved the variety of flavors. The soups and entrees are also easy to prepare, and I can freeze them to eat later (which is great if I’m traveling that week). The smoothies, which come in more than a dozen delicious flavors, kept me full throughout the day, so I didn’t find myself binging on unhealthy snacks in the afternoon. The soups were my favorite part of the service: Not only did they taste great, but they also come in fairly large portions, so they were filling and served as a healthy alternative for lunch or dinner.
Splendid Spoon lets you choose how often you want to receive your meals: weekly, biweekly, every three weeks or monthly.
Best all plant-based meals
Purple Carrot has both prepared meals and meal kits, both of which are fully plant-based and vegan. The meals are a perfect mix of familiar and innovative, says Resnick, who adds that, “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.
Best ready-made vegetarian meals
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Factor has 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 service. I tried Factor for a week and found it quick, convenient and tasty, which is great for busy weekdays when I don’t have time to cook. Young also recommends 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.
Best splurge
All of Sakara’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,” says Moskovitz. 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 Metabolism Reset, a one-, four- or eight-week program that sends you a specifically curated menu 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.
How to shop for vegan and vegetarian meal delivery services
When shopping for a vegan- or vegetarian-friendly meal delivery service, our experts recommend keeping in mind the following factors:
- Plant-based plans: Look for services that offer plant-based or fully vegan meal plans. Many services will offer several vegan and vegetarian options within their weekly menu, and you can update your preferences to automatically show these meals.
- Serving size: If you’re feeding multiple family members who follow a vegetarian or vegan diet, you’ll want to consider meal kits with multiple serving sizes (typically ranging from two to eight servings). If you’re just feeding yourself, it’s probably best to select a single-serve prepared meal.
- Customizability: Browse services that provide a weekly rotating menu with several vegan and vegetarian options that you can select or swap in.
- Delivery dates and times: Many services will offer customizable plans to choose which days (and sometimes times) you want to receive your kit. Most will also let you pause plans or skip weeks as needed.
Meet our culinary experts
At NBC Selected, we work with experts who have specialized knowledge and authority based on relevant training and/or experience. We also take steps to ensure that all expert advice and recommendations are made independently and with no undisclosed financial conflicts of interest.
- Lisa Moskovitz is a registered dietitian and the CEO of NY Nutrition Group. She is the author of “The Core 3 Healthy Eating Plan,” a program that focuses on simple and sustainable ways to lose weight.
- Ben Leonard is a chef and educator for companies and brands nationwide, including Sur La Table, Greenpan and more.
- Lisa Young is an adjunct professor of nutrition in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University.
- Ariane Resnick is a special diet chef and certified nutritionist. She’s also a recipe developer and has written about nutrition, health, wellness and identity for a variety of platforms, including The Kitchn, Livestrong and Simply Recipes.
- Abby K. Cannon is a dietician and the founder of Abby’s Food Court, a private nutrition practice that focuses on women’s health and eco-friendly lifestyles.
Why trust NBC Selected?
I’m an updates editor at NBC Selected who has written about meal delivery services for over three years. For this article, I spoke to chefs and nutritionists about what to look for in a vegetarian and vegan meal delivery service, and gathered their recommendations for the best ones to try out.
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