After Years of Price Increases, Which is More Cost-effective: Shopping, Meal Boxes, or Takeout?
Why Food Delivery Costs Are So High in California, Compared to Groceries
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We calculated the costs of dining out via food delivery services, meal kits, and cooking at home for the same meals in the Bay Area.
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By Jessica Roy, Personal Finance Columnist | Updated October 12, 2024 at 7:28 a.m. PT
Is buying groceries and cooking still cheaper than having pre-selected meal kits or restaurant-prepared meals delivered to your home?
I am an advocate for home-cooked meals.
Since entering the personal finance field in 2017, I’ve tracked every penny. To my surprise, ordering a few pizzas weekly or dining at nearby sushi restaurants significantly impacted my monthly budget.
I can cook. But standing by the stove after long commutes felt daunting. What should I make? Most times, I bought grains, coffee, and ingredients for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from the supermarket. I deliberately avoided Trader Joe’s frozen section because I knew I could make tastier stir-fries or pasta dishes. Yet, despite my ability to prepare a delicious, healthy dinner from scratch, time was not on my side.
So, I adjusted. When shopping at Ralphs, I started planning meals for the week. My lunchtime fare shifted from cafeteria leftovers to Pyrex containers of homemade meals. I achieved what most American politicians dream of: balancing the budget.
Simultaneously, meal kits became popular. If you listened to podcasts in the late 2010s, you likely encountered promotional ads for HelloFresh, Blue Apron, Sunbasket, or other competitors. These subscription services deliver ingredients and recipes to your home, reducing dinner planning and preparation.
However, I never subscribed due to the perceived waste from packaging and higher costs compared to groceries. Ralphs was a five-minute walk away, and I enjoyed grocery shopping. Additionally, package theft was rampant in my neighborhood at that time.
The same applied to popular food delivery apps. My husband and I didn’t have children, so if we opted for someone else to cook for us, it would be by dining out at restaurants.
Over the past few years, inflation has affected everyone’s grocery budget. With two young kids now, frequent restaurant outings are less feasible.
The Consumer Price Index shows that food prices in grocery stores have risen 28% since 2019. Although the rate of increase has slowed down, a slight rise is expected next year. According to Too Many Foodboxes, a meal kit comparison website, meal kits increased by 14.8% from 2019 to 2023. During the pandemic, people became more accustomed to using delivery apps like Uber Eats and DoorDash, but menu prices and various fees have significantly driven up costs.
My personal finance team and I decided to investigate firsthand. Each of us selected a meal kit service (Blue Apron, Gobble, HelloFresh, or Home Chef), a food delivery app (DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats), and a local grocery store (Ralphs, Raley’s, Whole Foods, Sprouts). We then chose an available recipe from the meal kit supplier and attempted to recreate our orders at the stores and apps.
Here’s what we found:
In four different stores, apps, and kits, prices were fairly consistent: a meal kit dinner costs around $13.50, delivery is about $30, while cooking at home ranges from $5 to $10 per person.
We considered the following in our calculations:
- Only food costs were included, not total purchases. You might have leftover hamburger buns or mascarpone that need another use. That’s the nature of grocery shopping.
- If driving to the store, we included a standard mileage cost of 67 cents per mile for round trips, even though most people don’t shop just for one meal.
- Restaurant portions are usually much larger than what you make at home, theoretically leaving leftovers. In contrast, my meal kit recipes split 12 ounces of pasta among four people; I wouldn’t expect any leftover lunches.
- Meal kit prices vary based on frequency and quantity: a Blue Apron dinner for two twice weekly costs $14.74 per person, while ordering five dinners weekly for four people brings the cost down to $8.54 per serving.
So yes, even with inflation considered, buying groceries and cooking at home remains significantly cheaper than meal kits or restaurant-prepared meals delivered to your door. However, price isn’t the only factor in food decisions. In most households, women are primarily responsible for meal preparation, bearing the mental burden of choosing recipes and the physical labor of shopping and cooking. These time and efforts have value. Similarly, washing a stack of dirty dishes by hand saves more than delivery.
While meal kits and deliveries come with packaging waste, groceries often result in some food waste if you can’t find uses for leftover ingredients like mascarpone. Most grocery items are also wrapped in plastic, much like meal kits. A lifecycle analysis by Michigan University researchers concluded that meal kits have lower greenhouse gas emissions compared to grocery store meals.
For most people’s grocery budgets, buying a meal kit for every meal may not be feasible. The USDA provides food plans to help budget groceries. Based on our moderate-cost plan, we would spend $247.80 weekly on groceries, averaging $2.95 per home-cooked meal. None of the recipes cooked in this article cost that little—this doesn’t even account for my kids’ voracious appetite for fresh berries.
However, what we tried to recreate were meals provided by meal kits, aiming for a more upscale dining experience. I conducted similar analyses on regular meals and found them much cheaper: lemon chicken thighs and potatoes at $2.92 per person, pasta with frozen meatballs and quality sauce at $2.95 per serving, and rice and beans with onions and limes costing just $0.74 per person.
For the busy individual, meal kits overall are cheaper than indulging in a private pancake delivery.
Jessica Roy
Personal Finance Columnist
Jessica Roy is the personal finance and practical columnist for The Chronicle. If you have questions about living better or managing your money, send her an email.
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