The Best Vegan Meal Kits You Need in Your Life in 2024

Best vegan smoothies, soups & bowls: Splendid Spoon

Cost: from $9.00 per serving
Vegan options: All vegan
Packaging: Recyclable 
Special Features: Gluten-free. GMO-free. 

Splendid Spoon is the perfect option if you want ready-to-eat, healthy vegan food like soups, smoothies and bowls. Their whole range is vegan.

The Splendid Spoon plant based meal delivery menu offers some of the most delicious-sounding options, such as the coconut curry rice bowl, a brown rice taco bowl with black beans and salsa and the butternut turmeric soup with sweet potatoes and nutmeg.

All their vegan food meal kits are  gluten-free and GMO-free. They’ve ensured all packaging in their plant based food delivery boxes is recyclable, too. They’re also the cheapest vegan meal delivery on this list.

Choose a plan (depending on whether you want breakfast and/or lunch) and the options you want from the weekly menu of vegan meals delivered to your door.

Soup and bowls last up to a week in the fridge or a month frozen, and smoothie have a printed use-by date.

Click here for more information.

Sun Basket

Cost: from $10.99 per serving
Vegan options: Limited vegan options
Packaging: Recyclable and/or biodegradable 
Special Features: Organic ingredients used. 

I used to recommend Sun Basket, which had a dedicated vegan box option and featured recipes developed by an in-house dietitian. Unfortunately they no longer offer a dedicated vegan box and seem to have removed the dietitian from the equation as well.

They do still have vegan options, but they are limited and so I wouldn’t recommend this brand. If you’re looking for an organic vegan meal kit I recommend Green Chef instead.

If for some reason you want to order Sun Basket, whilst they no longer offer the option to select a vegan box, they do have some vegan recipes, so you could select vegan recipes each week, but be forewarned the options are limited.

Some weeks have more than others but it seems many weeks only have three vegan recipe options (two recipes and one prepared meal), meaning you may be left with no choice but to order the recipes for that week – not great if you don’t like one of the dishes.

Click here for more information.

Best for flexibility/best vegan meal plan service: PlateJoy

Cost: from $8.25/month
Vegan options: Vegan options
Packaging: none
Special Features: Great for new vegans. A meal plan creator, rather than meal kit delivery service. Perfect if you want to save money. Gluten free options. Nut free options.

PlateJoy is completely different to the other vegan meal prep companies here. Rather than selling vegan meal kit services where pre-measured food is sent to you, PlateJoy offers a vegan meal plan service.

They send you vegan meal plans, and you do the shopping and cooking — or if you prefer not to do the shopping, you can use the grocery delivery service they’ve partnered with.

Setting up PlateJoy is simple. You just tell enter some details, like your dietary requirements (they have a vegan option!), how many people you cook for and how much time you have available to cook, and they’ll create a meal plan that meets your requirements and preferences.

The questionnaire is really thorough. You can add additional requirements, for example if you have allergies (you can select gluten free, peanut free etc.) or if you need to eat a low-sodium diet.

You’ll also be asked if you prefer seasonal ingredients or don’t mind out-of-season ingredients. You can even note ingredients you prefer to avoid, like spicy food or cilantro for all those cilantro haters out there! 

Other questions PlateJoy asks are whether you want budget-friendly foods or more variety that may cost more, whether you want to batch-cook (and save money) or make smaller amounts, whether you want to try new flavors or prefer familiar and family-friendly flavors and which appliances you have.

PlateJoy’s algorithm actually takes 50+ data points into consideration to construction your personalized meal plans. If you don’t like any of the dishes on your meal plan, you can delete them permanently.

You can also select how many of each meal of the day you’re planning to cook this week — I love the flexibility it gives, especially considering how often many of us change our mind last minute about eating out.

Once you’ve made a meal plan for the week, you have the option of printing out a shopping list or ordering ingredients through Instacart, which deliveries groceries in most major cities. 

One feature I really love is that they ask you which ingredients you already have in your pantry, so you’re not ordering more than you need or wasting any food! Another feature I like is that they combine recipes in the meal plans to minimize food waste.

PlateJoy is ideal if you want help planning meals, are just transitioning to vegan and aren’t sure what to eat or you’ve been stuck in a food rut and need some new recipes and inspiration.

It makes figuring out what to eat much easier, and saves time, while still allowing you to make fresh, home-cooked meals. It’s also a much more budget-friendly option and it means if you’re concerned about packaging waste you can shop for groceries as normal.

Plus, it’s much more complete than many meal kits, which usually only provider dinner and/or lunch — PlateJoy provides recipes for unlimited meals, including breakfast and snacks.

Click here for more information.

Hungry Root healthy grocery delivery

Cost: from $59
Vegan options: Vegan options
Packaging: Recyclable
Special Features: Most foods are pre-prepared and take just minutes to assemble. Some organic items.

Hungry Root is probably the best vegan meal prep delivery service if you’re really pressed for time, as you can assemble meals in 10 minutes or less. Unlike other vegan and vegetarian meal prep delivery services, which still require you to chop or cook, pretty much everything is pre-done for you with Hungry Root.

Hungry Root is different from other vegan and vegetarian meal subscription services in that it doesn’t send you a meal kit, per se. Instead, it sends you a selection of healthy ingredients.

They restock your fridge, according to your preferences (you take a quiz and they suggest foods and send recipes).

You can select vegan from your preferences, along with any allergies.

It’s difficult to compare price-wise, since they price per item, rather than per meal. Packaging is recyclable (depending on your area) but since everything is pre-prepared, it does have more waste than other vegan and vegetarian meal plan delivery services.

Click here for more information.

Best vegan meal box Canada: Plant Prepped (Quebec/Ontario only)

Cost: from CAD$11.66 per serving
Vegan options: Fully vegan
Packaging: Recyclable and compostable
Special Features: Best vegan meal kits Canada, best vegan delivery service for those in Quebec/Ontario. Gluten-free and soy-free options.

Looking for a vegan meal kit in Canada? Plant Prepped is an all-vegan meal kit service shipping to most of Quebec and Ontario.

It’s the best vegan meal delivery service in Canada (in fact, it’s the only all-vegan meal kit service in Canada that I know of!). If you want vegan meal kits delivered to your door and you live in Quebec or Ontario, Plant Prepped is the best choice.

Dishes vary by week, and might include a chickpea “tuna” melt, carbonara with smoky mushrooms and seared asparagus or a baked tofu Buddha bowl with brown rice, sauteed bok choy and a creamy peanut and ginger dressing.

They also have gluten-free and soy-free options available on request.

Plant Prepped’s packaging is made out of 80% recycled content and is recyclable itself and the rest of packaging is mostly recyclable, biodegradable or compostable.

The coolers food is shipped in are made out of corn and can be dissolved in water and used as plant food or even used as fire starters.

Their large containers are made out of plastic and are recyclable and smaller containers are made out of corn and compostable. I like their use of compostable materials! They seem to have a greater proportion of compostable packaging than other companies in the space.

Plant Prepped works with local and artisanal suppliers and try to source local and organic ingredients as much as possible. For example, their soy products are made with soybeans that are grown in Canada and GMO free. Their tempeh is from a producer in Quebec.

If you’re looking for vegan meal delivery in Canada that’s also eco-conscious, it’s your best choice.

Click here for more information.

More companies offering vegan prepared meals

Daily Harvest healthy meals (vegan options)

What are vegan meal prep kits?

If you’ve ever looked for easy vegan meal prep, you’ve likely come across two different concepts: meal kits for vegans and vegan prepared meal delivery. What’s the difference between the two?

• Meal kits are boxes of pre-prepped ingredients, which you still have to cook at home. Usually they come with pre-measured spices and sauces and sometimes even pre-chopped veggies.
• Meal delivery consists of refrigerated or frozen vegan meals, delivered to your home. All you need to do is reheat and eat.

In this article, I’m going to be focusing on vegan meal kits, but if you’re interested in vegan meal delivery, I have an article devoted to that.

Click here to see my guide to the best vegan food delivery services.

Looking for Hello Fresh vegan meals or Blue Apron vegan meals? They don’t exist (for now)!

Unfortunately many of the biggest meal kit services, like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh, don’t provide vegan options, or they provide one only once every few weeks.

What makes a meal kit vegan? Surely, containing only vegan ingredients–but on Hello Fresh’s site, they advise vegan customers to buy their vegetarian meal delivery services and just throw away the non-vegan parts of the recipes, like cheese.

This is completely unacceptable for most vegans, who don’t buy animal products out of ethical or environmental concerns, and even for those who are plant-based for health reasons, this is a really wasteful practice (environmentally and cost-wise). As an ethical vegan and an eco-conscious consumer, I was really unimpressed with this advice.

Fortunately, as you’ll have seen in the vegan meal delivery reviews in this article, more and more vegan meal prep companies are springing up, and meal kit providers are starting to offer plant-based boxes.

You’ll find the best vegan meal kit delivery service reviewed above.

Why and when to order vegan meal prep delivery

Meal kits are a popular way to save time, for example if you’re going through a busy period at work, are in the middle of a move, or have just had a baby.

While vegan food kits still require some cooking time, they cut out most of the food prep and shopping time required to make home-cooked meals. 

A vegan meal prep service is the right fit for you if any of the following are true:

• You want to cook plant-based meals at home, but lack the time to shop and prep ingredients. Ideally you have around 15-30 minutes available to cook meals (as meal kits still require some cooking)
• You’re new to a vegan diet and don’t know what to make/need inspiration, or are looking for a vegan beginner meal plan
• You’re pressed for time because you just had a baby, moved house or are going through a busy time

In any of these cases, vegan meal kits delivery can save you time while still ensuring you feed your family healthy food. They can also offer variety and tickle the taste buds of long-term plant-based eaters who’ve got stuck in a rut.

If you are really busy and don’t have the 15-30 minutes of time to cook, I recommend looking at vegan meal delivery services.

Click here to read my review of the best plant-based meal delivery services.

Vegan meal delivery companies like VegReady will deliver pre-made and frozen or refrigerated meals to your door, so all you need to do is reheat and eat.

If you have at least 15 minutes to devote to cooking, then see reviews above of the best plant based meal kits.

However, bear in mind that all meal kits, vegan or not, are more expensive than cooking from scratch, while being less expensive than takeout or getting prepared frozen/refrigerated meals delivered.

Plus, they create a lot of packaging waste (although the environmental effect of this vs food waste is debatable; see below).

Are meal kits eco friendly?

You may be wondering if there’s such a thing as an eco meal kit. Prior to researching this article, I too questioned the eco credentials of mainstream meal kit providers, most of whom talk about recycling on their sites while sending out ingredients packed in individual plastic packages.

Most people (including myself) wonder how an industry that generates so much waste can ever be eco friendly.

However, looks may be deceiving. Recent studies indicate that in spite of the packaging waste generated many of these products, their average greenhouse gas emissions are LOWER than shopping for ingredients in a supermarket and cooking meals from the food you bought there.

What?!

Yeah, I was shocked too.

The reason for this is partly because of supply chains, and mostly down to food waste. Because vegan meal delivery kits send you the exact amount of food you need for a recipe, there’s no food waste. And food waste currently is currently a huge contributor to climate change.

If food waste were a country, it would the third biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions on earth, after the US and China.

So, ordering vegan food packages just might reduce your footprint. If you’re already running a zero waste/low waste kitchen, that’s unlikely to be the case (so keep up what you’re doing!).

However, if you’re like most people and throw away a lot of food that has gone bad every week, vegan delivery meal kits can help. It appears meal kits, vegan or not, have a lower footprint than your average supermarket basket. When ordering a vegan meal kits this effect if even greater!

If you’re switching from meals including to meat to vegan meal kit delivery services, this will have an even bigger effect on reducing your eco footprint, as studies cutting meat and dairy from the diet can cut an individual’s carbon footprint from food by 73%. Also, if you’re new to a plant-based lifestyle, then ordering plant-based foods from a delivery service can make the switch easier than wandering around a grocery store trying to find the right vegan fresh ingredients.

However, other studies indicate that packaging is a major problem, regardless of the reduction of food waste thanks to meal kits. That’s why I’ve noted which companies use compostable, biodegradable or recyclable packaging. 

Platejoy vs Purple Carrot?

Wondering which to opt for – Purple Carrot vs Platejoy? The services are very different and so it depends on your needs, if you’re new to the vegan lifestyle and how much you want to cook.

Purple Carrot is a typical vegan recipe kit – you select the meals you want for the week and they send you the ingredients and recipes which you then prepare at home.

Platejoy, on the other hand, is a meal planner service. You input your criteria such as any allergies and preferences and it creates a customised meal plan for the week as well as your grocery list.

You do the grocery shopping (though it also integrates with Instacart and Amazon Fresh so you can opt to have the food delivered) and then prepare the dishes using the recipes.

Platejoy offers more flexbility and costs less money. It uses a digital pantry to create smart grocery lists, leaving out items it already knows you have in your pantry, saving you money and being more eco-friendly in the process. Buying your own groceries is always less expensive than a typical vegan meal kit box.

Plus, since you’re shopping for ingredients yourself, you can opt to buy ingredients with less packaging. I recommend Platejoy if you’re looking to cook more or healthier food, want to expand your recipe repertoire, need help meal planning and are on a budget.

Purple Carrot, on the other hand, offers more of a one-and-done service. All you have to do is select your recipes for the week and they send everything to you.

You still have to cook the meals, but you cut out all the time on shopping. I recommend Purple Carrot if you’re really short on time (for example, you’ve just moved or had a baby) and don’t mind spending a bit extra for the convenience of a vegan meal prep box.

Want to save money? Choose Platejoy.

Need to save time? Choose Purple Carrot.

Best vegan meal delivery services

If you don’t have time to cook, you might prefer pre-made vegan food delivered, rather than meal delivery kits. Vegan delivery kits require some cooking time.

If instead you want premade vegan meals delivered to your door, I’ve put together a guide to the best meal delivery for vegetarians and vegans here. 

Click here to read my guide to the best vegan meal delivery services available.

What are your favorite vegan meal delivery services?

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Still looking for some vegan cooking inspiration? Maybe instead of a meal kit, you’d prefer to take a vegan cooking class or look through some vegan magazines or vegan cookbooks for inspiration.

Or, if you’re just looking to try new foods, a vegan snack box subscription might be right up your street.

Find more vegan product reviews.