New Zealand’s Best Meal Kits: HelloFresh, My Food Bag, Woop & More

What’s on offer in NZ’s meal delivery scene?

Meal kits, meat packs, and produce boxes on a subscription or try-it-and-see basis: we take a look at the choices on offer from the big players to more niche providers.

My Food Bag

Best for: weightloss nutrition

The days of vegetarian or meat-eater being the key choices for meal kits seem distant. Nowadays there are so many preferences you can add to the mix when ordering from My Food Bag. One of the brand’s latest offerings, the GLP-1 Support Meal Plan, for people on medications such as Wegovy and Ozempic, is designed by nutritionists and chefs to feature smaller, high-protein portions made using wholefoods, as both ready-made and easy-to-cook recipes. My Food Bag has also launched a service providing gift boxes, care packages and ready meals without a subscription – with delivery nationwide and often next-day.

myfoodbag.co.nz

Hello Fresh

Best for: plant-based eating

Hellofresh.co.nz

Wonky Box

Best for: reducing food waste

Wonky Box aims to rescue produce that might otherwise go to waste due to cosmetic standards, adverse weather, or oversupply, supplying produce direct from growers from Auckland and Christchurch depots. A medium size fruit and vegetable box with 10 varieties (including three types of fruit) to feed two to three people costs $32. You can add “wonky” pantry staples to your order, and more recently the company “rose to the occasion” including rescued flowers. Perfectly good rescued blooms gracing the table of the perfectly good rescued food you’ve turned into something delicious = perfect match.

wonkybox.nz

Woop

Best for: reduced meal prep

Since launching a decade ago, Woop has steadily serviced the premium end of the meal kit market – more of the prep is done for you, as though some cheffy elves have swept in to do your mise en place. Sometimes the elves make way for celeb chefs adding recipes from their restaurants to your home dining table – Nic Watt will return in October with recipes from his three establishments, and Pepper & Me’s Cherie Metcalfe is spicing up Father’s Day with an add-on gift box available now.

Bliss Box

Best for: organic produce, minimal packaging

Looking for Oooby? It changed its name to Bliss Box in July this year, Bliss being the family name of the owners who founded the business in 2010. The offering remains the same – organic produce delivered to your door in Auckland and Waikato, with a sharpened focus on supporting dietary needs like FODMAP, Keto, GF and DF. Choose from a lineup of produce boxes like The Big Bliss Box, which feeds a family of four “or a couple of produce lovers” for $89.99, with 8-10 varieties of vegetables and 2-3 of fruit, and allows you to customise to suit your preferences. Or if you’re happy to take it as it comes, the $49.99 value box is a great pocket-friendly option. You can add on other items like grouped essentials (eggs, milk, bread), avocados, meat and salmon. The delivery charge is quite hefty at $18.99 - unless you crack the $150 mark in which case you pay $12.99 - but they say their hands-on and plastic-free packing process means it’ll arrive in peak condition.

blissbox.co.nz

Farmers Box

Best for: lower-priced fresh produce

Farmers Box offers fresher produce at low prices, delivered in Auckland, Hamilton and Whangārei. You can build a box or subscribe weekly or fortnightly, choose from non- or organic options, and choose your delivery day, with next-day delivery an option. Market prices are passed on to customers – the Hot Deals reads like a straight-up antidote to depressing supermarket pricing.

Farmersbox.co.nz

The Avo Tree

Best for: Avocado addicts

Avoid the avocado lottery and get a happy reveal every time by subscribing to The Avo Tree. They might not know how to use an apostrophe (avo’s what?) but they know how to handle your precious cargo – gently, with no cool storage. They stock a few varieties with helpful explainers on the differences, and supply you with tips on how best to ripen and store fruit once it’s arrived, and recipe ideas.

theavotree.co.nz

Lots Of

Best for: Bakers

Realising you’re out of an essential ingredient midway through baking is one of those irritating occurrences that will never happen if you’re signed up to Lots Of, which delivers kits of four or eight baking mixes monthly, ensuring the tins are always filled with Anzac biscuits, peanut brownies, gingerbread, or many more Kiwi classics. You can subscribe for up to three months at a time, the greater the commitment, the lower the price per batch.

Lotsof.co.nz

Cater Station

Best for: special occasions

If you want to feed a crowd without having to think or do, Cater Station delivers boxes of build-your-own meals. Choose how many mouths you’re feeding, then scroll the choices – from salmon bagels to loaded potatoes and tacos, gyros and banh mi. Also, sweet treat kits to make the likes of ice cream sandwiches, pancakes, and Christmas dipper donuts.

caterstation.co.nz

Meat mailer

Best for: carnivores

If you’re lucky enough to have enough room in the fridge or freezer, stocking up on meat via delivery can save time and money, and there’s a plethora of butcheries now offering variety boxes to cover all your bases. Check out The Meat Box for the whole gamut of animal proteins, plus pantry add-ons; Greenlea for beef, Ovation lamb, and First Light venison, and Waipawa for premium Hawke’s Bay beef and lamb. The Kiwi Butcher Shop makes cooking for a crowd easy with meat kits like fried chicken, burger bonanza, and work shout – it’s based in Taranaki with free local delivery in that region over a certain spend, and delivers around the urban north island for $25.

Dietary needs

The large-scale meal kit suppliers cater for a range of dietary needs including gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan and low-carb within their wider scope of offerings, and there are some businesses set up to cater specifically to dietary requirements and preferences. Christchurch-based Flip Grater, of GG Bistro and Grater Goods, this month added to her portfolio of plant-based businesses by acquiring The Green Dinner Table, a meal box provider that delivers the goods to make vegan meals for two or four people – with an option to make things gluten-free for an extra charge. They deliver to customers in Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland.

greendinnertable.co.nz

Ready-to-eat

If turning on an oven or microwave is the only thing you want to be doing, there are plenty of players delivering ready-to-eat meals, chilled, ready and waiting for your appetite to come along.

Farro delivers a range of mains, sides and desserts and you can add bundles to see you through periods or pad meals out for more hungry mouths.

farro.co.nz

FED thoughtfully packages up meals to suit busy couples and new parents, for get-well gifting, or to save a student in your life from another week of instant noodles.

getfed.co.nz

Jess’s Underground Kitchen Gift Hampers range from a night off cooking for a family to multiple meals for a plant-based pal. juk.co.nz

Tastemakers

Launched at The Auckland Food Show last month, Tastemakers does away with the recipe card and invites cooks to get creative. Subscribers receive a mystery box of eight to 10 premium ingredients once a month, they get as creative as they like with those ingredients plus common pantry staples like oil and flour, then upload their creations to be judged by a panel of “Tasteraters”. There are prizes up for grabs, plus bragging rights of course. Currently available to Auckland-based subscribers, priced at $69 to feed two. tastemakers.co.nz

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