This Genius Hack Turned My Meal Kit Habit Into a Money Saver

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How I gamed the system and scored months of healthy meal kits for more than half off. Here’s the playbook.

David Watsky Managing Editor / Home and Kitchen

David lives in Brooklyn where he’s spent more than a decade covering all things edible, including meal kit services, food subscriptions, kitchen tools and cooking tips. David earned his BA from Northeastern and has toiled in nearly every aspect of the food business, including as a line cook in Rhode Island where he once made a steak sandwich for Lamar Odom. Right now he’s likely somewhere stress-testing a blender or tinkering with a toaster. Anything with sesame is his all-time favorite food this week.

Expertise Kitchen tools | Appliances | Food science | Subscriptions | Meal kits

If you’re attempting to eat like an adult for once and cook at home (revolutionary, I know), meal kits can be your armor against grocery store impulse buys. 

Most meal delivery services offer customizable options for specific dietary needs in case you’re gluten-free, vegan or allergic to nuts. After extensive “research” (read: eating my way through a slew of meal kit boxes), these are the best meal kits I’ve tried.

But here’s where it gets juicy: before you go full commitment-phobe and marry one service, try this sneaky little strategy. This meal delivery discount hack lets you sample the most significant hits — HelloFresh, Blue Apron, Purple Carrot, EveryPlate — for up to 75% off. It’s like speed-dating for dinner, except you don’t have to pretend to laugh at bad jokes.

After years of testing and subscribing to various meal kit services, I’ve compiled a list of tips to help you get the most out of your meal kit subscription. No single tip is more fruitful than taking advantage of meal kit signup offers for massive discounts on months of meals.

With a little organization, this semisecret will allow you to try months, even up to a year of meal kits and prepared meal delivery for far less than it would cost to buy the groceries yourself. Here’s how to do it (hint: it involves taking advantage of promo deals and canceling at the right time) and a snapshot of how much you’ll save. 

How to get months of discounted meal kits

Nearly every meal kit I’ve tested (here’s how CNET tests meal kits) allows you to try several weeks of meals for a super cheap promotional price, typically about 50% off the regular price. These hugely discounted sign-up offers are often as low as $5 or $7 for a full recipe that will feed two, four or even six people. That’s about $2 to $5 per serving, and it’s about as affordable a meal as you’re going to find during days of inflation.

Gobble’s deal is shorter but just as tempting. That service lets you try your first six servings (three meal kits) for just $36.

There’s the mother of all cheap meal delivery services, EveryPlate. This budget-friendly brand will send your first few boxes for an impressively low price per meal. It varies by week, but currently, your first box will cost under $2 per serving.

I can attest firsthand that meal kits make meal-making a breeze, as you won’t have to labor over deciding what to make, shop for ingredients, or do loads of prep (since many of them do the measuring and a good deal of the prep work for you).

Even without these deals, we crunched the numbers and using a convenient meal kit is just a few dollars more expensive than shopping for the same groceries. Factor in one of the offers and it’ll be significantly cheaper than buying the ingredients. Plus, you won’t have to take annoying trips to the store for months — or even as long as a year, if you try them all.

What are the best meal kit deals?

Don’t worry, I’ve made this easy and rounded up the best meal delivery deals here , so you can plan to try them all for a great price. Some promotions are likely to change from month to month, so grab the ones that look best to you now and I’ll be sure to update the post so you can find the best deals when it’s time to try a new service.

Don’t forget to cancel after the promo ends

The big catch is that if you don’t cancel after the initial promotion ends, the service will almost certainly keep sending you boxes of meals but at the full price. Some will let you cancel right after you place your order, while others will require you to wait until all the promo boxes have been delivered. In cases where you’re made to wait, I suggest setting a reminder to cancel as soon as possible. 

The worst-case scenario is you’ll get an extra week’s delivery of meals at a higher price. Certainly not the end of the world, but if you’re trying to take advantage of those rock-bottom offers, you’ll have to stay on your game. 

Meal kits don’t have long-term commitments

Most of these deeply discounted sign-up offers won’t rope you into any long-term contracts. They make it reasonably easy to pause or cancel your service, unlike those fury-inducing gyms. For safety’s sake, read the fine print for each service and promotion before entering your credit card information. 

Prepared meal services have promo deals, too

If you’re not interested in cooking, many of the top prepared meal delivery services also offer sign-up incentives. I’ve found that the discount by percentage isn’t usually as good as with meal kits, but there are still some cheap meal options. Much like meal kits, you’ll be able to cancel your service after you’ve taken advantage of the deal — or keep ’em coming if you like what you get. 

Even online butchers such as ButcherBox and grocery delivery services such as Thrive Market and Hungryroot have some hefty new customer deals. I say try them all and let everyone else pay full price.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.