A 70-80+ work week doesn’t leave much time for grocery shopping, prepping, cooking, and bringing a healthy lunch (make that breakfast, lunch, and dinner) to work. You’re forced to eat takeout three times a day and helplessly watch your waistline grow and your energy level and focus shrink.
An Alternative Exists, with meal delivery services
In recent years, the meal delivery market has expanded to cover a variety of tailored services for busy professionals, including ready-to-eat meals, weekly groceries, daily smoothie ingredients, and even healthy snacks, all delivered to your office or home.
Meal delivery services sell healthy pre-cooked, individually packaged meals in bulk. Most services offer a weekly delivery of fully cooked meals in individual containers. No grocery shopping, no cooking – just heat, open and enjoy.
Why use a meal delivery service?
Stay focused, get more done
When you’re getting crushed on a deal, you barely have time to eat, let alone walk down to the food court.
A stack of fresh and healthy prepared meals in the office fridge ready to go after microwaving for 2–3 minutes, means you have a workday with fewer interruptions and more focus
Healthy body, healthy mind
In general, meal delivery services are healthier than restaurants and food courts. While it is possible to find healthy takeout options, it’s not easy when the typical American diet is loaded with “taste-bud pleasing” salt, sugar, and fat.
Meal delivery services cater to specific dietary needs like Paleo, Vegan, and lactose-free, which are often a nightmare to fulfill in your typical food court.
Spend less, get more
A typical ready-to-eat meal delivered by Freshly can cost as low as $8.99 per meal. In comparison, a steak burrito with guacamole from Chipotle in NYC will cost $11.49.
While these savings may sound small, $2.50 a meal adds up to $1,250 a year if you eat out lunch and dinner five days a week for 50 weeks a year. If you add a $30 dinner at a restaurant instead, then these savings jump to over $5,000 a year.
Recommended meal delivery services
There are hundreds of meal delivery services covering most cities in North America. Get started with a Google search “meal delivery [insert city name here].”Even easier, I’ve consolidated a list of a few good meal delivery options.
Ready-to-eat meals make the most sense for extremely busy bankers, but you could also try a meal kit service if you enjoy doing a bit of cooking.
For the ‘kitchen challenged’
Ready-to-eat meal delivery
● Portable Chef
● Provenance Meals
Healthy snack delivery:
● NatureBox
For the ‘kitchen friendly’
Meal kit delivery (for those who are kitchen friendly):
● Blue Apron
● Chef’s Plate (Canadian focus)
● Purple Carrot (plant-based meals)
Grocery delivery:
● ThriveMarket (paleo focus)
● FreshDirect (also do ready-to-eat meals)
Smoothie ingredient delivery:
● Daily Harvest
● Green Blender
Save even more time with free coaching
Email me if you need help finding a healthy meal delivery service in your area. Nutrition and meal planning is a service I offer through my 1:1 coaching program; it’s free for DealRoom readers.
For more ideas on staying healthy at work, check out my article on How to find fast and healthy food court meals (even if that deals got you crazy busy).
