If you’re familiar with the ultimate dinner party host, entrepreneur, and Snoop Dogg’s BFF, Martha Stewart, you might also know about her foray into meal delivery services. Marley Spoon is Stewart’s curated seasonal farm-to-table meal kit service with meals you prepare and cook in under 30 minutes.
When you’re busy and don’t have time to plan meals and shop, it can be enticing to order in or dine out at a restaurant, although you may wind up with large portions. Meal kits can offer nutritionally-dense, portion-controlled meals while still being convenient. (1) Plus, if you’re cooking with friends and loved ones, it’s an added bonus to spend quality time with them and possibly learn new recipes together.
There are lots of meal kit options these days, so read on to see if Marley Spoon is the right meal delivery service for you.
Key product features
What you should know
Marley Spoon is a farm-to-table meal delivery service that offers easy-to-make recipes from Martha Stewart’s curated collection.
- Our team likes how Marley Spoon has more than 100 recipes, including desserts, to choose from each week.
- The starting price for a meal starts at $10.99–$12.99, which is slightly more expensive than a few competitors.
- Marley Spoon is great for couples and families who want to try new flavors and cooking techniques.
What is Marley Spoon?
Marley Spoon is a meal delivery service that provides meal kits and prepared meals. This service offers many options for different types of diets: low-calorie, low-carb, gluten-free, quick and easy, vegetarian, vegan, and keto-friendly. The current menu has Italian, Mexican, Mediterranean, Indian, American, Jamaican, and Vietnamese dishes.
Much of Marley Spoon’s operations are in Australia, and 77% of the food is sourced locally. (2) The cage-free organic chickens are sourced from Europe. The tofu is made from soybeans grown in the United States, Canada, and Australia. To minimize the impact on the environment, Marley Spoon grows some of its produce, like baby spinach, in vertical indoor gardens, where it can control the environment by recycling and reducing its water use.
For nights when there’s no time to prep a meal, you can choose Tray-Bake dinners that you heat in the oven. Our testers find these meals tastier than microwaved meals. Tray-bake meals include Beef and Wine Ravioli with Spinach, cheesy Chicken Parmesan, and Ready-to-Heat Chicken Cutlets.
“Making options like this much easier during busy, on-the-go nights can be a challenge,” says Chris Mohr, PhD, RD. “If you work outside the house and/or have kids going in a variety of directions, the ability to make a quality meal without much fuss or hassle—or a lot of dirty dishes—is a game changer.”
To get the $10.99 per meal rate, you need to order six meals for four people. If you’re feeding two people six meals per week, the cost increases to $12.99 per meal.
Shipping is a flat fee of $11.99. The company delivers to most continental United States and ships from fulfillment centers in New Jersey, Texas, and California. Going on vacation or on a business trip? Not a problem. You can pause your subscription or skip a week as needed.
If you want to manage your subscription from your smartphone or tablet, the Marley Spoon app is available to download on Apple and Google devices. Your order comes with a recipe card with step-by-step instructions and pictures. You can also view recipes on the app if you prefer. You can also use the app to rate recipes or send free boxes to your friends to try.
If you’re looking for cooking inspiration, you can visit the Marley Spoon Facebook page or Instagram with videos of people cooking recipes and pictures of meals.
Specs
| Starting price | $10.99–$12.99 per meal |
| Shipping cost | $11.99 |
| Shipping area | Continental U.S. |
| Meal type | Meal kits, prepared meals |
| Number of meals per week | Two to six |
| Meal options | Everyday variety, gluten-free friendly, low-calorie, low-carb, picky eater, quick and easy, vegan, and vegetarian |
| Cancellation method | Online |
Our experience with Marley Spoon
Marley Spoon is designed to feed two or four people between two and six meals per week—plus, it’s family friendly. Our tester who tried Marley Spoon used it to feed her family of four. On the Marley Spoon website, she selected their dietary preferences (you can select more than one), entered her zip code, email, and home address to set up the subscription.
After entering payment information, our tester began choosing her weekly meals. Marley Spoon offers meal recommendations based on the meal plan selected during sign-up, but she was easily able to switch meals for something else she and her family preferred.
Our tester ordered meal kits to make Mustard Glazed Salmon with Sugar Snap Pea Salad, Vegan Jerk Black Beans and Rice with Mango, and Quick Sweet and Sour Chicken for her family of four. She liked the freshness of everything that arrived in her box. The dishes took less than 30 minutes to prep and cook, which for a busy working mom, she appreciated, especially when trying to feed the family during soccer season.
What we liked about Marley Spoon
We like being able to select the delivery date and a time slot that works for our schedule. Not all services allow you to select the time of day, which is very important for our tester. Another thing we like about Marley Spoon is its appreciation for people who help others. It offers hero discounts for people in the military, students, teachers, first responders, medical providers, and government employees.
Marley Spoon offers a wide variety of healthy cuisines, including the Mediterranean diet. The Mediterranean diet, chock full of fresh fish and veggies, gets accolades for its health benefits—from reducing the risk of age-related diseases like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular conditions, dementia, bone loss, and cancer. (4)
The recyclable cardboard box was well-insulated from the hot North Carolina sun, and everything arrived fresh and plenty cold. The ice packs are recyclable after you cut them open and throw out the ice pack filler. Also, much of the packaging is recyclable, including the insulation liners made of paper and plant-based recyclable foam, produce and pantry trays, jars, and bottles.
Even though our tester is a home chef, she found the recipes’ instructions were easy enough for a beginner cook to follow. She would recommend this service for a beginner home chef.
What we would change about Marley Spoon
Although you can select gluten-free friendly meals, there’s still a risk of cross-contamination. So this service may work for people who choose a gluten-free diet, because of a personal preference, but is not guaranteed safe for someone with celiac disease. True celiac disease is a condition in which the immune system attacks the small intestine when people ingest gluten, which can lead to malnutrition, liver issues, and anemia. (5)
If you believe you might be experiencing symptoms of celiac disease, check out our list of best at-home celiac disease test kits.
Mango ripeness was another issue our tester encountered. Packagers should ensure produce is ripe before shipping. A key ingredient, the mango, in the Vegan Jerk Black Beans and Rice with Mango wasn’t ripe enough to use. Our tester swapped it out for corn, but it affected the overall flavor, and she would have enjoyed it more with all of the recipe ingredients. Mangos are a nutritional powerhouse with up to 20 vitamins including vitamin C, vitamin A and beta carotene, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). (6)
How to choose the right meal delivery service for you
Choosing the right meal delivery service for you depends on several factors: whether you want to cook or just heat up meals, your budget, and your dietary needs and preferences.
Dietary preferences
Depending on your health and nutritional needs, you want a service that you can customize, whether you are looking for a plan that is high in protein, low in carbs, low-calorie, or offers plant-based meals.
Some services do a better job than others in labeling potential allergens during processing and packaging, which is very important because severe allergies can cause anaphylaxis, which can be deadly. (7) We like when meal services offer nutritional information on their website with a full ingredient list you can preview before you buy.
Much of Marley Spoon ingredients are organic, but not all. If you’re interested in researching more options, read our review of the best organic meal delivery services.
Budget
How much you are willing and able to spend per meal every week depends on your budget. Marley Spoon offers slightly more expensive meals, and the added flat shipping rate of $11.99 may be a little pricey for some. That said, Marley Spoon often offers discounts through promo codes.
Ordering
In reviewing meal delivery services, we look for a website or app that is easy-to-use and intuitive. Although we prefer to review menus and recipes before entering credit card information, not all websites offer a sneak peek. Meal delivery services that provide upfront pricing get our vote, and we don’t like to find out about hidden fees, or billing practices that aren’t clear. Being able to pause, skip a week, give a box to someone else, or cancel altogether should be smooth and simple.
How we test meal delivery services
Signing up for a meal delivery service like Marley Spoon can make it easier to eat nutritious meals when you’re busy. Letting someone else plan meals for the week takes a lot off of your plate (literally), so you can focus your energy on other things. Delivery services can also provide meals that meet your dietary, caloric, and macronutrient needs. Being able to take your time reading instead of rummaging through the grocery store in a rush will allow you to make more thorough decisions based on your goals.
Not every meal delivery service is a great fit for every person or scenario. That’s why Fortune Recommends™ aims to personally test every meal delivery service we review. Our goal is to provide unbiased, honest feedback to help you pick the right service for you.
Here’s why you can trust our meal delivery reviews.
Every Fortune meal delivery review features:
- In-depth analysis by testers and/or authors who are certified nutritionists and/or registered dietitians
- Testing for portion/ingredient accuracy, taste, and freshness
- Fact-checking and reviewing by qualified experts
At times, we may feature meal delivery services we haven’t yet tested. Until we can try them, we examine each service’s cost, meal variety, nutrition breakdown, and customization options. We then update our reviews once we’ve tested them to highlight everything we liked and didn’t like. Learn how we test meal delivery services here.
Testing criteria
Meal choices—30%
A meal delivery service should provide numerous healthy, nutritious options for every meal of the day. It should also give you as much authority as you want over what you order. Here’s what we take into account in our meal choices rating:
- Multiple options
- Substitutions
- Guidance
- Label transparency
Food quality—30%
We aim to match you with companies that use delicious chef-designed recipes and have the dietary firepower of nutritionists and/or registered dietitians behind them. Here’s what goes into our quality rating.
- Flavor
- Healthiness
- Freshness
Value—20%
Meal delivery services run the gamut in price, but what you receive should feel reasonable for what you’re paying. Here’s what we factor into a program’s value rating:
- Fair price
- Multiple quantity options
- Customization
Customer experience—20%
When assessing meal delivery services we consider whether the box arrives on time and in good condition. If something is not right, we contact customer service to see if the company can offer refunds or replace missed or damaged ingredients. We also see what other customers are saying in reviews to see if there are common themes, praise, or complaints.
- Packaging
- Ease of preparation
- Reviews
- Customer service
Compare Marley Spoon
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| Blue Apron | Hungryroot | Purple Carrot | ||
| Rating | ||||
| Starting cost per meal | $10.99 | $7.99 | $9.69 | $9.99 |
| Delivery area | Continental U.S. | Continental U.S. | Continental U.S. | Continental U.S., and a few zip codes in Hawaii |
| Meal type | Meal kits and prepared meals | Meal kits and prepared meals | Meal kits and prepared meals | Meal kits |
FAQs
How much does Marley Spoon cost?
Marley Spoon meals start at $10.99 per meal and go up to $12.99 per meal, depending on how many people you are feeding and how many meals you order per week. Shipping is a flat fee of $11.99. Occasionally Marley Spoon does offer promotional flash sales, like at the time of this writing, though you have to check the website to stay up to date on these types of offers. You can potentially save up to $260 off your first five boxes, plus free shipping, which brings the cost down to $6.29 per meal—less expensive than some fast food meals. While you are researching, read our cheapest meal delivery service article.
Is Marley Spoon worth it?
Depending on your budget, we think Marley Spoon is a great way to get chef-curated meals and Martha Stewart meal kits sent to your home on a weekly basis while cutting down on grocery shopping. Subscribers can review the Marley Spoon menu with over 100 of Martha Stewart’s favorite recipes you can make at home. We think the Marley Spoon meal kit and prepared meals are worth it.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any diseases.
Our experts
Christopher Mohr, Ph.D., RD
Dr. Chris Mohr is an internationally recognized subject matter expert and speaker and performance coach. Through his facilitation and online resources, he works closely with some of the largest corporations in the world including Deloitte, Delta Airlines, Johnson & Johnson and more to help busy executives all over the world, develop the energy to thrive personally and professionally.
Victoria Burgess, Ph.D., CSCS, CISSN
Victoria Burgess earned her Ph.D. in Health and Human Performance from Concordia University Chicago and holds her NSCA CSCS and Certified Sports Nutritionist (CISSN). She is an adjunct professor in the Human Performance and Nutrition department at Concordia University Chicago & Parker University, where she teaches undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral level courses.
Jessica Coulon
Jessica Coulon is a writer and editor who specializes in fitness, health, nutrition, and science content. Previously, she was an editor for Popular Mechanics and Bicycling, covering pro cycling news, writing how-to guides, and testing all the latest and greatest bike gear. She was also a regular shoe tester and contributor for Runner’s World. You can often find her skiing, riding her mountain bike, and racing with the F1RE female enduro team.
Joana Neziri, M.S., NASM CPT
Joana is a writer, editor, and content strategist focusing on nutrition, fitness, and all things health. After earning a master’s degree in business from the University of North Florida, she began a career in research and digital marketing.
Kelly Uhler
Kelly has a multifaceted background in elder care, health care, and copywriting. She has worked for organizations such as A Place For Mom and Homecare.com, which gave her the opportunity to work closely with families, providing reliable information to help them make informed decisions about their loved one’s health, safety, and quality of life.
Lauren Evoy Davis
Fortune Recommends Staff Writer