I’m a Mom of Two Selective Eaters and I Had Run Out of Meal Ideas Until We Tried Dinnerly

Over the past few years, we’ve all experienced the financial pain of rising food costs. As a parent of young kids who are selective eaters, I feel like I am throwing money directly into the trash every time my daughters push away a plate of food because “it tastes gross.” Not to mention, I constantly feel at a loss as I try to plan meals and get my kids to eat something besides chicken nuggets.

Enter Dinnerly, a meal delivery service that is both affordable and filled with kid-friendly meals, as well as gluten-free, low-calorie, low-carb, vegetarian, and vegan options — all of which can be cooked in under 30 minutes. We’re a family with two full-time working parents, so the time-saving convenience of meal delivery kits that send two to six meals right to the door can’t be understated. Dinnerly stands out because each week’s menu includes a wide variety of options, many of which my kids will be willing to try. So I signed up my family for a week of four servings of three meals. I spoke with three registered dietitians — including one who also tested Dinnerly — about the meals. Here’s how the experience went for my family.

Signing up for Dinnerly is easy.

Simply go to the homepage and click Choose Meal Kit. From there, you can set your menu preferences; Dinnerly uses these to make recommendations each week, but you can change your preferences at any time.

Next, you pick how many servings you’d like and how many meals per week. On the following page, you enter your ZIP code, email address, and credit card information, then choose what day you’d like your meals delivered. The last step is the fun one: choosing your meals.

Choosing the Meals

With Dinnerly, you can choose your meals up to four weeks in advance. If you provided dietary preferences when you set up your plan, the platform automatically selects meals based on that preference. However, you can always see and select from the whole menu for the week — there are more than 50 meals to choose from.

Dinnerly's subscription is flexible. You can skip weeks (this needs to be done a week in advance), change the number of meals you’d like (up to six meals per week), and cancel your subscription at any time.

And I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. Ashley Brafman, RD, who is based in Michigan, also tested Dinnerly and had similarly positive thoughts about the menu. “I like the variety of recipes available, including a wide range of flavors, proteins, and cuisines,” she says, “and I appreciate that Dinnerly sources produce directly from the farmers.” However, she was a little disappointed that there was no way to change or swap ingredients.

I, too, liked that the protein and meal types varied. On offer were pork, beef, fish, chicken, pasta, salads, bowls, and more. There are plenty of familiar foods like Chicken Taco Salad, vegetarian dishes like X-tra Crispy Tofu Sandwiches, delicious Asian recipes like Thai Beef With Coconut Brown Rice, and kid-friendly picks like Cheese Pizza.

With so many meals available each week, there are some repeats, but plenty are swapped from week to week, so you don’t have to get the same meal twice if you prefer variety.

I also appreciated that each meal was tagged with labels like “kid-friendly” and “under 30 minutes,” which helped me filter out what would not work for my family. Christine Byrne, RD, based in Raleigh, North Carolina, describes the items that meal delivery services categorize as kid-friendly as “tasty meals without complex flavors, like pasta with meat sauce or beef or turkey burgers, and the vegetables are often sweeter choices like carrots, peas, corn, and broccoli.”

• Skillet Pesto Tortelloni
• Garlic Butter Chicken With Parmesan Orzo
• Spiced Ground Pork Tacos

In addition to meal kits, Dinnerly has a marketplace so you can add grocery essentials to your delivery and skip a trip to the store. The marketplace also has quick meals and desserts. I did not add any extras to my meal delivery box.

How Much Does Dinnerly Cost?

Dinnerly's meals start at around $5 per serving, and the prices for weekly deliveries range from $46 to $132 per week, depending on the number of servings and meals. Customers have the option of two or four servings per meal and between two to six meals per week. Here’s the pricing breakdown:

Shipping is an additional $11.99 per box.

You can upgrade meals (labeled “PremiYUM”) and add pantry staples. Upgrades and add-on prices vary.

You can save up to $1 per meal on “Saver” meals, though the exact amount depends on the meal.

Overall, Dinnerly’s price per meal is on the lower end, compared with similar companies. Byrne notes that it’s one of the most affordable options out there. “Dinnerly has a lower price point than most services, so it’s a great way to stick to a weekly food budget,” she says.

All of my meals arrived neatly packaged and undamaged.

The box had insulation as well as a large ice pack at the bottom that kept the ingredients chilled. There was no leaking, and the box was well organized and easy to unpack and separate by meal.

However, Brafman had a less positive experience. Because of a shipping delay, her box “arrived two days after the scheduled delivery,” she says. “The ice packs were no longer frozen, the food was room temperature, and it was starting to smell.”

Fortunately, customer service responded to her within 24 hours and credited her account for the full cost of the box.

Preparing the Meals

Each meal came with a recipe card, featuring a picture of what the final dish should look like and step-by-step instructions for preparing it. As someone who considers herself a novice cook (at best), I found these recipes approachable. Instructions were clearly written and easy to follow, but if you’re not confident about your kitchen skills, you can always check the cooking instructions online before ordering your meals to ensure you’re comfortable with the steps.

All of the meals I chose were described as needing under 30 minutes, which ended up being accurate: Each meal took between 20 and 30 minutes to prepare, and all the meals came out looking similar to the photo.

Most meal delivery kits assume that you’ll have some pantry staples to complete the meal, and Dinnerly is no exception. For the meals I chose, just salt, pepper, garlic, and olive oil were not included in the shipment. Cooking required basic tools and cookware that would be found in most kitchens, which is not necessarily true of other meal delivery services.

All of the recipes took a little bit of prep work, but the easiest by far was the tortelloni, since it had few ingredients and I only had to chop the broccoli. The tacos and chicken with orzo were slightly more complicated. Both required a bit more prep, particularly grating the cheese for the orzo and the lime zest for the coleslaw in the taco dish. The coleslaw veggie mix came shredded, but I did have to cut up the pork.

Tasting the Meals

Overall, the meals were tasty. The chicken was good, though the broth was somewhat salty — something that could easily be adjusted by using our own broth if we were to order it again. We especially loved the tortelloni. The tacos lacked flavor, but sometimes that happens when you select kid-friendly meals.

We were mindful of choosing our meals that our daughters would try. Our 8-year-old was happy to sit down and give each dish a fair shot. While she didn’t take to the tacos, she seemed to enjoy the chicken. She tried the tortelloni but wasn’t a fan of the pesto sauce; when we swapped it for some marinara we had in the pantry, she ate a decent amount. It was more difficult to get our 5-year-old to try the meals, even when we plated them with favorite familiar sides. In hindsight, I should have picked at least one meal that I know she’d like (like pizza) instead of three new-to-her recipes.

We received four servings of each meal, and the portions were more than enough. Since our two young kids only tasted the meals, we had plenty of leftovers. If we had older kids with larger appetites, we would have needed extra sides to ensure there was enough food for everyone.

Dinnerly’s menus online and recipe cards provide basic information about the nutritional value of each meal, including total calories, fat, protein, and carbs. On the website, you can also find allergy information. But if you’re following a specific diet or have strict dietary restrictions, Brafman recommends downloading the app.

“It lists even more details,” she explains. “In the app, I was able to see more nutrition information for each recipe, including the amount of saturated fat, sodium, dietary fiber, and total sugars. In addition, allergen information is clearly listed, so you can quickly see whether or not the recipe contains anything someone needs to avoid.” The app displays the full details about which ingredients in each recipe contain an allergen. “So if you accidentally selected a recipe with an allergen, you can see which ingredients you need to avoid and could still use the rest,” Brafman says, which is a really handy tool to keep you and your family safe.

Amie Alexander, RD, based in Australia, looked at the meals my family ordered and acknowledges that they seem “very delicious, varied, and highly nutritional,” however, she would have liked to see a greater variety of vegetables and more whole grains. (In Dinnerly’s defense, there are plenty of options that meet this criteria, but it’s likely that my kids wouldn’t have eaten them, so I prioritized meals I thought they’d actually eat.)

Both Brafman and Alexander note that Dinnerly may not be the best fit for people who follow a special diet for health reasons, like those who have blood pressure or heart disease, or those on low-sodium or low-fat diets. “Depending on your dietary needs, you’ll want to be mindful of which recipes you choose,” Brafman says. “The Hoisin-Glazed Chicken and Tamari Broccoli, for example, is very high in salt. With 2,230 milligrams of sodium and 100 grams of carbs per serving, it wouldn’t be a good choice for someone who needs to follow a low-salt or low-carb diet.”

Still, she continues, “The recipes would provide good, fresh meals at home” for many people, thanks to the amount of fresh produce and ingredients included.

Dinnerly stands out from competitors first for its pricing and second for its kid-friendly options. It offers 10 meal plans (with multiple combinations of servings and number of meals) and more recipe choices per week than many other meal delivery services. This makes it a pretty safe bet for families with picky eaters.

While most meal delivery services offer plenty of options each week, Dinnerly’s weekly menu is vast and caters to numerous diets — vegetarian, low carb, no added gluten, and low calorie, to name a few. Competitors have a much more limited meal variety or a smaller target audience (such as Purple Carrot, which specializes in vegan meal delivery kits), resulting in fewer recipe options.

I would absolutely use Dinnerly again and recommend it to someone curious about meal delivery services. When you compare its prices to an average weekly grocery trip, Dinnerly is really affordable. Plus, it offers so much convenience for someone who doesn’t like (or know how) to cook, isn’t great at meal planning, or is looking for meals that are quick and tasty.

Dinnerly is a particularly great option for families with kids, since it offers so many kid-friendly recipes and advertises itself as “picky eater approved.” That said, if you have any dietary concerns or allergies, it’s worth giving the nutrition information for each meal a look to make sure it suits your needs, since some meals can be high in sodium or carbs and may not be appropriate if you are living with certain health conditions.

Everyday Health is finding the best meal delivery kits by testing over 50 services. First, we research and vet the company and its business practices. Next, we consult registered dietitians to find out what to look for in a meal delivery kit, what to avoid, and about overall nutrition. Finally, we assign professional journalists or RDs to try the service. Ashley Ziegler spent hours familiarizing herself with Dinnerly and its online offerings, gathering experts' insight, and cooking and tasting three meal kit recipes to provide honest feedback.