Prepared Meals Delivered

How do you choose a prepared meal delivery company? Finding the right balance of needs, quality, and price is how you find value. Are you looking to buy gourmet meals? Are you looking to send senior meals to a relative? Are you send meals as a gourmet food gift? The best place to start is to look for what you need these meals to accomplish.

This page offers tips on what prepared meals are. We also offer guidelines on How to choose a meal delivery servce.

What Is A Prepared Meal?

We define a prepared meal as a complete meal, or complete meal components, that has been cooked and only requires reheating to serve. Reheating methods may include microwave, oven, or stop top, via a sous-vide cooking method. Sous-vide means to cook under vacuum in a pot of hot, but not boiling, water.

Basically, we are looking to match time-starved consumers with companies that deliver precooked meals that satisfy their time limitations. Singles, senior citizens, caretakers, and families with newborn children are also very interested in this service. Reheating prepared food by microwave is our preferred method of choice.

Companies such as DineWise, Home Bistro, and Healthy Chef Creations, offer individual prepared meals, which include and entree, side.dish, and vegetable. The other companies, such as Artiko Chef, Family Chef, Magic Kitchen, Personal Chef To Go, Schwans, PureFoods, and Send A Meal focus on package and meal plan sales. Often you are buying one meal in a quantity that serves two to four people. The convenience of single serving compete meals will certainly help consumers create customized menus and get more variety from their order.

Prepared food will normally come frozen, but there are a few that can deliver fresh prepared meals. This type of delivery service is normally available in large metropolitan areas and areas with dense populations. Most companies that offer a local fresh delivery service can have a national frozen prepared meal service with a different menu.

Gourmet Meals

Most companies refer to the selections on their menu as gourmet meals. Technically, the word gourmet means fine food, made from high-quality or exotic ingredients, and with skilled preparation. Some meal delivery services, especially in the niche of weight loss meal plans, may overuse, or exaggerate the term.

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How prepared meals are normally shipped.

Prepared Foods Shipping Rates

Shipping rates will vary from company to company, but are generally closely priced. You can expect shipping fees to start around $15, and increase with the size of your order.

As your order prepared foods increases, more dry ice, larger coolers, and even multiple coolers may be needed to fulfill your order.

Consumers will get the value from their shipping dollar with larger orders instead of more frequent smaller orders.

FedEx and UPS do not normally require you to be home to sign for your delivery.

100% Satisfaction Guarantee

Most prepared meal delivered providers offer some form of guarantee on the quality of their food products and the condition in which your meals will arrive. It is important for you to verify the terms and conditions of the guarantee offered by each company.

Some companies may refund your money.

Some may replace parts of your order.

Some may give you the option of what is best for you.

We invite you to visit the consumer reviews for any company you may be interested in, and come back to share your experience with our other readers.

This section of prepared meals does not include weight loss meals, and focuses on what should be the best of the gourmet meal offerings.

Just like the gourmet meal you might have a fine dining establishment, no nutritional values are considered for the companies listed in this section. However, some companies listed in the prepared meals section, also have nutritional menus.

Prepared Meals Delivered

Most national meal delivery service companies will ship their meals via FedEx or UPS. Frozen prepared meals are delivered on dry ice, which is a carbon dioxide frozen to a solid state. It is normal to find warnings in the packaging alerting you not to handle dry ice with your bare hands. The gas will evaporate shortly after it arrives at your home, and then it is safe to handle the bag the dry ice is in.

In order to maintain frozen temperatures, Styrofoam coolers are used to have your meals delivered. Meals will generally stay frozen even in the case of the dry ice evaporating. This should not be a concern as the technology and experience of the industry as nearly mastered the art of shipping frozen meals.

In the event your dry ice did evaporate, your food should still be frozen to the touch. If you have any questions regarding the quality of how your meals arrived, you should immediately contact the customer service department of the company you purchased your meals from. Generally speaking, prepared meals that may have thawed should not be refrozen.