Quality Home Cooking to Your Door
Pros
- Offers you recipes with pre-portioned ingredients per week
- You can choose your favorite dishes from their 22 meal recipes.
- Allows you to add desserts, coffee or extra protein to your order
- Good vegetarian options
- Per serving price - $6.99
Cons
- Adds a $8.99 shipping fee to all your deliveries
- Doesn't include specialized meal plan choices
- Doesn't include special meals for people with severe food allergies or other dietary needs
- Total price per serving - $10.99
Martha and Marley Spoon Review
Who doesn’t love a menu option that offers a wide variety of recipes and exotic dishes? In the meal delivery industry, apart from healthy and nutritious recipes, uniqueness and creativity are the two important features that help a good meal kit delivery service to earn its name and reach the top of the competitor’s list. Martha and Marley Spoon is one such company that made its presence felt in the meal delivery market with its creativity and unique recipes. Although a comparatively new company, Martha and Marley Spoon has fast created a reputation in the industry with its food, recipes and a menu that offers you 22 absolutely interesting dishes to choose from.
Established by the joint association of television personality Martha Stewart and Marley Spoon in 2016, the company has developed and spread across the country in a very short time. With their team of in-house recipe designers and chefs, Martha and Marley Spoon has exceled itself in developing perfect and interesting recipes each week for their customers all across the world. The menu includes several options for vegetarians as well as non-vegetarians which definitely helps it get the attention of all their customers. Marley Spoon, as it’s also called, also offers you the choice to choose any non-entrée recipe of your choice on a regular basis which makes it more interesting for its customers. However, you surely need good cooking skills to make these absolutely delicious recipes at home to make sure that they taste just as perfect as expected.
Cost-wise, the price of a Marley Spoon kit is almost similar to the other meal kit delivery services available in the market, which makes Marley a good options for all those who love to experience new recipes and some great cooking time.
What we didn’t quite like about Martha and Marley Spoon meal kit services is that they are way too specific with their equipments. You will not see any alternatives mentioned in their recipes, thus making their customers choose recipes with equipments that are available in their homes. The ingredients provided were also a little disappointing. Not everything was fresh and high quality. In fact, we received a yellow kale leaf instead of a fresh green one. The quantity of the ingredients was enough for two people to enjoy a healthy and full meal. Also, they do not mention the allergens present in a recipe, making it risky for people who are allergic to certain food items. In short, despite its good services and variety of meals, Martha and Marley spoon doesn’t edge over its competitors such as Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, or Green Chef.
Overall, Martha and Marley is an ideal meal kit option for people who love to cook and eat different gourmet dishes without spending much time in the kitchen. It would have been a completely different story had they focused a little more on their flavors.
Unique Features Martha and Marley Spoon
Offering fresh and easy meals to their customers, Martha and Marley Spoon has spread its wings in the meal kit industry in a very short time. The website of this food service is remarkable, especially the recipes and their pictures. But, the question is do they really offer such delicious and mouth-watering dishes? Well, let’s take a look at the various unique features offered by Martha and Marley Spoon to their customers.
Easy to Sign-up
Signing up for Marley Spoon is just as easy and basic as all other websites. Once you open their online portal, you will be asked to choose their meal plan for either 2 people or 4 people and the number of days in a week for which you wish to order their meal. At Marley Spoon, you can choose anything from 2 to 5 meals in a week. Also, if you are a vegetarian, you will be asked to choose your food preference here. This food preference can be changed whenever you want, thus allowing you to enjoy a wider variety of recipes. Each portion at Marley Spoon costs you $8.99 and an additional $8.99 shipping charge for each meal box.
Once you have chosen the portion and your food choice (vegetarian or non-vegetarian) you will be asked to provide your address and your email id where you would like your meal box to be delivered. The meal boxes are usually delivered between 8 a.m and 9 p.m. However, I would suggest that you plan cooking the Marley Spoon meal box, only after you have received it. In our case, the meal box arrived late in the evening around 8 p.m. on the delivery day.
Large Menu
This is one of the most attractive features offered by Martha and Marley spoon. The meal kit delivery service offers you a huge variety of 22 recipes that are healthy, nutritious and made out of fresh ingredients. The large menu ensures that everyone gets a recipe that is perfect for them.
Vegetarian Friendly
If you are a vegetarian, you don’t have to worry at all. Marley Spoon offers you several vegetarian food options in its weekly menu list. The recipes are delicious and mouth-watering, making you enjoy your dish to your heart’s content, such as their spinach salad and spicy oven fries, Pan roasted cod sided with herb butter and potatoes.
Offers Meat Options
If you are a meat lover, Martha and Marley Spoon offers you an enormous list of options to choose from. You will find everything right from pork, fish, chicken and also other food items in their weekly menu.
Offers Non-Entrée Kits
Another interesting feature about Marley Spoon is that they offer special non-entrée meal recipes in their menu. For instance, you will find all the ingredients to make smoothie or cookies. So, you can enjoy baking a plateful of cookies instead of cooking a lasagna.
Packaging
Packaging of your ingredients plays a great role in ensuring that you offer only top quality ingredients to your customers. However in most cases, a lot of waste is generated which actually makes you feel guilty for ordering meals from meal kit services.
With Marley spoon, almost all the packaging material is recyclable. You will see details on the packaging about the packing materials. Yes, they do use plastics, but in a very little amount thus causing very little plastic waste in the environment. Also, they use re-usable bottles and containers in packing their ingredients which you can use again later. They also use frozen gel packs to keep all your ingredients cold and fresh, whike they used un-dyed cotton as an insulation in the meal box.
Quick and Easy Cooking
Every recipe offered by Martha and Marley Spoon is mostly easy and require very less preparation. In fact, you can cook your meals in just about 30 to 45 minutes. However, there are some recipes that still take more preparation and cooking time. We tried their seared steak salad and it took us less than 30 minutes to cook the dish.
Fresh and Good Quantity Ingredients
The ingredients used in the meals were fresh and enough to make meals for 2 people with a good diet. However, there was one yellow kale leaf in our ingredients which was a little disappointing. The dishes tasted good but not excellent as they appeared in the pictures.
Easy and Smart App
Martha and Marley Spoon also has a smart application that you can use to check their recipes. Once you sign-in, your orders are automatically saved in your application. It also offers you a favorite tab that lets you track your favorite recipes which you would love to repeat again.
Easy Cancellation
If you are not satisfied with their meal recipes or wish to skip a meal, you can easily make the changes in just a few minutes time. In fact, the cancellation procedure is a simple, no trouble method unlike many other meal kit services.
Note: Make sure that you cancel your order or subscription a week/ 6 days in advance.
Food Plan Options
Simple and straightforward meal plans, Martha and Marley Spoon offers you the option to choose recipes with great ease and zero complication. All you need to do is choose your meal preference, the total number of meals you want to order and the total number of people for whom you want to buy the meals. The meal plans are available for 2 people or 4 people.
When you choose your meal preferences, it only ensures the fact that when you do not choose meals for a week, you will receive meal boxes based on your preferences and not something that you don’t like to eat.
The meal kits are delivered only once in a week and include all the ingredients required to cook your meals while there are many services that allow you to pick your meal kits almost any day of the week. On the contrary, Martha and Marley Spoon offers you just 2 options for meal delivery pick up and the kits may arrive between 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
The most fascinating part about Martha and Marley Spoon is their enormous variety of meal. The meal kit service offers you a menu of 22 exclusively designed, delicious and ease to cook recipes that take just about 30 to 40 minutes of cooking time. All the recipes are tagged with labels that give you a clear idea about the dish and the preparation. For instance, ‘low-carb’, ‘vegetarian’, ‘Family-Friendly’, ‘Meat’, ‘Spicy’, ‘Fast’, etc. The menu includes everything that you can ask for such as, vegetarian recipes, non-vegetarian recipes and sometimes, vegan or keto-friendly meal recipes also. Hence, if you are a keen follower of special diets, you may face a problem with the menu.
Also, the variety of recipes in the menu offered by Marley Spoon is interesting. There are some exotic recipes such as Vietnamese fish soup, sheet pan chicken thighs sided with grapes, noodle paella and roasted shallots along with some very common dishes such as oven-fried chicken sided with apple-walnut salad or the crispy potatoes and mini meatloaves with green beans.
When you click on the image of a chosen recipe, it will open the complete recipe for the dish. However, there are no printing options for the recipe procedure. But when you order a chosen recipe, you will also receive a colorful recipe card with complete step-by-step procedure of the recipe with pictures and other information such as the cooking time and nutrition value. The website also has a blog that is updated frequently and also includes certain bonus recipes that you will definitely enjoy.
To check their services and quality, we ordered their Garlic Chicken Thighs sided with Bacon Vinaigrette and kale salad and the Cuban mojo pork chops. However, for the pork chops required flattening using a heavyweight skillet or a tenderizer. Both the recipes were ready in the expected time and tasted good.
Martha and Marley Spoon Cost
In order to compete with the other market competitors, Marley Spoon reduced its overall costs which were much higher earlier. Today, the basic cost per serving at Marley Spoon is $8.99 along with an additional shipping cost of $8.99 per delivery. However, the cost per serving depends on the total servings you order for each box. For instance, if you are ordering 2 meals each week for just 2 people, the cost per serving will be the highest.
The biggest meal box you can order with Marley spoon is their weekly 6 meals plan for 4 persons. It will cost you around $6.29 for each portion and an additional $8.99 shipping charge, making your weekly meal total around $162.35. On the contrary, the smallest meal box containing 2 meals for 2 people will cost you a total of $49.99.
Martha and Marley Spoon Vs Market Competitors
With the competition extremely high in the meal delivery market, comparative study between two similar services proves to be a great help in understanding and choosing the best meal kit service for you.
Martha and Marley Spoon and Blue Apron
Designed for food lovers, both Marley Spoon and Blue Apron aim to provide the best services to their customers who are food lovers and enjoy great flavors.
Blue Apron believes in using ingredients that are rare and exotic. Their use of global constituents such as Szechuan peppercorns and gochujang makes their recipes classy. On the contrary, Marley Spoon uses regular ingredients but a little unusual cooking procedures that make the recipes different.
Also, Blue Apron offers you only 6 or 8 weekly recipes to choose from, while Martha and Marley Spoon offers you a vast menu of 22 weekly recipes. Costwise, Blue Apron is a little expensive than Marley Spoon. The per serving cost at Blue Apron is $9.99 while the per serving cost at Marley Spoon is $8.99. However, Blue Apron doesn’t charge you any extra money for shipping charges, unless you order 3 or more meals in a week. And, they also include interesting add-ons such as Wine in their menu.
