Feeding yourself and the family on a strictly kosher diet presents more challenges than it should in this day and age. You've probably encountered difficulties in restaurants, bars, and supermarkets. Chances are you have barely considered the possibility of getting a kosher meals delivery.
But the good news is that you can receive kosher meal delivery kits to your door. While there aren't as many kosher options as there are non-kosher meal kits, the few that do exist produce delicious and nutritious meals made with certified kosher ingredients.
If you've ever been jealous of the neighbors boasting about the step by step instructions and stress-free convenience of their meal delivery service, you can stop now. Sign up for one of the two main companies offering kosher meal delivery and join the thousands of families reaping the benefits.
In this article, we're going to take a closer look at America's leading kosher food delivery companies, JChef and Kosher Box.
JChef Meal Delivery Service
JChef is the brainchild of kosher celebrity chef Jamie Geller. The company exploded into the meal kit scene to much acclaim and fanfare in September 2019 and has since garnered happy customers across the United States. Up until recently, there were limited options for kosher families, so it's great to see delivery services like JChef taking off. After all, it shouldn't be so difficult to get kosher food delivered.
You can think of JChef as the kosher equivalent of Blue Apron or Hello Fresh. Customers sign up to receive a weekly delivery of everything they need to make a set number of meals.
Jchef's menu features dishes such as:
Home cooks who enjoy preparing food will find that there are enough steps to keep them interested and engaged, while those who cook for necessity rather than pleasure will find the recipes simple to execute. It's a good balance that should keep everyone happy.
Kosher Box
If you're tired of stalking aisles in grocery stores looking for kosher snacks, Kosher Box has a solution: a monthly delivery of high-quality kosher snacks from around the world. Order one time to try the service or sign up for a regular delivery, it's up to you.
The company also offers pre-made kosher meals, which you order online a la carte style. Each kosher meal just needs to be reheated quickly and it's on the table and ready to go. Unlike JChef, where you are given the ingredients to cook your own meals at home with step by step instructions, Kosher Box's meals are all heat and eat. For busy people who have little time to cook, getting kosher meals delivered this way is ideal.
Kosher Box offers a few other choices besides snack delivery and ready meals, too. There's a Purim gift box, a limited selection of baked goods, including challah rolls, and an all-in-one Shabbat box.
When it comes to the ready meals, the menu is created from certified kosher ingredients and includes options such as:
If you're looking for meal plans that you don't have to think about (or go grocery shopping to get), then Kosher Box is a good delivery service. Just bear in mind that you'll have to order the meals individually, which you don't need to do with a monthly meal delivery service.
If you've ever found yourself furiously googling "where to buy Passover food near me" or "certified kosher meal plans" both of the above companies are useful additions to your digital Rolodex.
The Rise of the Meal Plan Delivery Service
Our collective love affair with convenience really kicked off in the 1950s. A confluence of events including the advent of microwave ovens and the first ready meals, which were actively marketed to busy housewives, began a trend for fast and easy food. The first company to dish up pre-prepared meals was Swansons, left with a surplus of Thanksgiving turkey, the company hit upon the idea of cooking it, packaging it, then selling it (1). Meanwhile, items such as instant mashed potatoes and powdered eggs made their way from military mess tents to family homes.
Since the first instant food products and TV dinners arrived on the scene, we were hooked. Today, the global ready-meal market is worth around US$159 billion dollars, a figure that is expected to rise in line with increasingly demanding work schedules (2). But a sea change has been occurring in the last few decades, a growing body of evidence points to the nutritional cost of heavily processed foods and consumers are actively seeking meals without all the additives and preservatives.
In 2012, delivery meal plan services, including Blue Apron, arrived in the US and hit the ground running. Customers received a menu, ingredients, and all the instructions they needed to cook quickly and easily at home. Plus, these kits negated the need for additives and other nutritionally void or even harmful additions, making them incredibly popular.
Make-at-home meals and menu plans cater to all kinds of diets, be it vegan, keto, kosher, or paleo. For more information on the different kinds of kit meals available, take a look at our pages where you'll find in-depth reviews of delivery services and menus currently on the market.
References
Winterman, D. (2013, February 16). The rise of the ready meal. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21443166
Ready Meals Market Size, Trends, Growth Report, 2020-2027. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/ready-meals-market
