Meal Prep St. Louis: How to Save Time & Money
We’re a meal prep company based in St. Louis. We have one mission: to help our customers eat healthy without wasting their valuable time or money. At first glance, a service like ours may seem like an extravagance...even if you’re trying to eat a healthier diet. It’s not the typical way of doing things, after all. When it comes to what we eat at home, we’re programmed to think we’re one-person shows. It’s up to us to plan a full calendar of healthy meals, it’s up to us to get to the grocery store (and to go back again when we forget the lemons that recipe needs), it’s up to us to find the time to prep our meals. It’s up to us to make sure we’re not wasting our money by throwing out food we didn’t get around to preparing. If we fail, it’s on us.
We don’t think eating healthy at home needs to be a one-person show. We also don’t think a meal delivery service is an extravagance: we think our service saves you time, money, and health. Here’s how and why:
Hey, St. Louis: You’re Spending a Lot of Time Grocery Shopping for Meals
Believe it or not, the average household spends $2,625 per year by eating out at restaurants every year (keep in mind, the number is probably slightly different for those of us based in St. Louis). Depending upon your time constraints and the size of your household, you could be averaging a lot more than that number. We spend almost as much money on ‘out food’ as we do on food we prepare at home. That’s a lot of dough...and that’s also a lot of salt (the vast majority of excessive salt intake comes from packaged food and foods prepared in restaurants).
On a typical day, 17% of women and 10% of men go grocery shopping for an item or numerous items. How much time do we spend in the store? On average (and keep in mind this includes those smaller trips), we spend 41 minutes each time we walk into the grocery store. Mondays are the least busy day of the week to go grocery shopping; if you go to grocery shopping on a Saturday, you’re going to spend -- on average -- 8 minutes more at the store.
This number doesn’t include the time it takes to get to the store in the first place...and it doesn’t include unloading the car and putting all those groceries away in your kitchen. 
Hey, St. Louis: You’re Spending a Lot of Time on Meal Prep
How much time do you spend each week on meal prep? It depends upon your role in the house. On average, American adults spend over 33 minutes a day prepping food; the primary person in charge of a household’s meals, however, spends an hour in the kitchen. Keep in mind: this doesn’t include the time it takes to research healthy recipes, make a shopping list, and so on.
Further, this number doesn’t reflect if you have children (who need things as you go), your skill level, your kitchen layout and so on: this number could increase or decrease depending on your unique situation.
Trying to prep healthy meals? Add on even more time to your day. Statistically, the more time you spend in the kitchen - the healthier your diet tends to be. Trying to cut corners in the kitchen? The data shows that the more time you save meal prepping, the less healthy your food is. The more you work, the more you look for ways to cut corners…..aka: the more you work, the more the quality of your diet goes down.
Hey, St. Louis: You’re Throwing Away a Lot of Money on Wasted Meals
Is every last carrot you buy actually being eaten? Probably not, according to the data (although we couldn’t find any specifically for St.Louis). Let’s look at the overall picture: in America, we throw out, on average, 40% of the food our households buy. That’s a lot of food to toss...in terms of the numbers, that’s a whopping 37 million tons of food waste each and every year.
How much does that equal each year, per household, in terms of money spent on meals that don’t get prepped or eaten? $2,200 wasted every year.
What’s getting thrown out? One Scandinavian study indicates we’re throwing out fresh foods the most: bread, vegetables, and fruits....so, we're not eating or preparing the fresh foods that are healthiest for us.
How Can a Meal Delivery Service Help You Save Time, Money, and Health?
When you’re meal planning, shopping, and preparing yourself -- you have a lot of things to juggle. It’s all too easy to let one or two fall and end up with a less than healthy diet (aka ‘out food’) in addition to the expense of both grocery shopping and restaurant food.
We can help (well, if you're in the St. Louis area).
We take care of all the meal planning for you: we plan out a full menu of healthy meals that give you the fuel you need for your goals.
We take care of shopping for you: we source the organic ingredients for our healthy meals (and we make sure we’re getting the best prices out there for the highest quality ingredients -- less things you need to worry about).
We take care of all the meal prep for you: our team has it down to a science. Our food is delicious (afterall, we wouldn’t have any customers if it wasn’t) and easy for you to quickly heat up and enjoy at home.
If you’re considering a food prep service, consider the full picture instead of just the per-ticket price. Depending on the meal plan you choose from us, for example, you could be paying as little as $159 for 5 full days of meals: breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner. If you tally up the food you would waste, the food you would eat at a restaurant, and the time it takes you to plan, buy, and prepare the food -- that $159 suddenly looks like a very good deal.
Bottom line? All too often, we only put a value down on physical items. We don’t look at the big picture: if we are actually using the items, if we are not using them and spending more on replacements (aka restaurant food), and, of course, how much our actual time is worth.