The first thing to know about Marley Spoon is that it has Martha Stewart’s stamp of approval—the whole thing is built around her most popular recipes. So while you might not be able to have Martha herself come to your home and prepare you dinner throughout the week (she’s busy), you can have a box of fresh ingredients shipped to your door filled with almost everything you need to make a bunch of her best dishes yourself.
We’ve tried lots of meal kit delivery services over the last several years and, honestly, they’re all over the map in terms of quality. But some of these companies (like Hungryroot, Cook Unity, or Blue Apron for example) have started to figure out what works and what doesn’t and continue to improve their services. Marley Spoon has the pedigree, online popularity, and over a decade under its belt: Would it live up to the sum of its parts? We gave quote, unquote Martha Stewart’s meal kit a thorough test to see how it stacks up against its competitors.
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What’s the Marley Spoon ordering experience?
When you click to sign up, Marley Spoon asks you to select the type of meals you want (from a number of dietary preferences), how many people you want to feed, and how many meals you want. You can get anywhere from two to six meals a week of either two or four portions per meal. I chose to do four portions—theoretically, a family-friendly plan—to have enough to feed my roommate and have lunch the next day.
You then answer a brief questionnaire to better inform the recipes that will auto-populate in your first box. However, you’re allowed to swap out and customize the selections to your liking. Preference options include ones for people with particular dietary needs—gluten-free, keto, or vegetarian options, for example—as well as more general filters like Low Calorie, Low Carb, Quick & Easy, and Picky Eater Approved. I went with the filter-free Everyday Variety meal option to get a sense of the range of selections available.
In addition to the Marley Spoon meal kits, the company has a pretty expansive menu of add-ons that include premade desserts and shakes, as well as things you might otherwise get at the grocery store like meats, produce, cheeses, and bread products. You can add any and all of them to your weekly meal kit order.
What to expect in a Marley Spoon box
On delivery day, everything arrived surrounded by an ample number of ice packs, and nothing seemed too warm or wilted despite the record-breaking summer heat in my area and that the box sat outside for a couple hours before I got home.
Upon opening the package I was pleased to discover that most of the veggies were laid in the box without any additional packaging. Some meal kits (Home Chef, for example) can overdo it with plastic packaging on almost every individual ingredient, so I appreciated the attempt to minimize extra trash. I should note that there were still plenty of individual packets of spices, condiments, and plastic containers for delicate herbs, lettuces, and meats, though. Marley Spoon is better than most, but as a rule, if you’re seriously focused on sustainability in every lifestyle choice, meal kits aren’t gonna win you over.
The box also comes with full-page recipe cards that have an image of the meal on one side and the instructions on the back, as well as a little card with a QR code that lets you check when your box was packed, if for any reason you’re feeling unsure of how long it’s been sitting around.
How are the Marley Spoon ingredients?
It’s not uncommon for a meal kit’s produce to be a little worse for wear by the time it gets to you. Not so with Marley Spoon’s: When commerce writer Alaina Chou spent several weeks testing the brand, she noted how high-quality the vegetables were in each of her shipments. “The herbs were fresh and never wilted, cucumbers were crunchy and unblemished, and citrus was juicy, not shriveled,” she says.
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