Welcome to my Everyplate review!
Since EveryPlate is Australia’s cheapest meal kit subscription service I decided to see if it is as budget-friendly as it claims and, more importantly, whether the meals taste as good as they look in the pictures.
This popular meal kit delivery service aims to provide affordable and easy-to-prepare meals for people who want to eat well without breaking the bank.
In this review, I will be providing an in-depth look at Everyplate’s meal kit delivery service, including its ordering process, the quality of its ingredients, the variety of its recipes, and the overall experience of using the service. I hope this review will help you decide whether Everyplate is the right meal kit delivery service for you.
Note: The review was done for three weeks for my non-conventional family of four – consisting of myself, my two teenage daughters, and my eldest daughter’s boyfriend.
Below is my honest opinion of the Everyplate meal kit subscription service from order, to cooking, to eating.
Further reading: How to make meal kits work for your family.
The ordering process
Placing an order on the Everyplate website is super-duper easy.
Here are the steps I took:
Go to the EveryPlate website
To start the process of placing an order with EveryPlate, you’ll need to visit their website at www.everyplate.com. I found the website clean and easy to use. For mobile users, download the Everyplate app.
There is a simple guide as to how the process works on the homepage.
How Everyplate works
Sign up for an account
Once you’re on the EveryPlate website, click on the Get Started button to create an account. You’ll need to provide some basic information, such as your name, email address and shipping address.
Choose your meal plan
That is it for signing up! Next you get to the fun part which is choosing a meal plan that best fits your needs.
Different Everyplate meal plans
Selecting your plan with Everyplate is easy as pie. A plan consists of two parts.
They are:
Choose your preferences
What I really like about the Everyplate preferences is that whatever you choose, you will have access to all the recipes every week. By choosing a preference simply means they will put meals in the perfect order for your viewing. And you don’t have to choose just one. You can choose as many as you like. The current choices are:
- Classic: A selection of everyday favourites
- Family: Family-friendly dishes with popular flavours and nothing too out-there
- Flexitarian: A nice mix of meat and vegetarian dishes (our personal favourite)
- Vegetarian: Meal free meals with vegetables and alternative proteins
Select your box size
Then of course, you must select how much food to order. This is done by:
- Number of people: Choose between 2, 4 and 6
- Recipes per week: Choose between 3, 4, 5 and 6
Here is what we chose for our household:
Our Everyplate plan
Pricing with the latest special
With Everyplate, depending on your plan, you can buy a meal from $4.44 for a single serving. That’s just as good, if not better, than creating my own dish from supermarket ingredients.
You get the best value the more you order. So, ordering six recipes for six people gets the cheapest individual meal. You’ll see in the Everyplate plan image above that you can view a clear indication of what everything cost and how much you are saving. This is a great little tool.
As you browse your recipes, you will see options for recipes that have an extra charge of around from 99c to $5.00 per serve. These include:
- Premium dishes that feature more expensive ingredients such as prawns or steak
- Custom recipes where you can swap out an ingredient for something more expensive
- Recipes with which you can order extra protein
Lastest Everyplate special
Everyplate seems to always have a special on, but they can vary.
The current special is: Get $128 off throughout your first three boxes.
Note: If you are a Qantas points collector, you’ll be pleased to know you can earn a whopping seven points per $1 spend.
What I ordered
I ordered four meals for four people with the Flexitarian preference, over a period of three weeks.
Delivery
Your delivery day will depend on where you are located. It is worth noting that Everyplate does not deliver everywhere in Australia.
You don’t have to go through the rigmarole of signing up, only to discover you are outside the delivery area. Instead, get a full list of delivery areas here.
For us, delivery was on a Tuesday. I would have preferred a Monday but this was fine.
I received a text reminder the day prior to delivery, and another when delivery had been made – which was good as the delivery driver didn’t ring the bell. Perhaps they are still no-contact delivery post covid?
Packaging
There is always much excitement in our house when a parcel arrives and Everyplate is no exception.
It has been a while since I ordered a meal delivery service and my sigh of relief was audible when I saw how much less packaging is used nowadays. Everything is packaged loose in the box other than the cold items which are packed together in one insulated bag, and of course the sauces and spices.
Not one item was so much as damaged or bruised in any of the three boxes we ordered.
Our boxes had around three-to-four ice packs in each. According to Everyplate this would keep the food fresh for 48-hours. Living in sub-tropical Queensland, I wasn’t game to test their claim and my food was packed safely in the fridge as soon as possible.
Preparation and cooking
Now comes the fun part: cooking!
How long does it take to make an Everyplate meal?
Everyplate states that their meals take between 25 and 45 minutes to cook. From my experience, this is fairly accurate but it’s worth noting they are not super-fast meals to make. Leave yourself plenty of time.
Are all the ingredients provided?
EveryPlate aims to make meal preparation and cooking as convenient as possible, and their meal kits come with pre-portioned ingredients, including fresh produce, meats, and pantry staples like rice, pasta, and spices. However, there are some basic store cupboard ingredients that you may need to have on hand to complete certain recipes, such as:
- Salt and pepper
- Cooking oil and cooking spray
- Butter
- Vinegar
- Sugar
- Eggs
- Milk
I recommend checking the recipe cards for the meals you’ve selected before they arrive, so you can make sure you have any additional ingredients needed. If you find that you’re missing something, you can easily purchase it from your local grocery store.
How easy are the Everyplate meals to make?
The Everyplate recipes cards are easy enough for a novice cook and/or children aged 12 and up to follow successfully.
As a mum of nearly 20 years, I can already cook but I enjoy trying new dishes, especially with the kind of foods that we wouldn’t usually cook at home.
Other points about cooking with Everyplate
- The recipes are fuss-free and easy. Don’t expect frills and fancy bits as there aren’t any! For busy mums such as myself who just want to get healthy, filling food into my family fast, this is great.
- There is heaps of food. Without exception, every dish served more than four people and we had leftovers the following day.
- Talking of leftovers, if you choose your meals carefully, you can use food for pack lunches or freeze for an easy meal another day. Also check out their specific Bulk Cooking Recipes which have just four steps and create multiple meals for the family, perfect for freezing. You will see these at the meal selection stage.
- Loved some of the simple twists on cooking everyday foods. For example, cooking rice with butter and garlic for delicious garlic rice (great for a stir rice dish the following day if you have spare) – never will I cook plain rice again!
- Expect lots of carbs in your meals, they are designed to fill tummies on a budget – think potatoes, rice, couscous etc.
- There is lots of butter in the dishes! It may seem unnecessary but it does aid the taste. Often it is added with the garlic near the end of the cooking time. It seems odd but it does work.
- Garlic, garlic, garlic – there is lots of it in nearly every dish. I think Everyplate must get a special deal on their garlic order as we always receive much more than we need. Not complaining.
The recipe cards
Everyplate menu cards
Each recipe card comes complete with:
- Big image of the dish
- Cooking time
- Photos of included ingredients
- Pantry items required
- The main kitchen utensils you need, such as oven tray, baking paper, frying pans, saucepan etc
- Nutritional information
- Allergens
- Step-by-step illustrated cooking instructions
- Extra steps if you choose Custom Recipe ingredients
Quick tip: If you like a recipe, hold onto the menu cards as the Everyplate meals are easy to recreate at home, you just have to guess the spice mixes sometimes!
Everyplate review: Taste tests
No Everyplate review would be complete without taste tests.
I won’t bore you with details of all 16 meals I cooked but I have picked a few to share images and opinions from my family.
Asian pork schnitzel and garlic rice with veggies and sweet chilli mayo
My youngest daughter picked this dish. It was way more flavoursome than I thought it would be because the rice and vegetables are cooked in garlic. And there was so much food! Even after feeding four, there was enough for at least another three full meals. It could have done with more flavour at the bread-crumbing stage. Other than that, it was a hit with my teens.
Asian pork schnitzel and garlic rice with veggies and sweet chilli mayo
Cheesy veggie pasta bake with creamy sauce
This was my pick as I like vegetarian dishes, plus I knew it would freeze well. The recipe was a really unusual to cook a veggie pasta dish. Some vegetables were roasted which was great as this adds lots of flavour, while the zucchini is grated and added to the sauce. Stick with it though as it does work. I omitted the garlic powder and instead added crushed fresh garlic while frying the zucchini. The sauce seemed runny at first but once baked it was a good consistency. A highly flavoursome vegetable bake with 4+ extra portions to eat the following day or freeze.
Cheesy veggie pasta bake with creamy sauce
Black bean chilli and garlic rice with sour cream
Another dish picked by a wanna-be-vegetarian mum. Veggie chilli is a favourite in our house anyway but this one was highly regarded by all. It was the easiest dish to make. It felt wrong to add the vegetable stock powder at the end of the dish but I followed the instructions to a T and it definitely works. There is a custom recipe option for this dish to add minced beef and use only half the amount of black beans. Very fuss-free and simple. I will make this again for sure.
Black bean chilli and garlic rice with sour cream
Ginger pork noodle stir-fry with garlic veggies
It was with trepidation that I cooked and tried this dish that my kids chose. Not one for pork, especially minced, I was wary. Gotta say though, it was good. Cooking with fairly straight-forward, especially with the pre-cooked udon noodles. Lots of yummy Asian greens and delicious flavours really made this dish pop. 40 grams of butter added at the final stage didn’t feel right but somehow brought the dish together. Again, lots left over which I portioned up for lunches the following day.
Ginger pork noodle stir-fry with garlic veggies
Noodles for lunch the following day
Haloumi dukkah couscous bowl with lime yoghurt
One my picks, this is definitely a dish I would make again. It’s a dinner essential in our home now because we all loved it. By cooking the couscous with fresh crushed garlic and butter it is far from plain, as couscous sometimes can be. Alongside the roasted veg which give a sweet tang, it’s super moreish. It was a bit on the dry side so I would make more of the lime yoghurt dressing next time. This particular dish is great for packed lunches the next day.
Haloumi dukkah couscous bowl with lime yoghurt
Customer service
Everyplate has a customer service team that is available to assist customers with any questions or concerns they may have.
Based on customer reviews and feedback, EveryPlate’s customer service is generally considered to be satisfactory. Customers can reach out to the company’s customer service team via email, phone, or live chat. Many customers have reported that they were able to get quick and helpful responses from the EveryPlate customer service team.
Additionally, EveryPlate has a comprehensive FAQ section on its website that provides answers to many common questions about the service. The company also offers a money-back guarantee to customers who are not satisfied with their orders.
Overall, while there may be occasional issues with EveryPlate’s customer service, the majority of customers seem to be satisfied with the level of support they receive from the company.
What I like and don’t like about Everyplate
Pros
- This is simple, no frills food which makes it easy-to-cook and easy to get everyone in the family to eat, even the fussy eaters
- The serving sizes are huge, often providing double what we needed so we could stretch one meal to two
- The dishes are damn tasty, with even the blandest ingredients with clever tricks to get flavour into rice, couscous etc
- It’s cheap – I genuinely believe ordering Everyplate is cheaper than buying the individual ingredients from a grocery store
- The recipes are super simple with foolproof menu cards to guide you every step of the way
Cons
- I’d like to see more choice on the weekly meal options, if ordering weekly, the dishes are a bit same-same
- More vegetarian choices would be a bonus for me, and I am sure for many others
- There is limited availability for special diets, although some options are labeled “low-carb” or “low-calorie,” these may not meet the specific needs of some customers
- Like other meal kit delivery services, EveryPlate uses a significant amount of packaging which won’t sit comfortably with the environmental conscience. Having said this, packaging has been improved and there is far less than previously used.
Is Everyplate worth the money?
In my opinion, Everyplate is 100% worth the money.
With the cheapest meal options coming in at $3.98 this is very competitive to a meal in which all the ingredients are shop-purchased. Not only that, the meals stretch much further, in some cases to at least another three additional full-sized servings. By picking meals carefully, one meal will be enough for dinners, lunches the following day, and freezer meals.
My Everyplate review conclusion
In conclusion to my Everyplate review, there is no doubt that Everyplate lives up to its promise of being a budget-friendly, easy meal delivery service that saves you time and money in the kitchen.
My experience with it was a very good one. Having said that, after three weeks of Everyplate meals, we were ready to go back to our everyday home cooking.
With the option to pause orders for a week at a time, I will continue to use Everyplate once every four weeks to give myself a break from the supermarket and from thinking about meal planning. For others, using Everyplate each week is doubtless a great solution that is economic in both time and money.
Ultimately, whether or not EveryPlate is worth the money depends on your personal preferences and circumstances, so it’s worth considering all factors alongside other meal delivery services before making a decision. Head to Everyplate and see what you think.
