Home Chef Review

Monday, January 13th

2025 Gluten Free Meal Delivery Reviews

Home Chef

• Prices from $47.96 to $359.64 per week
• 1 mix'n-match kit
• 2-6 day plans
• 2-6 meals per week (multi-serving meals)
• Family-style
• Refund policy for orders under $100

Home Chef is a company with a simple goal: to make your meals tastier and your moments at the table more enjoyable. The company was established in 2013, and since then, it's created weekly deliveries with a selection of 30+ meals.

Designed for families

Home Chef's meals are designed for families ranging from 2 to 6 people. The kits come as ingredients that are pre-measured and packed in a box for you to cook up when it arrives. This saves you the hassle of shopping or measuring at home. Home Chef is also part of the Kroger family, giving you the option to choose meals from Home Chef online or to buy items in-store. However, to see prices, you'll need to share your email and sign up, which might be a bit annoying for those who like upfront details before signing up for a service.

Service Overview

• Diets offered: Calorie-Counting, Carb-Counting, Vegetarian, Gluten-Smart, Keto-Friendly
• Days of food: 2-6
• Shipment frequency: Every week
• Daily meals: 1-2 meals per day (depending on number of people)
• Number of gluten-free-specific programs: 1 mix'n-match program
• Trial period: No

Start with a quiz

Home Chef's meal kit system starts with a quiz-based interface. Through this quiz, the site lets you choose from a variety of foods by picking the diet you want to follow. They offer five preferences: Calorie-Counting, Carb-Counting, Vegetarian, Gluten-Smart, and Keto-Friendly. You can select one or all of these dietary approaches to narrow down or expand your selection for meals. Unlike some other mix'n-match kits, Home Chef's prices change based on your selections.

Gluten-free meal pricing

Specifically looking at gluten-free meals, we'll explain the pricing for those items without choosing other preferences. For the Gluten-Smart plan, you can pick 2 to 6 meals per week. These meals can serve between 2-6 people, which means you're looking at anywhere between 2 meals per week (with 2 servings in each meal) to 6 meals per week (with up to 6 servings in each meal). If you're fine with leftovers, a single person could eat for 4-36 meals per week by splitting meals and saving the leftovers. The gluten-free plan starts at $47.96 per week for the 2-meal plan for 2 people and goes up to $359.64 per week for the 6-meal option serving 6 people. As a comparison, the cost for the Keto-Friendly diet ranges from $55.96 to $431.64, making the gluten-free boxes more affordable than some of the other meal styles at Home Chef. There's also a flat fee of $10.99 for shipping on every box.

Gluten-free meal choices

If you're curious about what kind of meals you'll find with the gluten-free meal box, here are some of the ones available at the time of this review:

• Brussels and brown butter risotto
• Sirloin steak with blue cheese compound butter
• Sesame sweet potatoes and avocado
• Maple-glazed pork tenderloin

Refunds for meals under $100

Home Chef, unlike many of its competitors, has a refund policy. If you get a Home Chef product and find it isn't satisfactory (due to defects or other reasons), you can request a Home Chef credit or a refund. As long as you contact the Home Chef support team within seven days of delivery, you should be good to go. However, there's one snag. If your order costs more than $100, you won't receive credit or a full refund matching the entire product's value. So, if you're concerned about trying the kits and hoping for a refund if you don't like them, you might want to start with a smaller order to make sure you'll qualify for the refund policy.

Not Rated and problems abound

Even though Home Chef has been around for more than a decade, the company's reputation doesn't really impress. The Better Business Bureau gave Home Chef a worrying "NR” rating, and on verified third-party review sites, it only has a 2.8-star average rating. Most customers complained about Home Chef's food specifically. A lot of customers feel the flavors are dull, almost like something you'd find in the frozen section of a grocery store. Others had trouble with customer support. In numerous reviews, people showed photo proof that their delivered meals had split open or leaked, making them inedible.

Doesn't make gluten-free cooking tastier or simpler

The downsides of Home Chef are pretty glaring. Home Chef is one of the pricier services in our review, and with a host of complaints about the quality of the food and issues with delivery, it doesn't seem like a good deal. In many cases, customers would have been better off just cooking gluten-free for themselves, which defeats the purpose of the meal delivery kit. The "NR" rating from the BBB raises a lot of concerns about this Gluten Free Meal Delivery service. Even features like family meals and cook-it-yourself options don't make this company stand out from its not-so-great reputation.