How many times have you added something to your cart online, only to discover that shipping is going to cost more than the product itself? We all suffer from this problem whenever we order anything online, with Australia being well known for having extortionate delivery costs (4th most expensive in the world).
This is, to be fair, quite a unique problem for Australia with the sheer size and distances that delivery trucks need to cover. It means that we need to be more conscious of the places that charge reasonable delivery fees. This is especially true if you life in a regional town or rural area where you often find an additional delivery fee added on.
I wanted to analyse the delivery charges from our 4 largest meal kit services in Australia, so you can find out which service will deliver to you at a reasonable cost.
- HelloFresh – $9.99 (+ $9.95 regional delivery fee)
- Marley Spoon – $8.95
- EveryPlate – $9.99 (+ $9.95 regional delivery fee)
- Dinnerly – $8.95
Page Contents
Meal Kit Delivery Costs
To get an overall perspective on the delivery costs each service charges, I checked the delivery charge for 24 different locations across Australia. These are a mix of small towns within a certain distance of major cities, as well as selected major regional towns. I believe this should cover over 80% of the Australian population.
Where you see an N/A, this means that service does not currently deliver around that area. However, I would always advise checking your own postcode on their website.
This study was conducted in February 2021 and meal kit services regularly change their delivery areas and costs, so you may find some minor discrepancies. Always double check your shipping costs at checkout before ordering.
Costs are listed in AUD.
The full dataset can be found at the end of this article.
Standout findings from this study are that:
- Marley Spoon and Dinnerly are the cheapest meal kit providers for delivery costs.
- HelloFresh and EveryPlate charge a significant regional delivery fee to quite a few different population centres.
- EveryPlate have the smallest delivery network, being unavailable in Adelaide, Darwin and Perth.
But those don’t tell the full story. I want to take a further look into the delivery offering for each service.
Hellofresh Delivery Costs
On the surface, HelloFresh have the most amount of ‘red’ cells in their column and let’s be honest, it’s as bad as it looks.
If you live in a large city outside the NT, TAS and WA, then you’re charged a reasonable $9.99 for delivery. Although this is still over a dollar more per week than Dinnerly or Marley Spoon, it’s not enough to switch services if you prefer HelloFresh.
In regional areas though, $19.94 is a very high delivery cost. Especially when you compare it to the $8.95 being charged by competitors. Over the course of an entire year, that could cost you an extra $570!
Unless you’re in Darwin, where unfortunately you don’t currently have any other options, it seems a no brainer to be ordering from either Marley Spoon or Dinnerly instead.
Interested in HelloFresh? Check out my HelloFresh review for more information.
Marley Spoon Delivery Costs
With the joint cheapest delivery costs available, Marley Spoon definitely offer a very attractive delivery structure. Most importantly, they do not charge a regional delivery fee for any areas. If they delivery to your area, it will always just be $8.95.
Unfortunately, they seem to have a very limited network in regional Queensland/Northern Territory as well as the Perth area. I find this particularly strange as they are owned by the same company as Dinnerly, who do deliver to most of those places. I’m not sure why they don’t use the same storage facilities and vans?
One thing I have to question is how sustainable these delivery costs are? They must be subsidising the delivery costs to rural areas quite heavily. It wouldn’t surprise me to see them increase in the future.
Marley Spoon are definitely worth considering if you live in a regional area. Check out my Marley Spoon review for more information.
EveryPlate Delivery Costs
EveryPlate easily have the smallest delivery network available, having only launched in November 2020. Over time, I have no doubt they will expand into new areas and more people will be able to try their service. In our study, they were only available in 13 of the 24 areas.
Their parent company is HelloFresh, so it’s hardly surprising that they have also adopted the regional delivery fee model. This means that four of the places I analysed cost $19.94 for delivery. As you’d expect, these were all places that HelloFresh charge the same fee.
When they launched, EveryPlate were offering an $8.99 delivery fee. That quickly increased to $9.99 within a few months, which I would expect to remain the same into the future.
If you live in an area where EveryPlate deliver, you might enjoy my EveryPlate review to see if their service is right for you.
Dinnerly Delivery Costs
Dinnerly perform incredibly well on all measures here. Like their parent company, Marley Spoon, they offer standard $8.95 delivery to every single area that they serve.
This is improved even further by having the largest delivery network of any Australian meal kit service. Dinnerly deliver to 21 of our 24 selected areas.
Considering Dinnerly are a low-cost offering, I find this very generous delivery offering to be quite surprising. It’s likely they are doing this to entice customers and will perhaps increase the delivery fee in the future. However, there’s no way to predict this, so you should take advantage of the low delivery fees whilst you can.
I really enjoyed the Dinnerly experience, which you can find out more about in my Dinnerly review.
How are meal kits delivered?
If you’ve never received a meal kit before, it’s useful to know what to expect with their delivery services.
Firstly, all Australian services offer a deliver window which can be either during night-time or daytime, normally within a range of around 8 hours. Your delivery can arrive at any time during this window, but will generally be around the same time every week (drivers take roughly the same route).
Your ingredients get delivered in a large cardboard box that can be left outside for between 4 – 8 hours without any of the food spoiling. How long the food lasts will depend on how hot it is and whether the box can be left in the shade. Ultimately, this means you can get the box delivered while you’re at work and pick it up when you get home.
Inside your box will be all your ingredients, printed recipe cards (except Dinnerly), a couple of ice gel packs and an insulated liner. All of these can be recycled, although you should check out my article on recycling meal kit contents as some items need to go into the soft recycling.
That’s it!
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to leave me a comment down below.
| Location | State | HelloFresh | Marley Spoon | EveryPlate | Dinnerly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney + 20km | NSW | $9.99 | $8.95 | $9.99 | $8.95 |
| Sydney + 40km | NSW | $9.99 | $8.95 | $9.99 | $8.95 |
| Sydney + 60km | NSW | $9.99 | $8.95 | $9.99 | $8.95 |
| Sydney + 100km | NSW | $19.94 | $8.95 | $19.94 | $8.95 |
| Coffs Harbour | NSW | $19.94 | $8.95 | $19.94 | $8.95 |
| Albury | NSW | $19.94 | $8.95 | $19.94 | $8.95 |
| Melbourne + 20km | VIC | $9.99 | $8.95 | $9.99 | $8.95 |
| Melbourne + 40km | VIC | $9.99 | $8.95 | $9.99 | $8.95 |
| Melbourne + 60km | VIC | $9.99 | $8.95 | $9.99 | $8.95 |
| Mildura | VIC | N/A | N/A | N/A | $8.95 |
| Brisbane + 20km | QLD | $9.99 | $8.95 | $9.99 | $8.95 |
| Brisbane + 40km | QLD | $9.99 | $8.95 | $9.99 | $8.95 |
| Brisbane + 60km | QLD | $9.99 | N/A | $9.99 | $8.95 |
| Cairns | QLD | $19.94 | $8.95 | $19.94 | $8.95 |
| Darwin | NT | $19.94 | $8.95 | N/A | $8.95 |
| Darwin + 20km | NT | $19.94 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Darwin + 40km | NT | $19.94 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Perth | WA | $19.94 | N/A | N/A | $8.95 |
| Perth + 20km | WA | $19.94 | N/A | N/A | $8.95 |
| Perth + 40km | WA | N/A | N/A | N/A | $8.95 |
| Adelaide + 20km | SA | $9.99 | $8.95 | N/A | $8.95 |
| Adelaide + 40km | SA | $9.99 | $8.95 | N/A | $8.95 |
| Adelaide + 60km | SA | $9.99 | $8.95 | N/A | $8.95 |
| Hobart | TAS | N/A | $8.95 | N/A | N/A |
