Prepared meals services have improved massively over the last 10 years, with incredible variety on offer. With hundreds of prepared meals service available across Australia, it can be hard to know which ones deserve your money.
Two services with strong reputations are My Muscle Chef and Chefgood, especially for anyone looking to buy healthy, nutritious meals.
As both services offer very similar products at a quick glance, I wanted to take a deeper dive into comparing My Muscle Chef vs Chefgood. This comparison aims to help you decide which service is right for you.
Contents
My Muscle Chef vs Chefgood: Quick Comparison & Discounts
Configurable Meal Plans
Additional Snacks, Sides and Protein Shakes
Best Tasting Meals in Australia
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Fresh, Nutritious Ingredients
Everyday & Weight Loss Plans
Beautiful, Flavourful Meals
Our comparison will look in detail at each service’s offering, food and cost before making a final recommendation for which service is right for you. If you want, you can click here to skip down to our recommendation.
My Muscle Chef vs Chefgood: The Offering
We’ll start by looking at the various products and services that each company provides, identifying any differences that are important to consider.
My Muscle Chef
The My Muscle Chef team have been serving prepared meals since 2013, becoming easily the largest and most disruptive meal delivery service in Australia. A selection of their meals can be found in supermarkets like IGA and Woollies, with their full range only available from them direct.
Subscription Options: It’s very easy to either purchase a one-off box of meals or subscribe to a regular delivery from My Muscle Chef. Their meals all fit into the categories of Muscle Gain, Performance or Calorie Control which act as filters to their menu. Through their website, you can fill in a few questions and they’ll recommend a personalised meal plan with your fitness goals in mind.
Meal Variety: With a rotating selection of 55 different meals available at any one time, there is always a good selection of meals to choose from. This includes 12 Plant-Based meals making the service suitable for vegetarians and even vegans. We found that like most services, My Muscle Chef focuses its meals on chicken and beef dishes.
Delivery Options: Delivery to over 4,200 postcodes across Australia means you’re very likely to be able to receive a My Muscle Chef delivery. The available delivery dates depend on the area you live in.
Additional Products / Extras: There are some interesting additional products including side dishes, which I quite enjoyed to get my calories up on gym days, protein shakes, breakfasts and snacks. This makes My Muscle Chef a quite comprehensive service that could make up your entire diet.
Chefgood
Chefgood boldly proclaims they deliver “gourmet restaurant-style dinner”. Whilst this may be a bit of a stretch for a microwave meal, there’s no doubt they effectively use natural, fresh, high-quality ingredients for all their dishes. Started in Melbourne, Chefgood is a local Australian company that’s been delivering meals since 2013.
Subscription Options: Chefgood subscriptions are based on two primary plans: ‘Everday’, ‘Weight Loss’. These plans differ based on the size of meals, with the weight loss plan offering smaller portion sizes. Within each plan, you can select 5, 7, 10, 14 or 20 meals each week. I’m not sure why you’re limited to these numbers.
Meal Variety: There are around 20 different main meals on offer, with a few recipes rotating in/out of the options every week. Most of the meals have Chicken or Beef as their primary protein source, with a separate vegetarian menu having around 10 meals to choose from each week. Although 20 meals is a small selection, the fact they change each week keeps the service feeling fresh.
Delivery Options: Chefgood deliver to major metro areas in Australia, such as Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra and Melbourne. Delivery is a flat rate of $12 per box and you need to have locked in your selections before Wednesday each week.
Additional Products / Extras: You’re able to add a selection of breakfast meals and snacks to your order for an extra cost. With 6 breakfast options, this is quite a large selection compared to most competitors. They’ve also introduced some fantastic “guest chef” meals from superstars like Reynold Ponermo.
My Muscle Chef vs Chefgood Service Comparison
These are the key differences you should consider when choosing between My Muscle Chef and Chefgood:
- Meal Variety & Rotation: My Muscle Chef have a consistent menu of 55+ meals that will take you months to work through. In contrast, Chefgood have a much more limited menu that rotates regularly. This means you may not be able to re-order your favourite meals!
- Subscription Sizes: With My Muscle Chef, you’re able to order any amount of meals you’d like. Chefgood make you stick to ordering in groups of 5, 7, 10, 14 or 20 each week.
- Delivery Areas: My Muscle Chef is stocked and available for delivery in most Australian postcodes. There aren’t many places you won’t be able to get My Muscle Chef delivered to. On the other hand, Chefgood only deliver to major metropolitan areas so you might struggle if you live in a regional area.
- Snacks / Extras: Chefgood have a reasonable range of snacks and breakfast meals, however they aren’t able to compete with the wide range of cookies, drinks and snacks that My Muscle Chef offers.
Overall, it’s clear to see that My Muscle Chef offer more variety, better delivery and increased customisation which makes them objectively the better delivery service. However, that’s without comparing the food itself.
My Muscle Chef vs Chefgood : The Food
Knowing the difference in the options provided by these two meal delivery services, it’s important to talk about how good their actual food is! Each service is incredibly popular in Australia but I found their food quite different.
My Muscle Chef Meals
Packaging: Meals arrive in shallow black plastic trays, with a cardboard information sleeve. They’re vacuum packaged so that the plastic film is covering the food, which is very different to how most other meal delivery services package their food. Cooking each meal is incredibly easy as you just need to pop the plastic container directly into the microwave, no messing around with poking holes in the lid. Each meal cooks in around 90 seconds.
Flavour: I can’t understate how impressive the flavour of most My Muscle Chef meals are. In fact, they generally tasted far better than anything I could have cooked up by myself. Meals tend to be very well seasoned and spiced, with each ingredient contributing to a delicious meal.
Texture: The packaging and cooking process appears to be slightly magical as My Muscle Chef meals really deliver on a great food texture. No more soggy/mushy microwave meals. Even dishes like risotto retained a good bite, while the steak dishes were soft and buttery. It wasn’t always perfect, but generally I have found My Muscle Chef meals to be the best microwave meals I have ever tasted.
My favourite My Muscle Chef meals include the Salmon Risotto, Korean Beef, Burrito Bowl and Chicken Nasi Goreng. I’ve reviewed every My Muscle Chef meal I’ve tried so you can pick the best of the best.
Chefgood Meals
Packaging: Chefgood still operate will traditional plastic packaging with a film across the top. It’s a small thing, but you need to poke holes into the film before putting your meal in the microwave for 2 – 3 minutes. I prefer the vacuum packaging the My Muscle Chef uses but that’s just pure laziness!
Flavour: I’m not sure I would go as far to suggest these are ‘restaurant standard’, but they all felt hand-made by a real chef using genuinely fresh ingredients. That’s a rarity for meal delivery services and meant I was very happy with every Chefgood meal. The ingredients are all natural, as if you were cooking these dishes at home. That’s reflected in some fantastic flavourful dishes.
Texture: Whilst Chefgood meals come ready for the microwave, they often advise alternative ways of cooking meals that retain their texture. I had a delicious Chicken & Black Bean Burrito that was let down by the fact it was soggy after a quick burst in the microwave. Using an oven or sandwich press would help retain better texture for a lot of Chefgood meals.
My favourite Chefgood dinners included the aforementioned Chicken & Black Bean Burrito, Curried Vegetable Pie and Gnocchi with Pesto. You can discover more at my Chefgood review.
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Before I compare the cost of each service, it’s worth considering the discounts you can get with each service. Taking advantage of a discount when you subscribe will make your first box incredibly good value, allowing you to make your own decision about the food. Simply click one of our unique discount links to get access to your money off.
My Muscle Chef vs Chefgood : The Cost
Both of these services offer meals at different prices, allowing you to choose whether to eat the cheaper or more expensive meals. To try and create a fair comparison, I will take a median price for each service and then apply any bulk discounts you might get.
You might be interested to find my industry analysis of the cheapest meal delivery service, allowing you to compare My Muscle Chef and Chefgood against all the other prepared meal services.
Price of a weekly subscription
| Meals | My Muscle Chef | Chefgood Everyday Plan |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | $72.80 | $81.90 |
| 10 | $104.00 | $115.00 |
| 14 | $141.96 | $151.20 |
| 20 | $197.64 | $209.00 |
My Muscle Chef are able to offer meals at a slightly lower price, saving you ~$10 for every number of meals. This isn’t a major difference in the grand scheme of things, so I certainly wouldn’t discount Chefgood from a cost perspective.
It’s also worth mentioning that I have compared the Chefgood Everyday Plan. The Weight Loss plan offers meals at prices that are very comparable to My Muscle Chef.
Delivery Costs
| My Muscle Chef | Chefgood |
|---|---|
| $15 – $20 ($10 discount with subscription) | $12 flat fee |
With the discount, My Muscle Chef delivery is cheaper than Chefgood, averaging between $5 – $10. Both of these fees are pretty standard for the industry, although I would prefer to see free delivery above a certain order amount.
Should I buy My Muscle Chef or Chefgood?
Overall, I rated My Muscle Chef a massive 9/10 whilst Chefgood scored a respectable 7.5/10. I personally subscribe to My Muscle Chef on an ongoing basis and love their service, which means it is no surprise I would recommend them over Chefgood. I find that Chefgood is let down by their website experience, meal choice and delivery options.
I would recommend My Muscle Chef to most people, especially anyone who hasn’t tried a prepared meals service before or maybe has special dietary requirements. Their meals deliver a fantastic flavour and texture profile, as well as being healthy and nutritious. I highly recommend giving My Muscle Chef a try.
In contrast, I think Chefgood provide a great service using natural, simple ingredients to create flavourful meals. They feel more home-cooked and I would definitely recommend Chefgood if this is important to you. If you’re wanting to go for a weight loss plan, then Chefgood is definitely more suitable for you than My Muscle Chef.
These aren’t the only services available in Australia, so it’s worth checking out my reviews of other meal delivery services.
Try My Muscle Chef TodayGet $20 off your first order with code WELCOME20