I absolutely love the convenience of getting prepared meals delivered. Having healthy, tasty meals sat in the fridge ready to eat makes my daily evening routine much easier and much less stressful. Especially when I’m getting back from work late and the temptation of a takeaway is so strong!
With the number of meal delivery services growing massively over the last few years, I wanted to compare two of the most well-known services: My Muscle Chef and YouFoodz. These services do target their meals slightly differently, with My Muscle Chef being very fitness-focussed compared to YouFoodz and their healthy eating message. Still, they both primarily offer ready-to-eat meals.
This comparison aims to help you decide which service is right for you.
Contents
My Muscle Chef vs YouFoodz: Quick Comparison & Discounts
Configurable Meal Plans
Additional Snacks, Sides and Protein Shakes
Best Tasting Meals in Australia
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Affordable Dinners
Small, Healthy Portions
Free Delivery Available
Up to $200 In YouFoodz SavingsExclusive offer valid across your first 5 boxes for FBM readers only
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 YouFoodz: The Offering
We’ll start by look at the various products and services that each company provides, identifying any differences that are important to consider.
My Muscle Chef
My Muscle Chef 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 often 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 their 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.
YouFoodz
YouFoodz was originally started in 2012 and since then has served over 850,000 Australian customers, delivering over 60 million ready-made meals. That’s a lot of meals! Like My Muscle Chef, YouFoodz meals can be found in most major supermarkets including Coles, Woollies, IGA and 7-Eleven.
Subscription Options: Each week, you have access to the full YouFoodz catalogue and can choose between 5, 7, 9, 12, 14, 16 and 18 meals as part of your subscription. There’s no categorisation of meals, giving you complete freedom to choose the meals you like best.
Meal Variety: There are always 45+ different meals available, with your options split between normal ‘ready made meals’ and a separate ‘FUEL’D’ range with bigger portions. Surprisingly, only a couple of meals are suitable for Vegetarians which makes YouFoodz unsuitable for anyone on a plant-based diet. We found that over 50% of the meals were Chicken-based, which can limit variety.
Delivery Options: YouFoodz offers delivery slots on most days, depending on the area you live. There is a very extensive delivery network, so it’s very likely YouFoodz will deliver to your area.
Additional Products / Extras: YouFoodz offer a wide range of Snacks and Drinks to purchase alongside your main meals. There are plenty of Protein Bars, Crisps, Popcorn and Yoghurts to try, along with different juices and protein powders.
My Muscle Chef vs YouFoodz Service Comparison
These are the key differences you should consider when choosing which service to purchase:
- Meal Variety: Both services are heavily chicken-dominant in their menu, though My Muscle Chef do offer a larger range with more variety.
- Vegetarian Meals: My Muscle Chef offer twice as many vegetarian meals as YouFoodz, so you only really have one option if you’re on a plant-based diet.
- Snacks & Drinks: Although My Muscle Chef have been adding lots of new products to their snack/drink range, they can’t compete with the wide range of different extras that YouFoodz offer.
Overall, these two services have a very similar offering. Both services have a large menu, plus additional snacks and drinks. Both services also allow you to purchase one-off boxes or subscribe to weekly deliveries. Unless you’re vegetarian, you’ll find the experience to be very similar between My Muscle Chef and YouFoodz.
My Muscle Chef vs YouFoodz : The Food
Knowing the difference/similarities in the options provided by these two meal delivery services, it’s important to talk about how good their actual food is! This definitely comes down to a lot of personal preference, but hopefully I can give you a good idea about what you’ll receive.
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 many 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 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 found My Muscle Chef meals to be the best microwave meals I have ever tasted.
My favourite My Muscle Chef meals included the Salmon Risotto, Korean Beef, Burrito Bowl and Chicken Nasi Goreng.
YouFoodz Meals
Packaging: YouFoodz meals come in clear plastic packaging that’s fully recyclable. These are quite shallow, so they’re very easy to stack in your fridge. You need to peel off the corner of the plastic (let’s the steam escape) before placing the meal in the microwave. Each meal takes just 3 minutes to cook, although I often found myself putting them in for an extra 30 seconds to get them piping hot.
Flavour: I found YouFoodz meals to be very hit & miss overall, which I talk about extensively in my full YouFoodz review. They use simple, healthy ingredients that often lead to quite simple flavours in each dish. Along with flavourful meals, I have always found their Snacks and Drinks to be absolutely delicious! Though maybe that’s the sweet tooth talking (protein cookie – yum).
Texture: YouFoodz have improved the texture of their range significantly recently, taking away meals that reflected poorly on the YouFoodz experience. As a result, every meal is now cooked to perfection with just a few minutes in the microwave so elements like vegetables and pasta remain al dente. It’s still difficult to make YouFoodz meals look visually appetising though.
My favourite YouFoodz meals were the Chicken & Potato Salad, Fish Curry and the Slow Cooked BBQ Beef & Mash.
It’s important also to note that YouFoodz meals all tend to be smaller (calories, size) than My Muscle Chef. This is in line with their ‘healthy eating’ approach and I often found myself looking for a further snack later in the evening to fill me up.
Overall, I much prefer the taste of My Muscle Chef meals. They pack much more flavour and still manage to retain an excellent texture. As you can see from the pictures, they also look a lot more appetising.
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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.
Up to $200 In YouFoodz SavingsExclusive offer valid across your first 5 boxes for FBM readers only
My Muscle Chef vs YouFoodz : The Cost
Since we’ve already covered the discounts you can get with these services, it’s definitely time to look at the cost of each subscription. As they both offer different meal types, I’m going to be comparing the ‘average’ My Muscle Chef meal price against the standard YouFoodz meals.
You might be interested to find my industry analysis of the cheapest meal delivery service, allowing you to compare My Muscle Chef and YouFoodz against all the other prepared meal services.
Price of a weekly subscription
| Meals | My Muscle Chef | YouFoodz |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | $76.65 | $76.93 |
| 9 | $98.55 | $94.41 |
| 12 | $131.40 | $119.88 |
| 16 | $166.40 | $143.84 |
| 18 | $187.24 | $152.82 |
| 24 | $236.52 | N/A |
YouFoodz is slightly cheaper than My Muscle Chef at their standard subscription prices, with the price difference getting more noticeable with larger orders.
However, YouFoodz actually offer regular discounts on their meals which you can use most weeks. You should keep an eye out on your emails and make sure you apply these discounts before your next delivery. With those deals applied, YouFoodz do come out about 25% cheaper than My Muscle Chef.
Delivery Costs
| My Muscle Chef | YouFoodz |
|---|---|
| $15 – $20 | $9.99 |
My Muscle Chef vary their delivery costs based on the delivery area and size of the box, so you’ll only know your actual delivery costs at checkout. With a flat shipping fee of $9.99 per box, YouFoodz definitely win this battle.
Should I buy My Muscle Chef or YouFoodz?
It’s interesting that these two services have a very similar offering, but are incredibly different on their food and price. If you’re looking for a budget meal delivery service then YouFoodz is definitely worth giving a try. Whilst their meals struggle with their texture, there are some delicious options within their menu. When you can get meal costs down to as low as $6.95, that’s an absolute bargain. It’s even more perfect if you’re trying to adopt a healthier diet with responsible portion sizes.
Instead, if you’re looking for delicious meals designed to meet your fitness targets, then I highly recommend My Muscle Chef. I have found the quality of their meals to be consistently the best available in Australia, managing to deliver an incredible flavour and texture profile. This resulted in me making them the highest rated meal delivery service on Food Box Mate.
These aren’t the only services available in Australia, so it’s also worth checking out my reviews of other meal delivery services.
Try My Muscle Chef TodayGet $20 off your first order with code WELCOME20
Up to $200 In YouFoodz SavingsExclusive offer valid across your first 5 boxes for FBM readers only