You Plate It Review (2024) with a qualified Nutritionist’s opinion

You Plate It have been delivering ingredients to Perth households since 2014, using ingredients sourced primarily from Western Australia. Like many meal kit services, they’re aimed at anyone who struggles deciding what to cook after a busy day.

In the last few years, most meal kit providers have expanded into Western Australia, including Dinnerly and HelloFresh. So, I tested a delivery box from You Plate It to see if they can compete with their much bigger competitors.

   Try You Plate ItExplore their menu & order today!

There are a few ways that You Plate It stands out from the crowd:

1. You’re able to purchase one-off boxes rather than subscriptions which is a rarity these days.
2. They are able to pick up old boxes on your next delivery (which is a much more sustainable practise than simply throwing them out).
3. You Plate It offer a 3-person box which is perfect when you have young kids to feed as well.

However, we wanted to properly review You Plate It, so I asked my colleague Clare (who studies in Perth) to get a box ordered and try out the real You Plate It experience.

It’s an experience that’s only available to people in the Perth metro area (from Mandurah to Yanchep).

Getting Started with You Plate It

When signing up to You Plate It, you have the option to choose boxes containing anything between 2 to 8 serves per night. As I mentioned above, it’s rare to find a meal kit service that provides a 3-person box so this is great for any families that don’t need all 4 servings of the larger boxes. Even more surprising is that you can get up to 8 portions, way higher than any other meal kit offers.

For each number of servings, you can choose how many nights of the week you want it to serve. That can be anything between 2 and 7 nights of the week. Overall, that means You Plate It provide boxes from just 4 servings to a crazy 56 servings.

You’re also able to purchase a simple one-off order without subscribing to weekly deliveries. It’s slightly more expensive (around $5) than subscribing, but this is a great option if you just need an extra helping hand for one week.

Alternatively, it’s definitely possible to subscribe and cancel immediately so you only ever receive one box.

Meal Options Available

The You Plate It variety of meals is quite limited, with just 12 options to choose from each week. With companies like Marley Spoon offering over 40 different meal options, this is an area where You Plate It just don’t quite match up.

Considering there are only 12 options, it could be quite difficult finding 5 recipes you’ll love.

I found there were 3 vegetarian meals available each week, which is just about enough for someone on a plant-based diet. However, this would leave you with no real “choice” of meals. Therefore, it’s easy for me to say that You Plate It isn’t suitable for vegetarians or plant-based diets.

On the menu, You Plate It provide the total calories per serving but they don’t provide any further nutritional information which is a shame.

Some of the options available include:

• Bacon and 3 Veg Mac and Cheese
• Sweet Chilli Turkey Rissoles with Slaw & Fries
• Honey Ginger Chicken Stir Fry
• Lentil Cottage Pie with Polenta Topping

Delivery Options

I think it’s fantastic that shipping is free for You Plate It. That means the cost of your meals is the only cost you need to worry about paying. No hidden costs at any point when you’re ordering.

You Plate It cover the entire Perth metro area with their delivery zones.

Deliveries are made every Sunday with no options to choose a different delivery day. Whilst the box can be left outside for a few hours without any harm to the ingredients inside, this lack of flexibility could be difficult for people who have full-day commitments on Sundays.

How Much Does You Plate It Cost?

I’m going to be upfront about this, You Plate It is really quite expensive. The lowest price you can get only brings the cost per serving to $11. Compare that to the cheapest meal kits that can provide portions for less than $7 a portion, it’s a cost that definitely adds up.

Here are prices for the most popular box sizes:

People	Meals	Cost
2	3	$95.00
2	4	$112.00
2	5	$132.00
3	3	$127.00
3	4	$164.00
3	5	$196.00
4	3	$154.00
4	4	$185.00
4	5	$222.00

Much like other services, You Plate It have a quirk in their pricing that means you can pay different amounts for the same amount of servings. A 4-person box for 3 meals is $10 cheaper than a 3-person box for 4 meals. This is particularly useful to save money for a single eater.

Expect to pay an extra $5 for a one-off box instead of a subscription delivery.

 Try You Plate ItExplore their menu & order today!

My You Plate It Review Box

The box did arrive a bit later than they had originally said, but they text me to let me know well in advance that it would arrive later that day. As you can see the boxes were very large, and I was told I could leave them out to be reused for future deliveries (I love this for sustainability).

For this review, I opted for a 2-person, 5-meal box so I could really test ingredient quality, portion size and a variety of different meals. This means my box was absolutely packed full of ingredients – including the meat in a separate insulated bag.

The produce and ingredients for each meal were separated into bags, except for the meats. They provided physical recipe cards as well as an example menu/order to eat the meals in, based on the use by dates. All of the produce was was in really good condition, a decent size, and looked very fresh

How’s The Food?

I ordered a variety of different meal types and protein types to give them all a try. When trying each meal for this review, I’m mainly thinking about three primary factors: Cooking, Taste, and Portion Size.

Cooking

The recipe cards had photos for each step, which makes things very easy to follow and the instructions were well explained. It’s only a small detail, but I liked how they bolded all the places where you were adding in a new ingredient. It just made it really easy to skim over to see where you were up to as you were cooking

The meals were very simple to cook, some had longer cooking times due to having roast vegetables, but you weren’t physically cooking the whole time. Interestingly the chicken wings I received were pre-made so that was a time saver too. 

Taste

I really enjoyed how the meals tasted. They were very flavoursome (apart from one, see below in meals I hated) and I love that it forced me into trying new sauces and ingredients – like jalapeno. I always thought I wouldn’t like it but it was delicious! My favourite meal was definitely the pizza, followed by the chicken wings and the barramundi

Portion Sizes

As a medium-sized female I found the meals to be huge! For every meal, except the pizza, I was able to get at least 3 large serves from the recipe. If there was a better ratio of protein to vegetables and carbs I would have been able to get 4 servings. 

So it goes without saying that the meals were very filling! If you’re someone with a big appetite, you’ll be fine with the You Plate It meals.

Nutritional Analysis of You Plate It

As a Nutritionst, the lack of vegetables in these meals made me sad. For example the chicken wing meal had just a single cob of corn, other than the potatoes which are serving as the carbohydrate portion of the meal. That is not enough vegetables to serve 2 adults for a main meal. Ideally, there should have been 2 cobs of corn and some greens, like steamed beans or broccoli. You could add these yourself but that’s not really the point of getting a meal kit subscription.

To be fair, some of the other meals did have more veggies but overall I found they were still lacking. The ideal situation is for half of your plate to be non-starchy vegetables (or equivalent to two large handfuls)

Unfortunately, there was no nutritional information other than the calorie amount per serve. This is a bit disappointing as it would have been great to see what the fibre, sodium, and saturated fat content of the meals were. Calorie-wise they ranged between 500-800 calories per serve. The ones upwards of 600 calories are personally on the higher side for my needs but could be suitable for many highly active people. 

Overall, the ordering and cooking process was great. 4/5 meals tasted great, and the portion sizes were good (if not too big), they just need some extra veggies!

What isn’t included?

As is standard with all meal kit delivery services, You Plate It ask that you provide some standard ‘pantry‘ ingredients alongside their provided kits. These are the ingredients that they might ask you to have:

That means You Plate It provide almost every ingredient you need for your recipes, helping justify the extra cost of their service. I always recommend checking your recipes before your box arrives so you can make sure you have all your staple ingredients available.

My Overall Thoughts

There are so many reasons to love You Plate It. The food is genuinely delicious (excluding that Mushroom Farfelle disaster) and it’s great to support a local Australian business trying to compete with global meal kit companies.

I appreciate the fact they’re happy to collect the delivery boxes and that they offer a 3-person box to give people a little more flexibility. It’s these small touches that make You Plate It a great meal kit to enjoy.

However, this all comes at a price. You Plate It ends up being around 20% more expensive than similar services like HelloFresh and Marley Spoon. It’s simply the premium you pay for locally sourced ingredients from a small, local business. The only thing I’d love to change is for You Plate It to offer more variety each week. 12 options can be fairly slim pickings, especially if you’re a fussy eater.

Try You Plate ItExplore their menu & order today!

Competing Services

The most similar service available currently would be My Foodie Box. They also deliver locally-sourced ingredients to the Perth area, and I found both services very similar when I tried them.

I’d love to hear about other people’s experiences with You Plate It – were they similar to mine? Did you find my You Plate It review useful? Let me know in the comments section below!