Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon is a meal kit subscription service that fast-forwards the cooking experience of preparing your food by providing fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and delicious recipes to your door. The company merged in June 2016 when Marley Spoon partnered with Martha Stewart and Sequential Brands Group Inc. to form Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon. The company has a sustainability mission by concentrating on carbon neutrality and offsetting 100% of its emissions.
Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon offers a plan suitable for couples and small families so that you can enjoy a delectable meal from a selection of weekly recipes and omit the time spent sourcing ingredients and searching for recipes. You’ll find meal choices for vegetarian and vegan diets, meat and fish lovers, quick meals ready in less than 30 minutes, and even family-friendly options. We tried the service for a week and chronicled our experience with the entire process, from ordering to eating.
Pricing: Sliding Scale
Pricing is set based on the number of people the meal kit is intended for, either two or four. Options range from two to six meals per week for both the two- and four-person boxes. The minimum order of two meals for two people comes out to be $11.99 per meal and $9.99 per meal for four people, but the cost per meal decreases as you order more meals. Here’s a breakdown of the cost per meal:
- 2 meals: $11.99 for two people, $9.99 for four people
- 3 meals: $10.49 for two people, $9.49 for four people
- 4 meals: $9.99 for two people, $8.99 for four people
- 5 meals: $9.99 for two people, $8.99 for four people
- 6 meals: $9.49 for two people, $8.49 for four people
Shipping is a flat $8.99 for all orders.
How It Works: 7 Diet Options
Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon start the subscription process by asking you to select a meal kit based on the number of people and the number of meals. After entering your zip code and email address to start an account, you’ll select which plan you want and then pay for your first delivery. After payment, you’ll be able to select the meals for your box. The varied menu changes weekly and is created by the company’s in-house dietitian.
Our meals required pantry staples such as olive oil, kosher salt, ground black pepper, white wine vinegar, sugar, and butter.
You can select meals using several preferences: vegetarian & vegan, keto, low-calorie, low-carb, nutritious, and healthy eating. This service offers both meal kits with essentially most of what you’ll need to make a delicious meal and ready-to-heat meals. Inside of your delivery box, you are guaranteed pre-portioned ingredients to reduce waste and save time plus six-step recipes with visuals to keep it simple.
Choosing Meals: 40 New Recipes Weekly
Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon has 40 new weekly recipes to choose from. There isn’t an option for customizing your meals, but you will find add-ons available such as protein variety packs and pantry staples at the bottom of the menu selection page. The company does not guarantee that its food has not been contaminated with common food allergens. This may not be ideal for individuals on restricted diets who need to be strict about what they eat.
While choosing your meals, you can view the recipe to find the macronutrient breakdown, prep information, and ingredients, along with what kitchen supplies and ingredients you’ll need.
You can skip, pause, or cancel a delivery five or six days from your scheduled delivery date.
Verywell Fit / Eric Kleinberg
What We Made
We ordered five meals—four meal kits and one ready-to-heat meal—to do an overall test drive of the company’s options and the food quality.
- Red pepper pesto chicken with cheesy pull-apart garlic knots
- Crispy skillet salmon & warm lentil salad
- Chorizo & potato tacos with guacamole, pickled onions & spinach salad
- 20-min broiled baharat-spiced eggplant with cauliflower rice & currants over greens
- Grown-up mac & cheese with roasted tomatoes, greens & breadcrumbs
Packaging: Mostly Recyclable
Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon includes a lot of packaging in its delivery box—we counted 34 total pieces in our delivery, including the box itself—but much of it is recyclable. A page on the company’s website details its recycling efforts and explains how its packaging pieces can be recycled and/or discarded. For example, the cardboard is made with paper from sustainably sourced forests, according to the website, while the ice packs can be cut open and their contents—which are non-toxic—can be drained in the trash. The outer plastic bag of the ice packs can be recycled.
Our food arrived cold through the use of a foil pouch insulated liner and two ice packs inside the delivery box. The ingredients and our heat-and-eat meal were fresh and nothing was damaged. The spices and herbs were packed neatly with some loose vegetables such as eggplant and bell peppers. Meats were individually packaged to prevent cross-contamination inside the box without notable excess packaging. Our heat-and-eat meal was simply covered with a plastic seal and a cardboard sleeve.
Verywell Fit / Eric Kleinberg
Customer Support: Lots of Options
Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon provides a robust recipe card to guide you through the cooking process and has details about ingredients and the cookware you will need. If you need more support, there is a customer service section with helpful topics and a search bar. There is even an app that allows you to subscribe, manage your orders, and follow the recipe instruction, along with a blog full of recipes, stories, and more resources.
Customer service is available via phone, e-mail, chatbot, and the app.
We emailed customer support regarding the use of nutritional experts in nutrient analysis and asked whether any dietitians were available for assistance. A response came within 24 hours and included information on the company’s nutrient analysis. The agent offered to provide more in-depth nutritional information for a specific meal on a one-time basis, but there was no mention of dietitians being used. Separately, however, the company told us that it has one in-house registered dietitian.
We also contacted customer support via the botchat with a question about whether previous menu items could be reordered, even if they are no longer shown on the current menu. The immediate response said that customers cannot reorder recipes because ingredients are curated specifically for each week’s menu.
Nutrition: Food for Several Diets
Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon does a fair job at meeting the dietary needs of its consumers by offering a variety of options without any restrictions. Like other meal kit services, you sift through your choices based on nutritional attributes such as low-carb, low-calorie, and keto-friendly. The abovementioned dietitian ensures that the recipes meet the specifications for the following diets: low calorie (less than 650 calories), low carb (less than 40 grams of carbs per serving), keto-friendly dishes (less than 20 grams of carbs), and nutritious (recipes with a high nutritional value and minimally processed ingredients).
For folks with food allergies, it’s important to note that the company does not guarantee that cross-contamination will not occur.
The Cooking Process: Some Skills Required
The six-step recipe cards provide a list of the ingredients included, cooking time, tools needed, any necessary tips applicable to the recipe, allergen information, nutritional information per serving, and the recipe. Our meals required pantry staples such as olive oil, kosher salt, ground black pepper, white wine vinegar, sugar, and butter. We used a rimmed baking sheet for the broiled eggplant, a skillet for cooking proteins, a saucepan, microwave, oven, and a microplane to grate cheese. We found that basic cooking skills suffice to fully execute the dishes and match the company’s claim of easy cooking level. As long as you fully read the recipes, you’ll be able to meet the cooking time total.
The instructions for our ready-to-heat meal, the grown-up mac & cheese, indicated that it could be microwaved for 2-3 minutes after removing the cardboard sleeve and removing the plastic film. To bake, you would remove the packaging layers and transfer the meal into an oven-safe dish to bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.
Verywell Fit / Eric Kleinberg
Flavor, Freshness, and Quality: Luxurious Eating Experience
Overall, the recipes and ingredients in our delivery called for flavorful dishes with fresh ingredients. The company hit the mark. We particularly enjoyed how the red pepper pesto chicken came together with the garlic knots. The sauce for the chicken, the lemon dressing with sweet dried currants for the cauliflower rice and eggplant, the guacamole and pickled onions for the chorizo tacos, and the tangy vinaigrette on the warm lentil salad provided a diverse quality of flavors to uplift our overall eating experience. No additional ingredients were needed. However, three of the five recipes used spinach, which somehow felt repetitive; we would have liked to have seen another leafy green or vegetable for variety. Everything arrived in good condition and maintained its freshness in the packaging.
The company declares that the chicken it uses is antibiotic-free. It does admit, however, that it cannot guarantee the same for the other meats it uses. The sourcing of other ingredients is a bit scattered; some of them are organic, some are sourced locally, and items such as pasta come from Italy.
Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon Is Good For
Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon caters to those who want fresh pre-portioned ingredients that are conveniently delivered and enjoy tasty recipes. It’s good for individuals, couples, or small families with basic cooking skills who want to put some time into meal prep. This meal kit service is not suitable for someone without basic cooking skills and doesn’t have the time to spend in the kitchen.
We found that basic cooking skills suffice to fully execute the dishes and match the company’s claim of easy cooking level.
The Competition: Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon vs. One Potato
Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon and One Potato both aim to offer convenience and engage consumers with flavorful recipes and quality ingredients. One Potato takes a more family-style approach with kid-friendly recipes and portions; it offers both add-ons and up to six servings per meal. One key difference is that One Potato is purely organic, while Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon does not specify sourcing. It’s worth mentioning that if you’re looking for a more diverse menu and additional dietary options, you’d be better off with Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon. Price-wise, both services cost around $8.50 per serving. One Potato, however, has a much smaller footprint and delivers to just eight states.
Final Verdict
Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon exceeded our expectations for flavor, meal balance, and recipe development. Ingredients arrived fresh and the meals were easy to prepare. We especially like that the menu is designed by a dietitian and that there are options for several dietary preferences. Also impressive is the fact that the company backs up its effort to be carbon neutral by offering packaging that is mostly recyclable.
Methodology
We ordered, cooked, and evaluated meals from 27 meal delivery services to get a sense of each one’s offerings, nutrition profiles, prices, and, of course, flavors. We contacted the customer service teams at each of the companies, collected data, and wrote detailed reviews about each one.
Our writers are all registered dietitians and relied on their research and its resulting data to inform their reviews.