Cost of Cooking at Home Versus Delivery

As Professional Home Economists and students we know the benefits of cooking at home. As Mary Carver, P.H.Ec., explained in a news release titled “A Call for Improved Food Literacy,” there is growing concern about a general lack of time, knowledge and skills to prepare healthful, affordable meals at home. Many families claim they do not have the time to prepare meals from scratch, while others complain that food is too expensive.

Priceonomics analyzed data from a customer, wellio, to compare the cost of cooking at home from scratch versus delivery from a restaurant or meal kit service. 

Wellio is a platform that breaks recipes into single ingredients and matches the items to grocery stores, which allowed Priceonomics to measure the ingredient cost for 86 recipes.

Through this data, they found it was almost five times more expensive to order delivery from a restaurant, and almost three times as expensive when using a meal kit service, when both were compared to cooking from scratch. This analysis found consumers save a significant amount of money on carb-based meals and save the most on protein-based meals when cooking at home versus ordering from delivery.

This report did not consider the opportunity costs of time associated with preparing the meals. However, the time needed to prepare a meal can be used to strengthen relationships in the home and used as a learning opportunity. Make it a family event from planning and shopping to cooking and cleaning up. Need to brush up on fractions for a test? What better way to do it than by cooking a meal or baking a delicious treat!
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To read more on the findings of this analysis, click here for Priceonomics’ post.