Why Meals?
What are you really eating when a meal costs £7.50, and how personal chef meals change the equation.
Meals is a chef meal prep service, not factory meals being labelled as chef prepared. By definition, any meal prepared by someone in a kitchen could be described that way.
What we mean by chef prepared is very literal.
When you use Meals, you are allocated your own personal chef. That chef either cooks in your home or prepares your meals and delivers them to you at a time and place that fits your routine. In many cases, that experience sits somewhere between a traditional private chef and a flexible weekly meal prep service.
That difference matters.
We are trusted across professional sport, our parent company is the highest rated catering service in the UK, and every week we deliver chef prepared meals to hundreds of high performers, athletes and families who want food that is convenient, high quality, healthy and built to support performance day after day.
All of that sounds good. But the real question is this.
What actually sets Meals apart from other meal prep services or ready meal products?
To answer that properly, there is a very important place to start.
Why People Trust Meals
- Trusted by professional athletes and teams across the UK
- Part of the UK’s highest rated private catering group
- Used weekly by hundreds of families, executives and high performers
- Menus designed by an experienced food and nutrition team
- Meals cooked by vetted, professional chefs, not factories
A Very Important Place to Start, What Are You Actually Eating?
A common conversation we have with new customers starts the same way.
“We’ve tried meal prep services before.”
The feedback is usually familiar. The meals were poor quality, tasteless or overly salty, small, off the shelf and not personalised. But they were reasonably priced, often £7 to £10 per meal.
And to be fair, many of those meals taste ok. Salt is cheap. Given the constraints of producing food at scale to a fixed price point, a lot of these meal prep companies do not do a bad job.
What most people do not really stop to think about is this.
If you are paying £7.50 for a factory made, direct to consumer meal prep product from a popular nationwide meal prep service, what are you actually eating once margins, logistics and overheads are accounted for?
Let’s look at a real, direct comparison.
Spaghetti Bolognese, Factory Made vs Chef Made
Factory Made, Direct to Consumer Meal Prep
From a popular nationwide meal prep service.
- Price: £7.50
- Calories: ~538 kcal
- How it is made: Factory produced at scale
- Upper realistic ingredient spend: £1.20 to £1.40
That £1.20 to £1.40 must cover everything in the tray, beef mince, pasta, sauce, vegetables, oil and seasoning.
Once factory labour, packaging, chilled distribution, warehousing, marketing, overheads and margin are accounted for, this is the maximum the maths allows.
To make this viable, the meal is carefully formulated. Pasta delivers cheap calories. Sauce carries added water for yield. Meat quantities are tightly controlled. Vegetables are included sparingly. Flavour is driven by seasoning rather than cooking time or reduction.
This is not about good or bad. It is simply how mass produced meal prep works at this price point.
Chef Made Spaghetti Bolognese by Meals.co.uk
This is Meals’ medium portion default spaghetti bolognese, cooked fresh by a professional chef using standard supermarket quality ingredients.
- Calories: ~590 to 600 kcal
- How it is made: Cooked fresh by your allocated personal chef
- Ingredient spend: £4.00 to £4.50 per meal
The ingredient list includes:
- 5% beef mince in a meaningful portion
- Olive oil
- Fresh brown onion and fresh garlic
- Tomato puree and tinned tomatoes
- Beef stock, diluted and reduced during cooking
- Spaghetti
- Tendersweet carrots and tenderstem greens
- Italian hard cheese
- Sea salt flakes, black pepper and oregano
There are no flavour systems, binders or yield fillers. The flavour comes from cooking technique, ingredient balance and time, exactly what you would expect from a private chef style service.
That £4.00 to £4.50 represents only the food itself.
It does not include the time required to shop, plan, prepare, cook, clean and deliver the meals. Those elements are charged transparently and separately as one clear hourly chef rate, which is why Meals works best when customers order multiple meals at once. As chefs scale their time efficiently across more meals, the cost per meal becomes more cost effective, without any reduction in ingredient quality or portion size.
The Difference, Side by Side
| Factory Made Meal | Meals Chef Made Meal | |
|---|---|---|
| Price shown | £7.50 | Ingredients + chef time |
| Calories | ~538 kcal | ~590 to 600 kcal |
| Protein | ~30.9g | ~40g+ |
| Ingredient spend | £1.20 to £1.40 | £4.00 to £4.50 |
| How it is cooked | Factory produced | Cooked fresh by your chef |
| Where flavour comes from | Seasoning and formulation | Ingredients and cooking |
This is not a small difference.
It is more calories, nearly three times the ingredient spend, and a completely different approach to meal prep.
Why This Matters
When you buy a factory made meal prep product, most of what you are paying for sits around the food, packaging, transport, infrastructure and marketing.
When you use Meals, most of your money becomes food, and the rest pays for a professional personal chef to prepare it properly for you.
The cost of ingredients is clear. The value you are paying for is the chef’s expertise, creativity and time.
One model hides ingredient compromises inside a fixed retail price.
The other makes the cost of food explicit.
One Final Difference That Matters
Meals dishes are not fixed or off the shelf.
Every dish on the Meals menu is a starting point, not a finished product. Each one is designed as a foundation that can be adapted around the person eating it.
Need a larger or smaller portion? Any dish can be increased or reduced by up to 40% from its default size.
Need something more specific? No problem.
- Higher protein
- Higher carbohydrate
- Lower fat
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Or tailored around a particular training or lifestyle requirement
We simply create a variant of that dish for you.
Not a fan of the flavour profile? That can be adjusted too. More spice, less richness, lighter sauces, stronger flavours, all easily changed for the next cook.
Because your meals are hand prepared by your own chef, nothing is locked in. Recipes evolve. Portions adapt. Preferences are remembered.
That level of flexibility is not something traditional meal prep services or factory meals can ever offer.
The Question Worth Asking
If a £7.50 meal from a popular nationwide meal prep service can only afford £1.20 to £1.40 of ingredients and delivers ~538 calories, it is fair to ask what compromises are required to make that work.
And how different that same dish becomes when there is no tight budget constraint placed on the ingredients, only a focus on delivering the best possible outcome for you in terms of health, performance and overall eating experience, guided by a professional chef.
That difference is what chef made meals deliver.
