About the 1-person meal boxes
Only a few meal boxes on the market are specifically designed for one person. More often, you see meal boxes for two people or more. For many suppliers, delivering a complete family box is more logistically and financially advantageous than smaller portions. That’s why you’ll notice that the prices for single-serving meals are often higher than for meal boxes intended for multiple people.
What kind of single-person options are available?
- A genuine one-person setting. A handful of providers let you select “1 person” directly when building your box, so every recipe and portion is sized correctly from the start.
- Ready-to-heat meals ordered individually. Instead of a weekly recipe box, you order chef-prepared meals one at a time and heat them up, useful if you want flexibility without committing to a fixed number of portions each week.
- A two-person box split over several days. Not a dedicated single-person product, but often the cheapest way to eat from a recipe box solo, at the cost of eating the same dish twice.
Cost-saving options
To reduce the cost per meal, you may consider ordering the meal box more frequently per week, thus getting more meals each time. Another way to save costs is by opting for a meal box for two people and spreading the meals over several days.
Providers of single-serving meal boxes
Among others, Gousto offers specific boxes for one person, while with providers like Factor, you can choose freshly prepared meals by chefs that you need to heat up. A meal box for one person is also ideal, then you can order multiple dishes directly and, for example, freeze some for later.
Which single-person option should you choose?
Gousto is the most straightforward if you want an actual recipe box built for one, it lets you set portion size to one person directly, so you’re not scaling down a family box yourself. Factor works differently, you’re ordering ready-to-heat meals rather than cooking from a recipe card, which suits solo eating well if you want variety without deciding in advance how many portions you’ll need that week. HelloFresh doesn’t currently offer a genuine one-person setting, its smallest box is built for two, so solo cooking there means eating the same recipe twice or freezing half.
We’ve tested HelloFresh’s format extensively via the Dutch box, the two-person minimum works the same way there, which is why we’re comfortable flagging it here even without a UK order of our own.
Who is a single-person meal box best for?
Solo households who want to cook without ending up with a fridge full of leftover ingredients, or who’d rather not eat the same two-person meal twice in a row, are the best fit here. If you don’t mind batch-cooking or freezing portions instead, ordering a regular two-person box and spreading it over the week is usually the cheaper route per meal, see our recipe box comparison for the full picture.