"It's cheaper to make it myself." That's true if you only look at what the ingredients cost. It gets a lot less clear once you count everything else.
What people usually compare
The reflex is to compare the price of a delivered meal with the price of raw ingredients. Played that way, homemade wins every time. A chicken breast, a cup of rice and some frozen vegetables comes out to a few dollars.
Except that isn't the real cost of a homemade meal.
The full math
1. The ingredients, for real
Chicken on sale at $6.99 a kilo is what you pay when you catch it in the flyer. The rest of the time, it costs more. Add the oil, the spices, the sauce, the rice, the fresh vegetables that cost more than the frozen ones.
2. The waste
This is the line nobody counts. Canadian households throw out a significant share of the food they buy: half the bag of spinach, the bunch of cilantro bought for one recipe, the leftover sour cream. A prepared meal service has zero waste at home: what you get is exactly portions.
3. The time
A well-organized meal prep session runs 45 to 90 minutes, plus the grocery run, plus the dishes. Call it two and a half hours a week, which is conservative.
Put a number on your hour. Not your gross salary, just what it's worth to you. At $15 an hour, two and a half hours is nearly $38 a week.
4. The restaurant meals you stop buying
This is the heaviest line, and the most honest one. The real comparison isn't "delivered meal versus homemade meal". It's "delivered meal versus what you actually eat on the nights you have nothing ready". And on those nights, that's $18 to $25 of delivery or restaurant food.
The table
| Item (per week, 10 meals) | Cooking yourself | Delivered meals |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients | $60 to $90 | included |
| Estimated waste | $10 to $20 | $0 |
| Delivery | $0 (but you drive there) | $12 max |
| Time | 2 h to 3 h | 0 |
| Dishes | yes | no |
| Controlled portions | if you weigh them | weighed to the gram |
These amounts are ballpark figures for one adult in Quebec in 2026, with generous protein portions. Your own math will vary depending on where you shop and what you eat.
When cooking yourself clearly wins
- You're cooking for a family of four or more, where the economies of scale are real
- You like cooking, it's not a chore but something you enjoy
- Your budget is genuinely tight and you have more time available than money
- You have very specific dietary restrictions
When delivered meals clearly win
- You already eat out often because there's nothing ready at home
- You follow a nutrition plan and you don't weigh your portions anyway
- Your time is worth more than the price gap
- You've tried meal prep three times and given up three times
Our position, no hedging. If you like cooking and you have the time, cook. Really. Our meals start at $12.90 with a weighed protein portion of 100 g to 250 g and delivery at $12 max. We cost more than your chicken on sale, and less than Tuesday night's Uber Eats.
See the menuThe hybrid solution
Most of our customers don't make it a binary choice. They cook on the weekend, when it's enjoyable, and order for weeknights, when it isn't. Five or six delivered meals cover the office lunches and the gym nights. That's probably the best math of both worlds.
Read next: the meal prep guide and the comparison of services in Quebec.