Among meal-kit delivery services, dedicated vegan and vegetarian options deserve the most respect. Take Sprinly, for instance. Not only does this subscription service make it easy for anyone to regularly plan lunches and dinners, it also simplifies the tough transition to a plant-based diet. Maintaining that choice isn’t just healthy for you, it’s healthy for the planet, too. Sprinly has some annoying limitations that you won’t experience with Hungryroot and other Editors’ Choice meal-kit picks, but it offers fresh, fully-prepared, delicious vegan meals, and that’s what matters.
How Much Does Sprinly Cost?
Sprinly meals arrive fully prepared. You may need to reheat them, but there’s no additional cooking required. Meal-kit delivery services in this category tend to cost a little more per serving, and Sprinly’s prices are in line with this trend. You choose between three weekly plans: 6 meals per week, 12 meals per week, or 18 meals per week. At $109 per week, the 6-meal plan costs about $18 per meal. Naturally, that price goes down as you commit to more meals. The store also sell gift cards.
Sprinly’s weekly meal subscriptions are your only options. Unlike Balanced Bites, Veestro, and other prepared meal-kit delivery services, you can’t order food a la carte. You also can’t order grocery items like you can with Editors’ Choice pick Hungryroot.
Sprinly doesn’t deliver everywhere in the United States. Currently, the service ships to the East Coast, Midwest, and South. That’s a larger reach than Housemade and other local services, but most top meal-kit services deliver nationwide. Editors’ Choice pick MisenBox specifically partners with local restaurants to send food across the country. At least Sprinly has free shipping.
Sprinly’s Menu
Sprinly has a fully vegan, plant-based menu. Its items hover around the 500-calorie mark, and you can easily see nutritional and allergy information listed for each meal on the website as well as on the packaging. In the past, my nut allergy made it tough for me to eat a varied, strictly vegan diet, but I found plenty of appetizing food to sample with Sprinly. Zucchini noodle pesto? Vegetable tikka masala? Smoked sweet potato tacos? Yes, please.
Unfortunately, the menu simply isn’t big enough; Sprinly only offers six selections per week. The company says this is to ensure it sources fresh organic ingredients, while avoiding waste. If you opt for anything more than six meals per week, you must double or triple up on a meal. At least Sprinly lets you directly pick meals, unlike Fresh N Lean and Trifecta Meals, services that send you surprise meals based on the criteria you enter. Editors’ Choice pick HelloFresh offers four times as many meals to choose from within any given week.
The Packaging
Vegan meal-kit services owe it to their customers to make sure their packaging is as eco-friendly as the food inside. Fortunately, Sprinly’s packaging is totally recyclable. The boxes are cardboard. You can compost the insulation. You can recycle the meal’s plastic trays, too. The cooling ice packs are filled with non-toxic water, as opposed to gel or dry ice.
My six meals came packed in one modestly sized box. Sprinly’s meals arrive fresh, never frozen. Ideally, you’ll never have to freeze the food. Sprinly recommends eating everything within a week, and even highlights the meals that you should eat earlier so they don’t spoil in the fridge. However, there’s nothing stopping you from freezing your meals. The quality might just go down.
Cooking and Eating With Sprinly
Sprinly’s meals are fully prepared, so all you have to do is heat and eat them. The instructions tell you how to best warm the food, whether it’s on the stovetop or in the microwave. Some meals, such as salads, you can eat straight from the fridge. And unlike prepared meal kit services like Veestro, where all the ingredients come already mushed together, Sprinly’s ingredients are neatly divided in their container. When you put the meal together, you can easily leave out parts you don’t want, which I really appreciated.
I also appreciated just how fantastic Sprinly’s meals tasted, in addition to their nutritional value. With plant-based meals, fresh ingredients go a long way. Daily Harvest and Splendid Spoon suffer from a lack of freshness. But Sprinly’s meals were so fresh they tasted like they just came straight from a colorful garden. There wasn’t a bad one in the bunch. Flavors were on par with Veestro, but the portions were much more filling.
The Japanese soba noodles with tofu and vegetables cooked nicely on the stovetop. The pineapple glaze added sweetness without becoming overpowering. The bunless beet burger developed a wonderfully crispy crust in the air fryer, while still holding together as a burger patty. The smoky seasoning may have been too spicy, but the cilantro lime dressing and green apple salad cooled everything off.
The antioxidant coconut kale and quinoa salad was simple but dense. Its raisins became a candy snack, while its apple balsamic dressing felt like fancy applesauce but in a good way. I wish the baked falafel wasn’t quite as wet and bitter on the inside, but its Mediterranean flavors were on point and I loved the slightly crunchy golden rice it came with.
As with any prepared meal-kit delivery service, Sprinly doesn’t teach you how to cook. If you want to put in the work and feed your brain along with your stomach, you’ll need a traditional meal-kit delivery service. Purple Carrot and Editors’ Choice pick Green Chef provide superb, plant-based cuisine, and will teach you to cook. Blue Apron, our Editors’ Choice pick for cooking education, is another great option for aspiring chefs.
Springtime for Sprinly
Sprinly still has some kinks to work out. It needs to expand both its delivery radius and its weekly menu size. But it absolutely nails a meal-kit delivery service’s most important element: delicious food. Best of all, Sprinly’s healthy, plant-based options mean you’ll never feel guilty as you take that next bite.
For more on meal-kit delivery services, check out Blue Apron vs. HelloFresh: Which Meal-Kit Delivery Service Reigns Supreme?
