How To Start A Meal Prep And Delivery Side Hustle

Food is one of the few things that binds all people together.

No matter the differences of language, region, culture or appearance, every human on earth needs to eat - and the vast majority of humans on earth like to eat.

This means that if you’ve got the ability to make great-tasting food, there’s a good chance you could use your skills and experience to make yourself some extra money.

Meal kits and prep services aren’t exactly a new phenomenon, but meal delivery really took off during Covid, as restaurants desperately sought out ways to make money without being open.

While opening your own restaurant is probably a bit ambitious for a side hustle, you can still make money from making and delivering food.

Meal prep and delivery services, which deliver ready-made food to customers’ homes, are becoming increasingly popular. So, if you’re capable of making good food in large quantities, there’s an opportunity to make some money from it.

If you’ve ever been told that you should open your own restaurant, or been begged for your secret pasta recipe, you might well have considered trying to profit from your skills.

If so, this article is for you. We’ll cover all you need to know about starting a meal prep side hustle, from the logistics of food-based businesses to the steps you need to take to get started.

And if you decide at the end that meal prep isn’t for you, we’ve got some alternative suggestions for less kitchen-heavy side hustles.

How Do Meal Prep And Delivery Services Work?

Generally speaking, a meal prep service is pretty simple. A customer chooses the meals they want from a range of recipes offered, and you make and deliver those meals on the date requested.

From the customer’s point of view, if they can afford to pay for a meal prep service, it’s the ideal solution for a busy life. Having your meals delivered gives you the convenience of supermarket ready meals without the underwhelming quality and unhealthy constituents.

A meal prep meal therefore offers all the benefits of home-cooked food, with none of the hours spent labouring in the kitchen. This can be especially beneficial for those living alone, who feel like it’s a waste of time to cook meals just for themselves.

For busy professionals, it’s easy to see why having a few - or even all - of their meals prepped for them each week would make life much easier, with the added bonus of enjoying tasty, high quality food.

As someone offering a meal prep and delivery service, you’ll need to write your own recipes, cook the food, and get it to your customers - but there are also other options you could consider to take advantage of your cooking skills, which we’ll detail below.

Options For Meal Prep Side Hustles

You might assume that a meal prep side hustle can only mean one thing - preparing meals and delivering them to your clients.

However, that’s not necessarily the case. While that is probably the most common meal prep side hustle, you can tailor your business to what works best for you.

This could mean any of a number of variations on the traditional meal prep business model. The main possibilities are:

• Make and deliver food yourself. There’s a reason this is so popular. From the customer’s point of view, it’s the most convenient option, so it’s not surprising many meal prep businesses have adopted this model.

• Make food within your client’s home. Rather than delivering your food, you can always deliver yourself. This has the advantage of avoiding having to pack up prepared food safely, and your client may take on the responsibility of purchasing ingredients. This option is something of a halfway house between a meal prep service and offering your services as a private chef.

• Offer consultations or classes. If you’re an expert cook, you might have more success selling your expertise than your meals. You could put together meal plans (complete with shopping lists) for people to buy, run classes to guide people through efficient meal planning and preparation, or even offer custom, private meal plan consultations for individual clients.

• Offer recipe kits. Recipe kits have become hugely popular! People often enjoy cooking more when some of the difficult decision making and shopping has been done for them. You could put together complete kits for your customers, including all the ingredients and clear instructions, to allow them to cook tasty meals for themselves. 
  
  This has the advantage of being fairly straightforward to scale up if you become successful - if enough people love your kits, you could end up delivering across the country via courier, rather than having to stick to your local area.

Do You Need Any Qualifications For A Meal Prep Side Hustle?

Technically, no. A food hygiene certificate isn’t a legal requirement - although it is incumbent upon you to ensure your food is handled safely if you’re going to sell it to the public.

To ensure that you’re handling everything safely, though, it is strongly recommended by the Food Standards Agency that you complete a food hygiene qualification.

A Level 2 Food Hygiene Qualification is designed for businesses intending to offer food to the public, and only costs £10-£20, so it’s well worth completing for this minimal cost.

And naturally, if you plan to offer a delivery service for the meals you prepare, you’ll need to be able to deliver them. A driving licence is therefore likely to be essential for this aspect of your business, unless you plan to deliver within an extremely small area.

Although it’s not exactly a qualification, you’ll also need insurance for your business, to protect you in case anything goes wrong. You may be tempted to try to get away without it, but it’s unlikely to be a huge expense for a small business, and being uninsured could be very costly in the long term.

We’d therefore strongly recommend taking out full cover before you sell a single meal.

How To Get Started With A Meal Prep And Delivery Side Hustle

1. Research. To begin with, you’ll need to gather information and complete logistical essentials. It’s best to complete a food hygiene qualification, and you’ll need to check your local legislation regarding requirements for food businesses in your area.

You should also look at insurance, and inform yourself about the requirements regarding allergen reporting for your business.

2. Consider your niche. What kind of meals do you plan to offer? Are you particularly skilled in cooking a certain cuisine? In meals that cater to specific diets? In exotic offerings to expand people’s minds?

You may be a great generalist, but settling on a niche can make your business stand out, which is hugely helpful for marketing purposes.

3. Write and test your recipes. Having settled on the kinds of food you’re going to make, you need to start making them. Work out a set of recipes to begin with, and test them extensively.

As well as making sure they work, you’ll need to have precise ingredients lists, so you can purchase ingredients in bulk, and to work out nutritional and allergy information for each recipe.

You’ll also need to fully cost each recipe, to help you set appropriate pricing for your services. Which brings us to…

4. Set your prices. Whether you charge by the hour or by the meal, or have package prices for consultations or recipes, you need to know how much to charge your clients to make sure you come out in profit.

5. Advertise your services. If you’re planning to include delivery in your service, you’ll probably want to focus primarily on local advertising.

This might include partnerships with other local businesses, posting on social media groups for your local area, or simply spreading the word around your circle of acquaintance and finding your first few clients by word of mouth.

6. Launch your business. Having found your first customers, it’s time to start cooking!

Pros And Cons Of Meal Prep And Delivery As A Side Hustle

Alternative Side Hustles For Extra Income

If you like the sound of starting your own side hustle, but you’re less sold on spending all your free time in the kitchen, there are plenty of other things you could do!

You could make gardening your new side hustle, or try out dog walking, for a side hustle that’ll get you off the sofa and moving. Or, if you’d prefer to work from home, you could consider copywriting, or even voiceover work.

Another alternative is to try Matched Betting, one of the best side hustles out there. Once you’ve got the hang of it, it’s an easy way to earn some extra cash, with the potential to make £300-£1000 a month - and it can all be done from home!