Meal Prep Made Easy: How Pre-Made Meals Save You 7 Hours a Week

Let's do some quick maths.

Think about your average week. How much time do you spend planning meals, writing shopping lists, driving to the supermarket, wandering the aisles, loading groceries into the car, putting them away, cooking dinner, and then — the bit everyone loves — cleaning up afterwards?

If you're like most New Zealanders, the answer is somewhere between 7 and 10 hours a week. That's nearly a full working day, every single week, just keeping yourself fed.

Now imagine getting all of that time back. That's what switching to pre-made meals actually looks like.

Where Does All That Time Go?

Let's break it down. These numbers come from typical Kiwi households, and if anything, they're conservative:

Meal Planning: 30 minutes

Deciding what to cook, checking what's in the fridge, scrolling through recipes, asking your partner "what do you feel like?" for the fourteenth time. It doesn't sound like much, but it adds up — and it's mental energy as much as time.

Grocery Shopping: 1.5 hours

Driving to the supermarket, finding a park, walking the aisles, comparing prices, waiting at checkout, loading the car, driving home, unpacking. Even a quick shop rarely takes less than an hour once you account for travel time.

Cooking: 3.5 hours

Seven dinners at roughly 30 minutes each (and that's if you're efficient). More complex meals can easily take 45 minutes to an hour. This doesn't even include lunch prep if you're making that too.

Cleaning Up: 1.5 hours

Dishes, pots, pans, wiping down benches, cleaning the stovetop. About 15 minutes per meal, seven days a week.

Total: 7+ hours per week

That's 365 hours a year. Over two full weeks of your life, every year, spent on food logistics.

What Meal Prep Looks Like with Premade

Here's the Premade version of that same week:

1. Browse the menu online — 5 minutes
2. Pick your meals and order — 2 minutes
3. Receive your box (delivered chilled to your door, Wed or Fri) — 0 minutes of effort
4. Put meals in the fridge — 1 minute
5. Heat and eat — 3–4 minutes per meal in the microwave, or 12–15 minutes in the oven at 180°C

Total weekly effort: Under 30 minutes

That's not a typo. You're going from 7 hours to half an hour. And the meals are cooked fresh daily in our Invercargill kitchen using locally sourced ingredients, then delivered chilled — so you're not sacrificing quality for convenience.

For the full details on how the process works, visit our How It Works page.

What Would You Do With 7 Extra Hours?

This is the bit that gets people thinking. Seven hours is a lot of time. Here's what some of our customers have told us they do with theirs:

• Exercise more — Finally getting to those gym sessions or evening walks
• Spend time with family — Actually sitting down and being present instead of rushing around the kitchen
• Pick up a hobby — Reading, gardening, learning guitar, whatever brings you joy
• Rest — Sometimes the best thing you can do with extra time is absolutely nothing
• Work on a side project — Building a business, studying, upskilling
• Sleep — More time in the evening means earlier bedtimes and better rest

The point isn't that cooking is bad. Plenty of people love cooking, and that's great. But when cooking becomes a chore — something you have to do rather than want to do — that's when outsourcing it makes sense.

"But I Like Cooking on Weekends"

Good news: Premade isn't all-or-nothing. Heaps of our customers cook on weekends when they've got the time and energy, and use Premade to cover the weeknight dinners when they don't.

A typical setup might look like:

• Monday–Friday: Premade meals from the fridge. Zero cooking, zero cleanup.
• Saturday–Sunday: Cook something special, try a new recipe, have a barbecue.

It's the best of both worlds. You get the joy of cooking when you want it, and the freedom from it when you don't.

It's Not Just About Dinner

While most people start with Premade for dinners, our meals work just as well for lunch. Chuck one in your work bag in the morning, heat it up in the office microwave, and you've got a proper meal instead of a sad sandwich or an overpriced café lunch.

With 26 meals on the menu — from Satay Chicken to Tofu Thai Green Curry — you can easily cover both lunch and dinner without repeating a meal all week.

The Cost Comparison

Let's talk dollars. Our meals range from $13.99 to $16.99 each. That might sound like more than cooking from scratch — but is it?

Consider the true cost of home cooking:

• Groceries for a week of dinners: $80–$150+
• Wasted ingredients (that bag of spinach you forgot about): $10–$20/week
• Your time at even minimum wage: $7 hours × $23.15 = $162
• Takeaways when you can't be bothered cooking: $20–$40 per order

When you factor in time, food waste, and those inevitable takeaway orders on the nights you just can't face the kitchen, Premade often works out cheaper than you'd think.

Orders over $120 qualify for free shipping, and new customers get $20 off their first orders ($10 off each of your first two, minimum $89).

The Sunday Scaries, Solved

You know that feeling on Sunday evening when you realise you haven't planned a single meal for the week ahead? That low-level dread of five consecutive nights of "figuring out dinner"?

With a Premade subscription, that feeling disappears. Your meals turn up, your fridge is stocked, and every weeknight dinner is sorted. No planning required.

If you're keen to get started but not sure what to order, our guide on How to Build Your Perfect Weekly Meal Box walks you through it step by step.

And if you're someone who's always felt like there aren't enough hours in the day, you might also enjoy our post on Eating Well When Life Gets Busy.

Ready to Reclaim Your Week?

Seven hours. That's what's waiting for you on the other side of your first Premade order. Better food, less stress, and a whole lot more free time.

Order your first box today →