Meal Prep vs Delivery in Brussels: A Real Cost Breakdown
By Thomas · 2026-06-16 · Meal Prep
The honest comparison between cooking, ordering and subscribing is one most articles get wrong on purpose. Cooking advocates count only ingredient costs and pretend the time investment is zero. Delivery advocates compare one delivery dinner to a restaurant meal and forget nobody eats from Deliveroo once a week. Meal-kit and subscription companies (us included) usually pick the framing that flatters them. The math below is set in Brussels in 2026 and assumes six dinners per week (a realistic working-household number, with two restaurant or social meals factored out), counting both the euros and the hours of each approach. The trade-offs are real, and which one wins depends entirely on which trade-off your week has room for.
The four ways to feed a Brussels household
- Cook from scratch: shop at supermarket or a market like Marché du Midi on the weekend, cook each evening or batch-cook on Sunday. The control option.
- Delivery apps: order from Uber Eats / Deliveroo / Takeaway six nights a week. The zero-friction option (no cooking, no planning, no shopping).
- Meal kit (HelloFresh, Foodbag): pre-portioned ingredients delivered weekly, you still cook. The compromise option.
- Ready-to-eat subscription (Timesty and competitors): fully cooked dinners delivered every Sunday afternoon, reheated and eaten in minutes. The time-saving option.
Cost: what six weekly dinners run in euros
Cook-from-scratch is the cheapest if you do it well. €52 a week works out to ~€8.70 per dinner, achievable in Brussels at Colruyt or Lidl with seasonal ingredients and minimal waste. The number rises fast if you shop at Delhaize for convenience or bin a quarter of what you buy. Realistic cook-from-scratch range: €50 to €75 depending on supermarket and waste discipline. Delivery apps are the most expensive by a wide margin: €18 average per delivery dinner in Brussels (meal + service fee + delivery fee + occasional drink) times six is €108. The meal-kit and Timesty cluster tightly between, the meal-kit slightly higher because the per-portion price is similar but the ingredient packaging adds cost. A Timesty 6-meal box lands at €10.50 per dish; the larger 8+ box drops it to €10. If you're tempted to do it yourself, the five batch cooking mistakes are what quietly push the scratch number up.
Time: where the four options separate most
Cook-from-scratch costs 5 to 6 hours a week: roughly 1 hour for shopping, then 30 to 50 minutes per evening for cook-and-clean (or one 3-hour Sunday block plus reheating). Meal-kits save about an hour, mostly on shopping; the cooking itself is similar. Delivery apps cost almost no active time (5 to 10 minutes per order to scroll, decide, pay) but cost something else worth naming: the cognitive load of deciding six times a week. Timesty is the lowest active-time option at about 30 minutes per week (reheating, plating, loading the dishwasher) because the cooking and planning are done by us. Our 45-minute component method is the cheapest way to close that time gap yourself if you'd rather cook.
The whole picture, side by side
| Option | €/week | Hours/week | Avg kcal/meal | Sodium load | Variety |
|---|
| Cook from scratch | €52 | 5.5 | Variable, controllable | Lowest | Depends on you |
| Meal kit | €68 | 4.0 | Moderate, balanced | Low to moderate | Service-set, varied |
| Delivery apps | €108 | 1.0 | Often high (800+ kcal) | Highest | Maximum, restaurant-led |
| Timesty subscription | €63 | 0.5 | Balanced, labelled | Low (chef-portioned) | Service-set, weekly menu |
So which one actually wins?
The honest answer is that the winner depends on which axis you can't afford to lose on. Cook-from-scratch wins on euros and on nutritional control, and loses 5 hours a week. Delivery apps win on time-of-cooking but lose on every other axis: euros, calories, sodium, and (this matters) how you feel by Friday after a week of restaurant-portioned food. Meal-kits win on the cooking-skill-and-variety axis without saving as much time as people expect. Timesty wins on the cost-per-saved-hour ratio: for the roughly €11 premium over scratch cooking, you get five hours back, a €2.20-per-hour rate that most professional Brussels schedules treat as an obvious yes. The math isn't subtle there. The remaining question is whether you actively want to cook, in which case the math doesn't decide for you.
Where this math breaks: meal vouchers Two situations change the answer. First, if you have Belgian meal vouchers (up to €8 per working day, around €1,760 a year), the relative cost of the three paid options shifts in their favour because vouchers can pay for them, including a Timesty box, which accepts Edenred, Monizze and Pluxee. Cook-from-scratch can also use vouchers at the supermarket, but the time penalty stays. The detail of how the daily cap works is in our guide to how Brussels meal vouchers actually work. Second, if you genuinely enjoy cooking and find it restorative rather than draining, you're paying for a hobby, not buying time. The 5 hours stops being a cost.
We don't want to pretend the choice is obvious. People who love cooking should keep cooking. People who treat dinner as fuel to be optimised should use the cheapest fuel that clears the nutritional bar. People in the middle, who would cook if they had two more hours per evening but don't, are who this comparison is for. The five hours per week is the number to actually look at. Multiply by 50 weeks and that's a fortnight of waking time per year. The math on what to do with two weeks is the math on what to do with this decision.
Is cooking from scratch really cheaper than a meal subscription in Brussels?
On euros alone, yes: about €52 a week for six dinners (~€8.70 each) at Colruyt or Lidl with low waste, versus €63 for a Timesty 6-meal box. But scratch cooking also costs around 5.5 hours a week, while the subscription costs about 0.5. The €11 weekly gap buys back five hours, roughly €2.20 per hour. Whether that is cheap depends on what an hour of your evening is worth to you.
How much do delivery apps actually cost per dinner in Brussels?
Around €18 per dinner once you add the meal, service fee, delivery fee and the occasional drink. Six nights a week is about €108, roughly double cook-from-scratch and well above both meal kits (€68) and a Timesty box (€63). Delivery wins only on active cooking time, and loses on calories, sodium and weekly spend.
Can I pay for a meal subscription with Belgian meal vouchers?
Yes. Timesty accepts Edenred, Monizze and Pluxee, one payment method per order. Belgian meal vouchers are worth up to €8 per working day (around €1,760 a year) and expire 12 months after issue, so spending them on dinners is efficient. Vouchers can also be used for groceries if you cook from scratch, which keeps that option competitive on euros while still costing the extra time.
Which option is best for a busy Brussels professional?
If your scarce resource is time, the ready-to-eat subscription wins: about 0.5 hours a week versus 5.5 for cooking, at only a small euro premium. If your scarce resource is money and you have waste discipline, cook from scratch. Delivery apps are rarely the rational choice six nights a week. The honest deciding number is the five hours: that is the gap between cooking and not.
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