Grubby Review

Grubby stands out from classic recipe-and-ingredient kits by being 100% plant-based — every recipe on the menu is vegan, with a rotating lineup built entirely around cook-it-yourself plant-based cooking. Pricing starts at £5.75/portion, delivery runs £4.99 (free on your first box), and there's no long-term contract. The lineup covers several plan types built around household size and diet, for 1–4 people.

The company is privately held and doesn't disclose detailed financials. In short: Grubby is a strong pick for households who want a fully vegan menu and dietary flexibility without committing to a subscription — and with a Trustpilot score of 4.0/5, it holds a solid mid-table position in our comparison set. This review is built on our testing methodology and compares Grubby directly against the other providers in our dataset.

Grubby isn't a single fixed box — it's a menu-driven subscription that lets you build your own week from a rotating selection of 100% plant-based recipes. Every recipe is vegan by default, so there's no need to filter for a "veggie option" — nothing on the menu contains meat, fish or dairy. Recipes typically take roughly 25–40 minutes to cook.

Plans are built around household size and diet, covering 1 to 4 people and typically 2–4 recipes per week. The subscription is flexible — you choose your meals, skip weeks, and adjust delivery frequency at any time. If you're unsure how many meals to pick, our general guide to choosing the right meal kit can help.

Because the whole menu is plant-based, Grubby suits households that are fully vegan or want to eat that way most weeks, though it does mean a narrower weekly rotation than an omnivore kit with a filtered vegan section. If you'd rather have a huge weekly menu with a vegan option built in alongside meat and fish recipes, a bigger kit like Gousto may be a better fit.

Grubby pricing starts at £5.75/portion (up to £7.25 depending on the recipe), which sits roughly in the middle of the six meal kits in our dataset. Across those providers, the average starting price is roughly £5.50/portion, ranging from £3.52 (Gousto) to £7.08 (Mindful Chef). Grubby lands above HelloFresh (from £3.75) and Gousto (from £3.52), and below Green Chef (from £6.30), Riverford (from £6.40) and Mindful Chef (from £7.08).

That's not an accident — you're paying for a menu that's 100% plant-based across the board, which most competitors only offer as a filtered subset of a larger omnivore menu. Price remains the single biggest reason people drop meal kit subscriptions, so it's worth going in with clear expectations about what a portion actually costs once the introductory period ends.

Delivery costs £4.99 per box, in the same range as HelloFresh and Green Chef (£4.99) and slightly less than Mindful Chef (£5.99, free over £49) — though Grubby's own first box is delivered free. New customers typically get 25% off their first three boxes. Current promotions are on the Grubby voucher code page. After the intro period, you're back to full price, and that's when the per-portion cost is worth re-checking against your actual grocery budget. If budget is the top priority, see our full roundup of cheap meal kits.

Grubby delivers across mainland UK, with a flat delivery fee of £4.99 per box regardless of order size — and delivery is free on your first box. That's a little more than Mindful Chef's fee (which waives delivery over £49) and more than Riverford (which delivers free), but on par with HelloFresh and Green Chef.

There's no long-term contract. The subscription is flexible — skip weeks, change delivery frequency, or cancel anytime. That's standard among the serious providers in our comparison: none of the six kits we track lock you into a contract. Still, subscription and cancellation management is one of the most consistently reported friction points across the meal kit industry (it comes up with HelloFresh, Green Chef, and Riverford alike), so read our guide to avoiding subscription traps before you sign up.

As with any recipe box, pay attention to shelf life and storage instructions on delivery. Check current delivery windows and packaging details at checkout, since these can vary by postcode.

Grubby's menu spans 2–4 recipes per week, all 100% plant-based. That's a narrower weekly rotation than the biggest players — Gousto runs around 200 recipes a week and Mindful Chef draws on a much larger recipe library — but Grubby's differentiator isn't sheer volume, it's that the entire menu is vegan.

On the diet side, that means every recipe naturally suits vegan and plant-based households without any filtering. That's a genuine edge if you're cooking fully vegan — see our roundup of vegan meal kits for how it stacks up against other plant-based options, or our vegetarian meal kits guide if you want a wider range of providers.

The recurring caveat in reviews is that, as with any recipe box, consistency can vary from recipe to recipe — some meals land well, others fall a bit flat. That's the main area where Grubby doesn't always land a perfect score.

It's important to be upfront about what we can't say. Grubby was not included in the dietary-guideline benchmark that underlies the green scores elsewhere on this site, so it doesn't have an independently verified nutrition score in our dataset. The benchmark measured recipes from other providers against official UK dietary guidance and produced comparable scores for those providers — but not for Grubby. Anything beyond that would be guesswork, and we're not going to fabricate a number. If you want to understand what the score measures, we explain it in green score explained.

Some context is worth keeping in mind: most UK adults fall well short of official fruit-and-vegetable and legume recommendations, and even the benchmark-tested kits in our dataset score well below the ideal. So the absence of a Grubby score doesn't necessarily mean it's worse than the rest — it means the number simply isn't available. If nutrition is your top priority, start with our curated healthy meal kits list instead.

What we can say with confidence is that Grubby markets itself on being 100% plant-based with recyclable packaging. Our sources don't document the exact fruit and vegetable content per portion the way the benchmark-tested kits do. The honest takeaway: if a verified nutrition profile matters most, the benchmark-tested kits give you more certainty. With Grubby, you'll need to read the recipe cards and menu yourself.

On Trustpilot, Grubby sits at 4.0/5 (checked July 2026, from around 1.9k reviews) — a solid mid-table score among the six providers we track, behind Riverford (4.8) and Mindful Chef (4.4), but ahead of Gousto (3.6), Green Chef (roughly 3.3) and HelloFresh (3.2). That's close to the roughly 3.9 average across this comparison set. Remember that an average score hides the spread — our guide to reading Trustpilot for meal kits explains why it's worth scanning the most recent 1- and 2-star reviews too.

The most consistent praise centres on ingredient quality — customers repeatedly call out the freshness of the plant-based produce and how easy it is to eat fully vegan without extra planning.

The recurring criticism, where it exists, echoes the broader recipe-box pattern: occasional recipe misses, and a smaller weekly menu than the biggest omnivore kits. These are worth weighing against the upside of a fully vegan menu — but it's still worth reading recent reviews before you commit, and the welcome discount is a low-risk way to test it yourself.

Grubby is privately held and independently owned — unlike some competitors in this comparison, it isn't part of a larger corporate group. For context: HelloFresh (which also owns Green Chef) is publicly traded in Frankfurt, while Gousto remains an independent, UK-founded company. Grubby doesn't carry that kind of parent-company backing, for better or worse.

That's also where the hard numbers stop. Grubby doesn't publish revenue, profit, or headcount figures, so we can't size up its financial position the way we can for a publicly reporting company like HelloFresh. That's not unusual for a privately held business, but it does mean you're taking the company's stability somewhat on faith compared with a publicly audited competitor.

On price, Grubby sits roughly in the middle of our comparison at £5.75/portion, close to the £5.50 market average — cheaper than Riverford, Green Chef and Mindful Chef, but pricier than Gousto and HelloFresh. It's not the value pick — the case for Grubby is that the whole menu is plant-based, not that it undercuts everyone. A head-to-head against its closest organic rival is in Green Chef vs. Grubby.

On customer satisfaction, Grubby holds a solid mid-table position. With 4.0/5 on Trustpilot, it sits behind Riverford (4.8) and Mindful Chef (4.4), but ahead of Gousto (3.6), Green Chef (~3.3), and HelloFresh (3.2).

In short: if you want a menu that's 100% plant-based without hunting for the vegan option, Grubby is the strongest pick in this comparison. If you want the best customer satisfaction score and don't mind an organic (non-vegan) menu, Riverford leads; if budget is the priority, Gousto is the clear value leader. Still deciding? See our full roundup of the best meal kits.

Provider	Trustpilot	Price from	Type	Contract
HelloFresh	3.2 ★	from £3.75	Meal kit (ingredients + recipes)	No	Visit ↗
Gousto	3.6 ★	from £3.52	Value meal kit (widest choice)	No	Visit ↗
Mindful Chef	4.4 ★	from £7.08	Premium healthy meal kit	No	Visit ↗
Riverford	4.8 ★	from £6.40	Organic recipe box	No	Visit ↗
Green Chef	3.3 ★	from £6.30	Organic meal kit (diet plans)	No	Visit ↗
Grubby	4.0 ★	from £5.75	100% plant-based vegan meal kit	No	Visit ↗

Grubby is the best fit for households that want a 100% plant-based, vegan menu without giving up flexibility on delivery. With a mid-table Trustpilot score in our comparison (4.0/5) and a strong welcome offer (25% off your first three boxes), it's a low-risk way to try a fully vegan recipe box.

It's a weaker fit if budget is your top concern — Gousto or HelloFresh will save you real money at the entry level. It's also not the pick if you want an independently verified nutrition score, since Grubby wasn't part of our nutrition benchmark, or if you want the top-rated provider overall, since Riverford and Mindful Chef both score higher on Trustpilot. Finally, know that some reviewers note occasional inconsistency between recipes — read recent reviews before committing to a long-term routine. All picks are made following our testing methodology.