Little Spoon vs. Yumble: How To Pick The Best Toddler Meals

📅 June 14, 2024

In a Rush? Get the Fast Facts

Nutritious and Convenient: Both Little Spoon and Yumble offer prepared meal delivery services that cater specifically to kids, providing nutritious, ready-to-eat meals that simplify dinner time for busy parents.
Variety and Adaptability: Little Spoon features a diverse menu with multicultural dishes and hidden veggies, while Yumble offers kid-approved classics and meals packed with hidden nutrients.
Fresh and No Additives: Meals from both services are made with clean ingredients; Little Spoon’s meals come with no additives, preservatives, or artificial sugars, and they offer a range of dietary options including nut-free, vegetarian, and gluten-free.
Storage and Shelf Life: Little Spoon meals benefit from an extended shelf life of 14 days and are freezer-safe for up to 3 months, thanks to their Freshlock seal. Yumble, however, does not recommend freezing their meals and they typically have a fridge shelf life of seven days.
Pricing and Delivery: Little Spoon is more affordable with meals starting at $5 each and offers delivery across the continental US. Yumble’s meals are pricier, ranging from $5.99-$7.99, and their delivery area is more limited.
Special Features: Little Spoon also provides complementary sauces that are nutrient-packed, whereas Yumble does not offer sauces or dips but focuses on meals that directly incorporate hidden veggies.
Overall Satisfaction: Little Spoon is favored for its lower cost, greater variety of meal plans, ability to meet diverse dietary needs, and the option to freeze meals, making it a more flexible and appealing choice for many families.

We’ll admit, we love the convenience and ease of prepared meal delivery services. But we also know that meals can be pretty hit or miss when you’ve got little humans at the dinner table. That’s why we’re all in on prepared meal delivery services that cater to kids. Knowing that there are nutritious and delicious meals ready to go when your kids get hungry or you need to get dinner on the table STAT can be such a relief for parents. There are a handful of fresh prepared meal delivery services for kids out there, but we had a chance to review two of the most popular: Little Spoon Plates and Yumble. Here’s how they stack up against each other!

Little Spoon Plates

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Little Spoon

Little Spoon, known for their organic baby food, branched out into the world of finger and whole foods with the launch of their toddler and kids meals, known as Plates. Plates offers a wide variety of fresh, homemade meals made with clean ingredients and no additives or preservatives. Their menu includes elevated and new takes on kid favorites like mac and cheese, in addition to multicultural dishes designed to expand your child’s palate. Plus, they also have a line of complementary dips called Sauces that pair well with everything on the menu.

What I Love about Little Spoon:

Familiar foods packed with nutrients: We know it’s not always easy to get kids to eat their greens…or really anything remotely healthy. You don’t have to worry about that with Plates, because Little Spoon uses hidden veggies and superfoods in all of their meals to make sure kids get the nutrients they need—like chicken nuggets stuffed with organic kale, carrots, and cauliflower.
No added junk: You won’t find preservatives, additives, fillers, stabilizers, or artificial sugars in these meals. Everything is made fresh and shipped fresh.
Extended shelf life: Thanks to their Freshlock seal, Plates will stay fresh in your fridge for 14 days!
Easy to heat-and-eat: No prep required. Since we’ve spent the last year balancing WFH with virtual school…and a global pandemic, this has been a particular lifesaver for me. Plates go from your fridge to the microwave to the table in under two minutes. No microwave? No problem. Each meal also includes detailed instructions on heating in the oven or on the stove top.
Freezer safe and approved: This was a BIG selling point for us. It’s hard to know which way your kids’ tastes will go from day to day, and being able to freeze Plates means that nothing goes to waste. They can be frozen for up to 3 months, and heated directly from frozen—an absolute lifesaver on busy days.
Meals to meet every dietary need and restriction: All of Little Spoon’s Plates are nut-free, and they offer vegetarian, dairy-free, gluten-free, and vegan options as well. You can also modify and save a default menu so there are no surprises in your deliveries!
High quality without a high price tag: Little Spoon has four different Plates plan sizes, and each starts at just $5 per meal. That’s a steal when you consider that you’re getting fresh, healthy meals with organic ingredients and no preservatives, delivered right to your door.
Saucy pairings: Kids love to dip their food, and Little Spoon provides tasty (and healthy!) sauces that go well with everything on their menu. Even their dips are packed full of nutrients, like butternut squash and spinach hidden in their Veggie Ketchup.

Little Spoon Plates

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Yumble

Yumble was founded by a mom of 3 who was looking for easier, more convenient options for kids’ meals that didn’t sacrifice nutrition or taste. Aren’t we all? Their rotating menu includes plenty of kid-approved foods like chicken nuggets and pasta, but also offers up some fun twists on classic dishes like hot dog pockets and burger bowls. They also have a selection of what they call ‘Picky-eater-pleasers’, which are their top-rated and most kid-approved meals.

What I Love About Yumble:

Varied weekly menu: Yumble offers about 20 meal options each week so there are tons of dishes to suit your little’s tastes..
Nutrients packed into every bite: Like Little Spoon, Yumble makes sure that their meals deliver balanced nutrition in a way that kids might not recognize. They use hidden veggies in several of their meals and components, like cauliflower in their cheese and marinara sauces.
Kid-approved classics: You’ll find mac and cheese and chicken nuggets on the Yumble menu which can be great, familiar options for the picky eaters in your fam.
Clearly labeled allergens: It’s easy to tell from the website which meals contain specific allergens, which is a big plus for parents of kids with food allergies.

What I Don’t Love About Yumble:

No vegan meals: Yumble does have a variety of meals that work for different dietary needs or restrictions, like vegetarian, dairy-free, egg-free, and gluten-free. But they don’t have any meals that would work in a vegan household.
High cost and limited plan sizes: Yumble offers three meal plan sizes delivered weekly, versus Little Spoon’s four plans delivered every other week. The price per meal ranges from $5.99-$7.99, which is significantly higher than Little Spoon’s ~$5 price tag.
Limited delivery area: Yumble currently only delivers to most of the East Coast, Texas, and just parts of the West Coast and Midwest. It’s a fairly small delivery area, compared to Little Spoon which delivers all over the continental US.
Freezing not recommended: We definitely understand that some meals are best served fresh, but as parents, being able to freeze meals and use later is a HUGE plus for us. The meals also only have a shelf life of seven days in the fridge, which can be hard to manage for families. Yumble does not recommend freezing any of their meals and does not provide heating instructions for frozen meals.
No sauces or dips: Dips and sauces can be a great tool in the fight against picky eating, but Yumble doesn’t offer any kind of add-on to accompany their meals.

Little Spoon Meals

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Both Little Spoon and Yumble check a lot of the boxes that are important to parents when it comes to feeding their kids. We love the meal options, the commitment to taste without sacrificing nutrition, and of course, the convenience! But when it comes down to it, Little Spoon gets our vote for a couple of reasons. They’re the more affordable option for even higher quality ingredients, they have meals that work for a wider array of dietary needs, and we love being able to freeze the meals and not be stuck with a short shelf life in the fridge. Plus, our kiddos happened to LOVE everything they tried, which is the most important selling point of all!