Compare meal kit deliveries against buying groceries.
Meal kits look expensive per box and cheap per serving, so the comparison has to be made per serving. On the grocery side the honest number is not the recipe's ingredient cost but what you must buy: a recipe needing 40 grams of ginger or half a tin of coconut milk forces you to buy the whole unit, and the unused remainder is a real cost when it goes off. Adding that waste uplift is what makes the comparison fair. Kits typically still cost meaningfully more per serving, and what you are buying is the removal of planning, shopping and portioning rather than cheaper food.
Kit cost per serving
Per serving = box price / (meals x servings per meal)
Home cost per serving
Per serving = ingredient cost x (1 + waste%) / servings per meal
Because recipes call for part-quantities and shops sell whole packs. A tablespoon of tomato paste, a third of a bunch of coriander, half a tin of chickpeas — you pay for all of it, and much of it goes off before another recipe needs it. Ignoring that flatters home cooking by 15 to 25 percent.
Occasionally, for one or two-person households cooking varied recipes with lots of specialty ingredients, where grocery waste is highest. They also win against takeaway comfortably. Against batch-cooked home meals from staple ingredients they almost never win on price.