Jessie & Laurent

We use Jesse and Laurent, it's a prepared meal delivery service. The meals are very good, have variety, and my kids will try them. 

Check out Jessie & Laurent.  They do door-to-door delivery to Berkeley and most of the Bay Area.  They have an excellent variety of entrees, and I like that they post their menus several weeks ahead.  Three Stone Hearth also does door-to-door delivery in Berkeley on Wednesday for $16.  You can also go to their storefront on University for in-person pickup.  Healthy food, made from scratch - mostly soups and stews. 

Hi and congrats! I'm also a new mom with a 4.5 mo and a 3.5 yo. Costwise, a personal chef is probably the most expensive, with prepared meals varying in price depending on where you order from. We tried a private chef once when our first was a baby but found the cost quite high for the number of meals the food provided. It was very tasty, but ultimately went a different direction. 

For local meal delivery services I've recently tried Olive SF and Jessie and Laurent, which both offer meals ala carte with no need to subscribe. You can choose as much as you want each week and can order on the weeks you need it.  I like Jessie and Laurent better and they are the service we currently use, just because I think the food variety is better, but they are both pretty good taste wise. There's also Cook Unity, which is a local service but does require you to sign up for a plan, which means you have to indicate when you want to skip a week, or it will default send you an order. I haven't tried them yet because I don't like dealing with a plan and have concerns about the meal size not being really enough for one person. 

For delivered meals that aren't local, we tried Factor and Freshly with our first baby and went with Freshly for several months. Both of these services require a plan and will send you a default number of meals based on your plan if you don't do anything.  We didn't like Factor, and used Freshly for several months. It was okay, but got very repetitive and we found the meal size wasn't enough for one person and we ended up eating 3 of their meals a day.  There is also Sun Basket, which I've heard from a parent friend was the 'best tasting' of all the delivered plans they tried.  

Good luck! 

We've been using Jessie & Laurent and have been very happy. Food is tasty, easy to order online, no need to commit/you can skip weeks if you want, never any problems with delivery. It has been a godsend with two full time working parents, a toddler, and a baby.