Frequently asked questions
Platform and Subscription FAQs
MenuAid is completely free to get started. No card required, no ads, and no catches.
You can also upgrade to MenuAid Premium for just $4 per week. You'll get access to weekly personalised recommendations, our meal planning tool, and much more!
We like to think so. On average, each MenuAid meal portion is around 25% cheaper than meal-kit alternatives, and up to 50% cheaper than typical kits, such as My Food Bag.
MenuAid meal plans can be moulded to fit any budget by picking the ingredients affordable for you, using what you may already have, or shopping in-season.
MenuAid Premium is our paid subscription tier that unlocks all of MenuAid's premium features. This includes: seasonal, weekly recipe selection, a personal meal planning tool, nutritional information, and enhanced recipe search.
Nope we don’t. We’re MenuAid - your friendly neighbourhood meal planner.
Unlike HelloFresh, My Food Bag and BargainBox we let you shop the brands and stores you love, instead of providing pre-packaged and inflexible ingredients.
You can review each recipe individually right on the recipe page by hitting “I cooked it!”, or please contact us at hello@menuaid.co.nz with any other feedback you have.
Your feedback is invaluable to us. We’ll use it to make sure our recipes are continually improving and always to your liking.
You can also always leave us a review on TrustPilot.
We're sorry to see you go and we hope that you come back soon!
You can cancel at any time by logging into your account, and selecting ‘Account’ > ‘Subscriptions’ > then ‘Cancel Premium’ at the bottom. This will move you to our free tier of MenuAid, and you'll lose access to any Premium features and recipes.
Not at the moment - but we’re working on it.
Once we have any update on an app we'll let you know!
MenuAid lets you check out instantly with the big three supermarkets: Countdown, PAK'nSAVE and New World.
We’re also continually working with several supermarkets, retailers and other brands to provide seamless shopping integrations covering multiple options. If you have a preferred retailer you’d like to see us work with, please let us know!
Unfortunately this may happen from time-to-time. The best thing to do would be to try again a day or two later (if it’s not urgently needed), or pop down to your local store.
If the missing ingredient is something uncommon or harder to find, please get in contact and we’ll be happy to suggest a replacement!
As we aren’t able to see which items you purchased with Countdown, we’ll leave everything in your trolley until you let us know you’re done with your shopping.
When you’re finished, you can empty your trolley completely by clicking ‘Empty Trolley & Remove Recipes’.
You can use our Planner tool to store your recipes for the week before adding them to and shopping with the trolley. This way, once your groceries are on the way, you’ll keep a record of everything you planned to cook!
Recipe and Food FAQs
Each recipe costs, on average, around $5-6 per portion, but will differ between different recipes.
Part of the beauty of MenuAid however is you choose your own ingredients, so you get to decide! MenuAid gives you the flexibility to shop for your favourite brands, local stores, or in sales, which can drastically reduce your costs.
We’re glad you asked.
Meal planning is a tool which should be in everyone's arsenal, allowing you to save yourself time, money and stress on deciding your weekly meals, easily shop for the ingredients you need, reduce waste, and be more sustainable.
(And that’s only a few of the benefits).
Yes, you can! Calories, carbohydrates (and sugars), fats and proteins are now available on all of our recipes.
Please keep in mind that the nutritional information is an estimate based on industry averages of the ingredients. The values may change based on different brands used, ingredients changed, or added in different amounts.
All of our recipes are designed to be simple and straightforward, perfect for beginner cooks. Each recipe comes with detailed recipe cards to follow step-by-step.
Or, for the more confident cooks, ignore the steps completely and recreate everything to fit your tastes (we won’t mind!).
We like to keep things simple, so we’ll do our best to limit what you need to the basics.
If you’ve got a pan, knife and something to stir/flip with - you’re pretty much all set.
Our average cook time is around 30-40 minutes for each recipe, but can differ depending on what you decide to cook.
If you’re looking for quick 15-20 minute week-night meals, or aiming to impress with something a bit fancier, we’ve got it all.
You can select to portion for 2, 4 or 6 servings on all of our recipes, ensuring you have the correct amounts and nothing goes to waste.
But, as you’re grabbing the ingredients yourself, you can scale this up or down to suit you, whether you’re cooking for one or feeding the 5,000 (we’d probably not recommend the latter, though).
Use our dedicated 7-day ‘planner’ tool!
Pick the recipes you want to cook, add them to the planner, mix and move each meal to the day you want to cook it, and keep your plan in one easy-to-use place.
Being able to select your own ingredients and scale our recipes up, down, or completely recreate them, means that you can fit portion sizes, calories or macros to your targets.
If you’re looking to up your protein, or on a weight-loss plan and wanting to cut down on calories, we have recipes for it all.
And, if you need an extra helping hand, our team of expert chefs and nutritionists are always happy to help. Chuck us an email at hello@menuaid.co.nz
With the flexibility of our recipes, you can add, remove or change to fit your diet - especially for keto.
Our recipes commonly use a single, staple form of carbohydrate (such as kumara or rice), making it easy for you to identify and change for a carb-free alternative.
We do indeed! You can find several recipes for delicious breakfasts, sweet treats, and other special recipes such as BBQ, Christmas and more!
Of course not!
You can choose the meals that suit you and your (or the families) tastes from all of our past or present recipes. Found yourself a Friday favourite? Sub that in each week around your other weekly meal ideas.
MenuAid aims to give you the flexibility to explore your culinary creativity.
Once you’ve got your recipes covered, you can create an automatic shopping list of all of the ingredients you need in the correct amounts.
You then have a few options for shopping: we can connect your list directly with any major supermarket to get online groceries delivered straight to your door. Or, shop locally in store, with your butchers or at the farmer's market.
Absolutely. All of our recipes, past and present, are available in our recipe library.
We currently have over 1,500+ fresh, delicious and seasonal meals to pick from and spark your inspiration, and we’re pretty proud of that.
We currently provide a balanced plan (a mix of meat and meat-free meals) and a vegetarian plan (with most meals easily adaptable to be fully vegan).
We’re constantly working on new recipes to tailor for people with more strict dietary requirements, such as dairy and gluten intolerances, or nut allergies.
Any recipes we use which may conflict with dietary requirements are clearly labelled, allowing you to switch them out for something suitable to you.
Search Results
MenuAid is completely free to get started. No card required, no ads, and no catches.
You can also upgrade to MenuAid Premium for just $4 per week. You'll get access to weekly personalised recommendations, our meal planning tool, and much more!
Each recipe costs, on average, around $5-6 per portion, but will differ between different recipes.
Part of the beauty of MenuAid however is you choose your own ingredients, so you get to decide! MenuAid gives you the flexibility to shop for your favourite brands, local stores, or in sales, which can drastically reduce your costs.
We like to think so. On average, each MenuAid meal portion is around 25% cheaper than meal-kit alternatives, and up to 50% cheaper than typical kits, such as My Food Bag.
MenuAid meal plans can be moulded to fit any budget by picking the ingredients affordable for you, using what you may already have, or shopping in-season.
MenuAid Premium is our paid subscription tier that unlocks all of MenuAid's premium features. This includes: seasonal, weekly recipe selection, a personal meal planning tool, nutritional information, and enhanced recipe search.
Nope we don’t. We’re MenuAid - your friendly neighbourhood meal planner.
Unlike HelloFresh, My Food Bag and BargainBox we let you shop the brands and stores you love, instead of providing pre-packaged and inflexible ingredients.
You can review each recipe individually right on the recipe page by hitting “I cooked it!”, or please contact us at hello@menuaid.co.nz with any other feedback you have.
Your feedback is invaluable to us. We’ll use it to make sure our recipes are continually improving and always to your liking.
You can also always leave us a review on TrustPilot.
We're sorry to see you go and we hope that you come back soon!
You can cancel at any time by logging into your account, and selecting ‘Account’ > ‘Subscriptions’ > then ‘Cancel Premium’ at the bottom. This will move you to our free tier of MenuAid, and you'll lose access to any Premium features and recipes.
Not at the moment - but we’re working on it.
Once we have any update on an app we'll let you know!
MenuAid lets you check out instantly with the big three supermarkets: Countdown, PAK'nSAVE and New World.
We’re also continually working with several supermarkets, retailers and other brands to provide seamless shopping integrations covering multiple options. If you have a preferred retailer you’d like to see us work with, please let us know!
Unfortunately this may happen from time-to-time. The best thing to do would be to try again a day or two later (if it’s not urgently needed), or pop down to your local store.
If the missing ingredient is something uncommon or harder to find, please get in contact and we’ll be happy to suggest a replacement!
As we aren’t able to see which items you purchased with Countdown, we’ll leave everything in your trolley until you let us know you’re done with your shopping.
When you’re finished, you can empty your trolley completely by clicking ‘Empty Trolley & Remove Recipes’.
You can use our Planner tool to store your recipes for the week before adding them to and shopping with the trolley. This way, once your groceries are on the way, you’ll keep a record of everything you planned to cook!
We’re glad you asked.
Meal planning is a tool which should be in everyone's arsenal, allowing you to save yourself time, money and stress on deciding your weekly meals, easily shop for the ingredients you need, reduce waste, and be more sustainable.
(And that’s only a few of the benefits).
Yes, you can! Calories, carbohydrates (and sugars), fats and proteins are now available on all of our recipes.
Please keep in mind that the nutritional information is an estimate based on industry averages of the ingredients. The values may change based on different brands used, ingredients changed, or added in different amounts.
All of our recipes are designed to be simple and straightforward, perfect for beginner cooks. Each recipe comes with detailed recipe cards to follow step-by-step.
Or, for the more confident cooks, ignore the steps completely and recreate everything to fit your tastes (we won’t mind!).
We like to keep things simple, so we’ll do our best to limit what you need to the basics.
If you’ve got a pan, knife and something to stir/flip with - you’re pretty much all set.
Our average cook time is around 30-40 minutes for each recipe, but can differ depending on what you decide to cook.
If you’re looking for quick 15-20 minute week-night meals, or aiming to impress with something a bit fancier, we’ve got it all.
You can select to portion for 2, 4 or 6 servings on all of our recipes, ensuring you have the correct amounts and nothing goes to waste.
But, as you’re grabbing the ingredients yourself, you can scale this up or down to suit you, whether you’re cooking for one or feeding the 5,000 (we’d probably not recommend the latter, though).
Use our dedicated 7-day ‘planner’ tool!
Pick the recipes you want to cook, add them to the planner, mix and move each meal to the day you want to cook it, and keep your plan in one easy-to-use place.
Being able to select your own ingredients and scale our recipes up, down, or completely recreate them, means that you can fit portion sizes, calories or macros to your targets.
If you’re looking to up your protein, or on a weight-loss plan and wanting to cut down on calories, we have recipes for it all.
And, if you need an extra helping hand, our team of expert chefs and nutritionists are always happy to help. Chuck us an email at hello@menuaid.co.nz
With the flexibility of our recipes, you can add, remove or change to fit your diet - especially for keto.
Our recipes commonly use a single, staple form of carbohydrate (such as kumara or rice), making it easy for you to identify and change for a carb-free alternative.
We do indeed! You can find several recipes for delicious breakfasts, sweet treats, and other special recipes such as BBQ, Christmas and more!
Of course not!
You can choose the meals that suit you and your (or the families) tastes from all of our past or present recipes. Found yourself a Friday favourite? Sub that in each week around your other weekly meal ideas.
MenuAid aims to give you the flexibility to explore your culinary creativity.
Once you’ve got your recipes covered, you can create an automatic shopping list of all of the ingredients you need in the correct amounts.
You then have a few options for shopping: we can connect your list directly with any major supermarket to get online groceries delivered straight to your door. Or, shop locally in store, with your butchers or at the farmer's market.
Absolutely. All of our recipes, past and present, are available in our recipe library.
We currently have over 1,500+ fresh, delicious and seasonal meals to pick from and spark your inspiration, and we’re pretty proud of that.
We currently provide a balanced plan (a mix of meat and meat-free meals) and a vegetarian plan (with most meals easily adaptable to be fully vegan).
We’re constantly working on new recipes to tailor for people with more strict dietary requirements, such as dairy and gluten intolerances, or nut allergies.
Any recipes we use which may conflict with dietary requirements are clearly labelled, allowing you to switch them out for something suitable to you.