Free Meal Prep Tool
See exactly how much you can save by cooking at home instead of eating out. Compare costs and discover your true savings potential.
You could save
€4,680
per year by meal prepping!
Weekly
€90
Monthly
€390
Yearly
€4,680
Varden creates personalized weekly meal plans, generates grocery lists, and helps you track spending on food. Start saving with smarter meal planning.
Start FreeThe average European eats out or orders takeaway 4-5 times per week, spending anywhere from€8 to €20 per meal. Meanwhile, a home-cooked meal typically costs between €2 and €5, depending on ingredients and complexity. That gap adds up fast.
Meal prepping — cooking multiple meals in advance, usually on a weekend — is one of the most effective ways to cut food costs. By preparing lunches and dinners in bulk, you reduce per-meal costs through economies of scale, eliminate impulse takeaway orders, and waste less food since everything is planned.
A family of two that replaces 10 weekly restaurant meals (€12 average) with home-cooked alternatives (€3 average) saves roughly €90 per week — that is over €4,600 per year. Even replacing just half your meals out yields significant savings.
The key to successful meal prepping is planning. Choose recipes that reheat well (curries, soups, grain bowls, pasta bakes), invest in good storage containers, and set aside 2-3 hours on a weekend. Tools like Varden can automate the planning by generating weekly menus based on your preferences and budget, then creating a complete shopping list so you buy only what you need.