Catering:A 10-meal chicken hot barcatering package from Mexican-style chain Qdoba comes with grilled adobo chicken, rice, beans, guac, a bunch of toppings including salsa, and tortilla chips for $119.50 total ($11.95 per serving).
Regular menu: Doctoring asimilar chicken bowl in-store costs about $9.85 per order, or $13.40 with additional chips and salsa. So it’s about $2.10 cheaper per meal to order individual bowls if you don’t include chips and salsa, and about $1.45 cheaper per meal to order catering if you do.
Special deals: If you ordera Family Meal pack, which includes enough chicken, beans, rice, queso, salsa, and chips for up to five people, you’ll pay $39.95 total ($7.99 per meal). Granted, it’s light on the veggies, but you could easily change that with a bag of frozen ones. And unlike a salad, cooked components like these will keep well in the freezer.
Grocery dupe: Loosely judging from Weissman’s Chipotle burrito video, which features similar ingredients, ordering the Family Meal pack is likely still more expensive than cooking at home.
The takeaway: A catering package from Qdoba costs a little less than the regular menu when you include chips and salsa, but each serving is more than double what most Americans allegedly pay per meal. The Family Meal pack nets out at a better deal overall than catering, especially considering you could use it as a base and stretch it further with a few supermarket staples. Still, cooking at home remains the cheapest option of all.
Panda Express
Everybody's favorite mall chain is a hotbed for deals.
Catering:At Panda Express you can buy up to16 meals worth of food for $112. The catering meal package includes two sides, like chow mein and greens, and two mains, like orange chicken and Beijing beef, for $7 per meal.
Regular menu: For one side and the same two mains, anà la carte combo costs $10.10—so catering is almost $5 cheaper per meal and includes an extra side.
Special deals:The best move here is ordering aFamily Meal pack, which includesthree mains and two sides and costs just $32 total ($6.40 per meal) for up to five servings.
Grocery dupe: Is the Family Meal combo cheaper than cooking the same meal at home? Doubtful. Though it’s certainly not a perfect comparison, back in October, Weissmanmanaged to make orange chicken, chow mein, kung pao pork, and a side of rice for $2.85 per serve.
The takeaway:Panda Express is one of the best chains we’ve found for ordering food in bulk. On paper, a Family Meal deal at $6.40 a meal is just a third more expensive than America’s estimated per meal average grocery spend—but in practice, according to some bloggers who claim the combofeeds more like eight people, it could actually be on par. The Family Meal also comes with three entrees, so you could divvy up your portions to ensure a bit more variety than pre-made bowls like Sweetgreen.
Boston Market
Here’s one for people who idolizethe rotisserie chicken dude, who ate 40 full birds in 40 days.
