Baby is ready for solids, and as a new parent, you have no idea where to start. It's an exciting time, but on top of the endless diaper changes and sleepless nights, the added weight of figuring out what to feed your infant can feel daunting. And if you're interested in making your own baby food, you'll soon discover that shopping for organic produce, then steaming and pureeing homemade blends can be extremely time consuming. Not to mention all the questions that arise — am I feeding my baby the right foods in the right order? Is the texture too thick or too thin? What baby food containers should I use to store the food?
Enter the growing baby food and kids' meal delivery industry. These services aim to deliver nutritious baby food directly to your door to make the process a bit easier for new parents. Yumi has become a popular option for parents looking for nutrient-dense meals for their little ones. We had a panel of moms and little ones — including yours truly — put the service to the test. Here's everything you need to know about Yumi baby food service, including how much it costs and whether or not it's really worth the cost.
Yumi Baby Food Meal Delivery Service
Pros
- Time-saving and convenient
- Catered towards baby's age and development
- Nutritionally balanced meals at every stage
- Recyclable and reusable packaging
- Responsive customer service
- Clean Label Project Purity Award recipient
Cons
- Limited options for children over 12 months
- Does not include allergen introduction
- No corresponding app to manage your order
- Does not deliver to Hawaii, Alaska or outside the U.S.
What is Yumi?
Yumi describes itself as a "next-generation food and nutrition company" that makes mealtime for busy families easier. It offers nutrient-dense, plant-based meals that are mapped to your child's age and development. You can select from blends, vitamins and snacks. Deliveries are made weekly but can be skipped at anytime. Yumi customers also get exclusive access to its in-house team of experts, including pediatricians and nutritionists, to offer support.
How does Yumi work?
When you sign up on the Yumi website, you'll provide some basic information about your child, including their birthday. Then, Yumi will match them up with meals catered to their developmental stage. Select one, two or three meals a day, plus options for snacks. Yumi's popular Milestone Plan introduces your baby to three to four new flavors each week, eventually introducing them to 100+ different ingredients. Yumi pre-selects the meals for your infant, but you have the ability to go in and edit your choices as well. The menu includes:
- Blends
- First Food Singles (6+ months): Thinner single ingredient puree
- Graduated Singles (6+ months): Thicker single ingredient puree
- Duos (7+ months): Two-ingredient puree
- Mashables (8+ months): Smooth multi-ingredient puree
- Mashables (9+ months): Textured multi-ingredient puree
- Pinchables (10+ months): Small pieces of whole food designed for helping baby practice their pincer grasp
- Bites (11+ months): Nutrient-dense bites as baby nears the one-year mark
- Snacks and Vitamins: A variety of add-ons which include bars, award-winning fruit strips and more.
In all, there are 60+ unique organic meals that change seasonally. Each stage is curated towards baby development. For example, when starting solids at 6 months, Yumi makes sure to feature blends rich in iron, which is essential for growth and development at this age (baby's iron stores naturally deplete around this point). At month 7, meals focus on protein-rich choices to help baby as they learn to roll back and forth and start to crawl. You'll receive more information for each stage as your baby gets older, too.
Yumi says its products are all gluten-free, big-9 allergen-free, vegetarian and vegan-friendly, kosher, organic, never fortified and have no added sugars or preservatives. Popular blends include its seasonal pie flavors (Pumpkin Pie, Triple Berry), as well as flavors from its limited-edition Chef Series.
How much does Yumi cost?
Yumi’s plans start at around $5 per day. The company offers three plan sizes to cater to your child's growing appetite as they get older, so you can decide if you want to supplement breastmilk or formula with Yumi one, two or three times per day:
- One meal a day plans come out to $4.40 per meal.
- Two meal a day plans come out to $3.85 per meal.
- Three meal a day plans come out to $3.47 per meal.
The more food you buy, the bigger the discount which is typical for most meal delivery services. Shipping is free regardless of how many meals you order. A 10% lifetime discount is available to military, first responders and teachers.
Where does Yumi ship?
Yumi currently ships anywhere in the 48 contiguous United States, and is hoping to begin delivery to Hawaii and Alaska soon. The food is made in Los Angeles, and the cutoff time for upcoming orders is Tuesday at 11:59 p.m. PST the week prior to your shipment.
What is Yumi packaging like?
The brand uses BPA-free and BPS-free plastic over glass so it won't break if knocked off a high chair. It is also curbside recyclable.
Our Yumi Baby Food Review
Good Housekeeping Expert Tester Profile
Name: Stefani Sassos, M.S., R.D.N., C.D.N.
Role: Registered Dietitian and Good Housekeeping Institute Deputy Nutrition Director
Why you should trust me: In addition to being a registered dietitian, I'm a mom to a 14-month-old girl with a fierce personality and big appetite! As a working mom, I'm constantly looking for time-saving solutions and have done extensive research on feeding her balanced meals that also expose her to a variety of flavors. In my role at GH, I lead all testing and analysis on food and nutrition products, ranging from supplements to baby food to prepared meal delivery services. As the primary expert tester on this Yumi evaluation, I fed my daughter Yumi baby food consistently from 6 months through 13 months. Not only does this review include my personal experience with the brand, but GH also asked five separate moms across the country to test the service out with their own little ones for additional real-life feedback.
Ordering and pricing
I found the ordering and sign-up process to be fairly simple, as did our other mom testers. You'll input some basic information, including baby's birth date, then Yumi will provide recommendations on which stage to start out with. Take note that you'll have to order via a desktop computer or on a browser on your phone, as Yumi does not currently offer an app.
As a new mom, I appreciate that Yumi took the guesswork out of solid introduction and offered the appropriate textures and blend's for my daughter's age. From the POV of a registered dietitian, I love that the blends cater to different nutrients at every stage with an emphasis on iron, choline and more, depending on what development milestones your baby is going through. Other parents agreed: "This kit was catered specifically to my baby, which was a new experience for us," said one of our testers. "I loved that it was specifically for him."
Another standout to me as a registered dietitian and mom is that Yumi has been awarded the Clean Label Purity award, which tests for over 400 different contaminants. After the concerns over heavy metals in baby food last year, it was important to me to find a safe option for my daughter. Our other testers appreciated this point as well, especially ones that didn't have the time to prepare homemade options and were instead relying on store-bought baby food.
Delivery and packaging
Having tested Yumi over the course of several months, I had consistently good experiences with prompt shipping and delivery. Containers were packed tightly in little trays with ice packs that kept the food cold even if sitting at our doorstep all day. Testers had positive delivery experiences as well, saying that while one or two jars might be knocked around sometimes, for the most part the trays kept them in order.
Testers appreciated that the jars, boxes and trays are all recyclable and loved that the jars are reusable, too. I personally would clean out the containers and repurpose them for puffs and other baby food throughout the week (I'm currently still reusing them!). The BPA-free and BPS-free jars are plastic, which has its pros and cons — the main pro being that they won't break if dropped, which is an important consideration with little ones. Overall, I was impressed with how much food they could pack in those little containers.
The insulation is curbside recyclable, which is convenient. For the ice packs, you can cut open the top and dispose of the contents in the trash. Then, rinse them out and recycle as #4 plastic. Sure, it's a bit of a production, but pretty standard for a meal delivery service that keeps the food cold.
As we progressed to finger foods, we did have some issues with the bites arriving soggy (some bites held their shape better than others), but they typically would come back to life when heated on stovetop. In two instances, I contacted Yumi to get a replacement of the bites, which were then sent over with the next shipment. Another thing to note: Since the meals are fresh, they need to be in an insulated bag if taken on-the-go. While the puffs, bars and some of the snacks are shelf-stable, none of the actual meals are. You are getting quality fresh food, but that's not always convenient when it comes to portability.
Preparation and feeding
Everything is ready to eat from the containers, making it super simple to use. Parent testers appreciated this convenience, with one saying, "The meal delivery I have done in the past is for adults and required prepping meals — this required no prep work." You can feed with a spoon right out of the jars, or scoop the blends out onto a plate.
My daughter and the other kids in our tests were surprisingly receptive to the flavors of the blends. Not every meal was always a hit, but most seemed to be well received. For picky babies, especially those around 6 months or younger, don't worry too much if they're not receptive to some of the foods you introduce to them to at first — try again in a week or two. Ultimately, those first few weeks are designed to introduce baby to solids, not be their sole source nutrition, so have fun with it. Don't be afraid to offer them something multiple times; sometimes a different spoon or setting can make a big difference in your infant's acceptance of it.
As for Yumi's Pinchables, they could get messy and were best served on a baby plate, but were very well-balanced from a nutrition standpoint. It was nice that the options progressed with my daughter — I was surprised that she took those first few bites of the Pinchables so easily. I may have delayed that introduction if not prompted by Yumi, since progression to finger foods can be a scary thing for a first-time parent!
The Bites were a great way to introduce her to larger pieces of finger food, but parents with older toddlers noted that the meal options were limited after the one-year mark. While the options were helpful from 6 to 12 months, the service doesn't fully grow with baby as they reach the toddler stage. That said, I started to re-create some of the Bites at home too, which provided great inspiration.
Customer service is available via live chat, phone, email or text message and was very responsive and helpful. They also have a great network of on-staff nutritionists that you can speak to if you have any questions, which is a major perk of the service.
Yumi pros and cons
A big consideration is whether or not Yumi is worth the price point. In my opinion, the quality of the food is undeniable and the Clean Label Purity Award status sets this option apart from other baby food brands. That being said, you're certainly paying a premium for convenience and freshly made baby food. While Yumi's options are more expensive than making the food at home yourself and pricier than many store-bought options, they do have some major advantages, including taking the the stress and pressure off of having to meal prep for your little one.
One thing to note is that although the service guides you in solid introduction, it is not an allergen introduction service. The meals are free from the big-9 allergens and even though you are introducing new foods, you'll have to add in allergens small amounts like peanuts and more on your own and under the instruction of your pediatrician separately from the service.
Pros
- Time-saving and convenient
- Catered towards baby's age and development
- Ideal for infants ages 6 to 12 months
- 60+ meal options that change seasonally
- Nutritionally balanced meals at every stage
- All meals are organic and plant-based
- No added sugars or preservatives
- Great variety of flavors
- Recyclable and reusable packaging
- Responsive customer service
- Fast reliable shipping and delivery
- Clean Label Project Purity Award recipient
Cons
- Limited options for children over 12 months
- Does not include allergen introduction
- No corresponding app to manage your order
- Does not deliver to Hawaii, Alaska or outside the U.S.
Final thoughts: Is Yumi worth it?
If you're curious about trying Yumi but concerned about the cost, my recommendation would be to start with just one meal a day for your little one. If you feel there is a surplus of food, you can freeze the blends for up to two months and pause your subscription if you need a break. The biggest pro for myself and many of our testers was that, as new parents, the service reduced stress over what to feed our babies and when. That alone for me was certainly worth giving the service a try. You are paying a price for convenience, but knowing that your baby is getting a variety of high-quality foods and being exposed to nutrient-dense ingredients is worthwhile.
What's more, the options are fresher than any store-bought alternatives, which can also be costly. For new parents that are just beginning solids introduction, Yumi can be extremely helpful in ensuring that your baby is exposed to different foods and flavors at the optimal pace. Regardless of whether you choose to use Yumi or go a different route, my ultimate advice is to have fun with solids introduction and soak up those precious moments with your little one — they go by way too fast!
Stefani (she/her) is a registered dietitian, a NASM-certified personal trainer and the director of the Good Housekeeping Institute Nutrition Lab, where she handles all nutrition-related content, testing and evaluation. She holds a bachelor’s degree in nutritional sciences from Pennsylvania State University and a master’s degree in clinical nutrition from NYU. She is also Good Housekeeping’s on-staff fitness and exercise expert. Stefani is dedicated to providing readers with evidence-based content to encourage informed food choices and healthy living. She is an avid CrossFitter and a passionate home cook who loves spending time with her big fit Greek family.
