With time-strapped Canadians finding themselves wondering what the hell they’re going to cook for dinner at about 5 p.m. most weeknights, it’s no wonder home-delivery services are booming.

Whether it’s a grocery order from your local food store or a fully prepared meal, people living throughout Metro Vancouver have a lot of options when it comes to making suppers a little simpler.

Here are a few. This isn’t a comprehensive list; got faves? Share them in the Comments section below. Some places charge for delivery, others don’t; ask before ordering.

Take-out without going out

Companies like foodora, Lazymeal, SkipTheDishes, DoorDash, Just Eat, and Uber Eats mean you can devour dishes from some of your favourite restaurants that don’t offer delivery themselves in the comfort of your own home.

Uber Eats recently expanded its zone to include Richmond, Burnaby, and New Westminster along with Vancouver, while foodora now services Burnaby as well as YVR.

Ditch the shopping cart

Looking for a new business opportunity? Online ordering for groceries with home delivery is an industry that’s expected to reach US$18 billion this year.

Besides grocery stores like Save-On Foods and Stong’s Market delivering to local customers, several other companies drop off foodstuffs.

Move over, Amazon: Walmart is said to be a same-day delivery service this summer that will include perishable items. It’s part of a partnership with Food-X Urban Delivery Inc., a subsidiary of Sustainable Produce Urban Delivery (SPUD).

SPUD is a local leader in the field, having been one of the first to offer door-to-door delivery of a range of local, organic products, including baked goods, meat alternatives, cheese, nondairy milks, condiments, snacks, fresh produce, and more. (It has won Best Grocery Delivery the last three years in a row in the Georgia Straight’s Golden Plate awards.) Having expanded across the country, it delivers from Hope all the way through to the Whistler-Pemberton region. The company supports 15 local farms and 205 local suppliers that are less than 800 kilometres from its Vancouver warehouse.

Loblaw Companies Limited and American-owned Instacart partnered for a new service for same-day grocery delivery from Loblaws, Real Canadian Superstore and T&T Supermarkets in as little as an hour. People can order online or via the Instacart app.

Founded in 2010, Smart City Foods (formerly Sky Rise Foods) services Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, Surrey, Richmond, North and West Vancouver. Its offerings run the gamut from the basics (like apples, eggs, and butter) to fish and seafood to international products such as rice paper, curry paste, and Pocky.

Kiki’s is the grocery-delivery branch of Persia Food, a grocery chain run by the Behrouzi family, who came to Canada as Iranian immigrants. Kitchen staples, vegan products, bulk foods, tea and coffee, fruit and veg, tofu and tortillas… The list of items goes on. The company currently delivers in Vancouver. 

Burnaby’s Low Carb Grocery (which stocks everything from low-carb muffins to low-carb snacks) is another option.

Carnivores’ convenience

Headed by Victor Straatman and chef Trevor Bird, Meatme recently acquired Barons of Beef, which shared a similar philosophy. The brand sources what it calls “honest meat”, ethically derived products from small, local farmers who care about their animals, give them natural feed, and avoid the use of chemicals, antibiotics or hormones. Some examples: pork from Blue Sky Ranch in Merritt, chicken from Langley’s Central Park; beef from Empire Valley Ranch in Churn Creek. Customers get to customize their order (beef tongue, shank, marrow bones, minute steak, sausages, heart, or something else?), and certified butchers cut and pack the items in fully insulated boxes. New to Meatme subscribers is sustainably caught Haida wild fish.

Big Bear Ranch in Horsefly delivers monthly, hitting several B.C. communities before reaching the Lower Mainland, including Vancouver. With grass-fed cows, sheep, and pigs, the 1,100-acre forest-and-pasture ranch is certified as AnimalWelfareApproved.

Sumas Mountain Farms, in the Fraser Valley, claims to be the only 100-percent certified organic and SPCA-certified "grass-fed & finished" beef producer in the Lower Mainland. The family farm offers organic beef, chicken, pork, and eggs, delivering throughout the Lower Mainland.

Done with prep

Sometimes, you want to make dinner at home but just don’t have enough minutes in a day to scrub, slice, dice, and measure ingredients, never mind having said ingredients on hand in the first place.

Home-delivered meal kits make up a raging trend that forms a $120-million industry in Canada, according to the market research company NPDGroup.

Take Fresh Prep as an example. You pick what dishes you want, place your order, and the company delivers a tidy package in an insulated cooler bag with all the necessary items prepped and portioned. Also included is a recipe card, with detailed, easy-to-follow instructions for meals that take 30 minutes or less to pull together. Some of the options? Lemongrass chicken with coconut rice and nuoc cham tomato salad; grilled Portobello mushroom burgers with quick guacamole and rocket salad; and tangy pad Thai with toasted peanuts and tofu. Menus change weekly and delivery is available throughout Greater Vancouver. It uses meat that’s free of unnecessary antibiotics and hormones as well as free-range eggs and sustainable seafood.

Among the many other local meal-prep companies that deliver throughout Metro Vancouver are Vancouver Muscle Meals (where the menu includes healthy treats like protein donuts and oat balls) and Feed Me Fit.

Full-meal deal

This option is for those who just want to come home after a long day et voila; dinner is served.

Just like all these other let’s-make-eating-and-feeding-our-families-easy ventures, the number of those specializing in meals that just need to be heated up or have a lid removed has exploded. And we’re not talking fast food, chicken strips, instant noodles, or anything else that’s lacking in nutrition or flavour.

Newly launched Fraiche Sheet Foods is the brain child of Dennis and Dariya Peckham, who are vets of Vancouver’s restaurant scene. They met when they were both part of the opening team at Black+Blue. He has also worked at Lumière and two of the most renowned in Thomas Keller’s globally acclaimed portfolio, the three-Michelin-starred Per Se in New York and Napa Valley’s French Laundry; after moving to B.C. from Bulgaria following high school, she became a front-of-house standout at various Glowbal Group and Cactus Club locations.

They combined their culinary savvy and a shared, renewed focus on health and fitness (Dennis has recently taken part in bodybuilding competitions) to create a meal-delivery and catering service that emphasizes healthy eating without compromising taste.

Regularly rotating dishes made with locally sourced ingredients wherever possible come with a complete Nutrition Facts panel. They use organic, free-range chicken from Rossdown Farms, for example, and sustainable Lois Lake steelhead salmon.

Here’s an idea of their menu items: vegan Buddha bowl, Korean barbecue chicken, albacore tuna poke, seared tempeh bowl, Thai turkey lettuce wraps, tofu banh mi wraps. Also: protein pancakes and “pronuts” (double-chocolate, high in protein, low in fat). It offers custom meals and vegan options, too. Little things: the dressing for the poke bowl consists of fermented tomatoes to help with digestion and gut health.

Movement Food keeps health top of mind, too, with free-range and hormone-/antibiotic-free ingredients. Roasted chickpea salad, Barbacoa beef and rice, Lebanese garlic chicken, and Cajun salmon are on the menu; so are many vegan items.

CHOMP’s guiding principle is clear: vegan food that doesn’t suck. The meal-delivery service grew out of chef Vanessa Mills’s CHOMP Vegan Eatery at 2234 Hastings Street. Aside from being meatless, the food is gluten-free and organic. Among the meals that could show up at your doorstep are garlic-lime (rice) noodle salad, creamy mushroom fettucine Alfredo, and Beyond Meat Chick’n tikka masala.

Brazil-born chef Sergio Pereira and competitive athlete Patrick Carr are the team behind 2 Guys With Knives. On the menu: Dragonfruit chia pudding parfait, lemon-basil sirloin strips, Southwest chicken salad, paleo snack box, and more.