• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Get our Freezer Meal Quick Start Guide
freezer meal quick start guide

Get Our Freezer Meal Quick Start Guide

Loading

About
Free Resources
Contact

Instagram

Facebook

Pinterest

YouTube

TikTok

Thriving Home

Food & Lifestyle

  • Recipe Index
    • Course
      • Breakfast
      • Lunch & Dinner
      • Sides & Salads
      • Soups & Chilis
      • Appetizers
      • Snacks
      • Desserts
      • Baked Goods
      • Beverages
      • Condiments
    • Method
      • Freezer Meals
      • Stovetop
      • Oven
      • Slow Cooker
      • Instant Pot
      • Grill or Smoker
      • 6 Ingredients or Less
    • Diet
      • Gluten-Free
      • Dairy-Free
      • Vegetarian
    • Ingredients
      • Chicken & Turkey
      • Beef
      • Pork
      • Seafood
      • Pasta & Pizza
    • Holiday
      • Birthday
      • Christmas
      • Easter
      • Halloween
      • Thanksgiving
      • Valentine's Day
    • All Recipes
  • Freezer Cooking
    • Start Here
    • Freezer Meal Recipes
    • 1 Hour Freezer Prep
    • Cookbooks
  • Menu Plans
  • Shop
    • Cookbooks
    • 1 Hour Freezer Prep
    • Shop Our Favorites
    • Gift Guides
Search...
Home Uncategorized

How to Start a Freezer Club (and Why You Should)

Updated: 11/4/21

This post may contain affiliate or sponsored links. Please read our disclosure policy.

Tight budget? Want to eat healthy meals at home regularly? No time to cook homemade meals during the week? I’ve got the answer for you: Start a Freezer Club.

A thorough guide about how to start your own time-saving, money-saving Freezer Club from a mom who did it for 7 years!

Note: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Read our full disclosure policy here.

Before having kids, I worked a full-time job with irregular hours. Dinner at home was the exception rather than the rule, unfortunately. Soon after quitting my full-time job to stay home with my first child (when the budget was much tighter!), my friend Darcie asked if I wanted to join her Freezer Club. After hearing what it was, I decided to give Freezer Club a try. Seven years later, we’re still going strong. And, now I’m a HUGE proponent of freezer meal cooking. I’d love to tell you more about my group, why I love it, and how to start a Freezer Club of your own.

What is a Freezer Club?

A Freezer Club is a small group of friends (anywhere from 2-8 people) who commit to cooking freezer-friendly meals for one another each month. (Take a moment and READ THIS if you’re unfamiliar with freezer meal cooking and wondering how it works.) My friends and I began our Freezer Club in 2007 and never looked back.

Our Freezer Club has had varying amounts of women in it over the years. Now days, I just swap with two of my good friends. Although I loved the days of bringing home 12 pre-made meals in one night, we find our smaller, more low-key group to be more manageable. However you decide to structure your Freezer Club, I think you’ll find it to be really fun and helpful!

Why Start a Freezer Club?

There are so many advantages to freezer meal cooking. These advantages are multiplied when you work together with like-minded friends. If we were sitting down for a cup of coffee and I was trying to convince you to start your own group, these would be my bullet points:

1 – Save money. By meal planning and buying in bulk, you’ll see your grocery bill go down significantly. Plus, for our family, knowing I have ready-to-go meals within reach keeps us from spending money by eating out. It’s hard to say for sure how much we save, but I’d wager to say it’s at least $100-200 a month by cooking this way even part of the time.

2 – Save time. By planning your shopping trip, you’ll cut down on all those little stops by the store during the week. You’ll also cut down on your prep and cooking time each month by preparing the same one or two meals in a large batch.

3 – Have healthy meals always on hand. If your Freezer Club is committed to a “real food philosophy” like ours (see “What makes for a healthy freezer meal?” in this post), you’ll be giving your family a wide variety of wholesome, nutrient-dense meals and NOT processed junk.

4 – Help others. A bonus to freezer meal cooking is that it’s easy to have meals on hand to take to new parents or someone in need, too. Over the years, our Freezer Club has collectively given many new moms, people in a crisis, and even a man recently released from prison some extra freezer meals to bake or warm up at their convenience.

how to start a freezer club

5 – It’s fun! Before paring down to my simpler Freezer Club group (just me and my two friends), I would meet with about 6-8 other gals every five weeks for our Freezer Club meetings for years. Those meetings were a blast! We had coffee, wine, snacks, and caught up at someone’s house. Then, we got to share recipes and chat about food, all while accomplishing a monthly meal plan. To top it all off, I came home each time and filled my freezer to the brim with pre-prepared healthy meals. The perfect night out if you ask this stay-at-home mom.

How Does a Freezer Club Work?

Step 1: Our Freezer Club comes up with a meal plan in advance over email. We used to do this at a once-a-month meeting but just don’t have time now. We each send about 3-5 recipes ideas out to our group and then we each vote for the ones we’d prefer from each person. We try to make sure there is variety in the menu plan, including some beef, chicken, pasta, seafood, soup, etc. You can cook one, two or even more meals for each other each month. Right now, my small Freezer Club group cooks one to two meals for each other depending on our schedules.

Step 2: We each cook our assigned meals on our own time, making sure that each family gets at least four servings of the selected recipe. Then, put it in the freezer until you’re ready to swap. To give you an idea of prep time, when I’ve made a meal for six families (that includes mine), it usually takes me about 2-3 hours from start to clean-up depending on the recipe.

how to start a freezer club

Step 3: Put a label on top of the meal, including the name, date prepared, who prepared it (in case they have questions), and directions for what to do with it after thawed (i.e. “Bake at 350 for 20 minutes” or “Warm on low on the stove.”). We have some super cute Freezer Meal Labels for only $1.99 here. Use them again and again.

Step 4: We swap our meals about once a month. You can meet at a friends’ house for dessert and drinks, meet up for coffee or dinner out, or just run the meals by each others’ houses when you’re out (not as fun!).

Are you ready to start a Freezer Club? Intrigued at least? Then you will need to think through these…

Questions to Ask Before Starting a Freezer Club

If you have some friends interested in starting a Freezer Club, it’s important to set up some ground rules from the beginning to make things run smoothly and to avoid frustration later. The bigger your group is, the more vital this becomes. Believe me. Our group learned this through trial and error, so I’m saving you a lot of headaches. Here are some questions to get you started:

What are our top food values? For instance, our group decided that we want to cook using “real food” ingredients and avoid processed ingredients as much as possible. We also try to use local or hormone-free/antibiotic-free meats. Other possible values: cost-effective, kid-friendly, healthy (and discuss what you mean by healthy!), or simply tasty. It’s important to have a discussion upfront with your group about what is most important to each of you when it comes to feeding your family.

How many meals will we make for one another each round? When I was in a bigger group we usually made two meals every 5 weeks. Now I usually make one per month with my two friends. You have to decide what works best for you in your phase of life.

How often will we swap meals? Every 4 weeks? 6 weeks? It can change during busier seasons, of course.

How much will we spend on our meals? Every group is different when it comes to figuring out meal cost, but it’s an important topic to discuss up front. Here are a few options to consider:

1 – Everyone polices themselves. This is how our group operated. So, if I did a more expensive meal one month, I would plan to do a cheaper meal the next. As a group, we tried to rotate who did the salmon and steak meals, for instance, since they were usually more expensive. This option also allows people who are thrifty shoppers to use their talent and not feel constrained by meeting a minimum cost.

2 – Set a cost range that members should think in terms of most months. We found that most of our meals were about $8-12, since we used local and organic ingredients.

3 – Have everyone bring their grocery store receipts, tally up the group cost at your meeting, and divide out equally. The upside is that cost is always even for everyone. The downside is that it takes a LOT of work and someone will inevitably forget their receipts or lose them. There’s also the occasional complications of people who purchase a side of beef for the freezer or those who grow some of their own ingredients, for instance. Figuring out exact cost can become tedious. I wouldn’t personally recommend this method. But, hey, if you’re a super administrative and love drowning in details as a group, then feel free! 🙂

How will we create our menu? Will we choose our meals at a face-to-face meeting? Over email? Using a Google Doc? Will each person be responsible for bringing at least four recipe ideas to the group to discuss and pick from, for example?

How many servings should each meal be? Our group has always done four servings for each family, since the majority of recipes make 4-8 servings. We even went so far as to create Freezer Club Guidelines & Reminders, a Google doc which you can download and use if you like, with some portion guidelines for certain kinds of meals (i.e. burger meals should contain four 1/4 lb burgers, chicken meals are 1.5 lbs of meat, tilapia should include 6 filets, etc.). The reason we did this is that often recipes vary when it comes to what a portion size actually is. When in doubt, though, we try to be generous with portions.

What kind of containers will we swap meals in? We highly recommend using a BPA-free container or dish. While it may be easier to buy the disposable foil containers, it might make sense for your group to invest in some quality, safe dishes that you can freeze AND bake in. After searching long and hard, I highly recommend using this container:

8×8 Glass Baking Dish with TrueFit Lid

A few reasons I like this pan:

  1. Glass is a natural, non-porous material.
  2. Glass cookware doubles as food storageware.
  3. Glass is easy to clean and dishwasher safe.
  4. The clear lid allows easy visibility to your food.
  5. Because they are oven and microwave proof, you can cook, heat, and store your food all in one dish.
  6. Flat top allows for easy stacking.
  7. They are affordable.

A few other freezer meal storage options are…

BPA-free freezer zip-top bags* – These work well for some frozen foods, like meat in marinades, muffins, and even soups. They do not work so well for casseroles.

Disposable aluminum pans with lids – These are particularly helpful when making a frozen meal to give away to a friend or someone in need, but aluminum can react to acidic food (like tomato sauce) and leave a unwelcome taste behind. So, we do not recommend using these for long-term storage most of the time.

*Important Note: Be sure to let your foods cool completely before putting them in plastic containers to avoid chemicals being released into your food.

Who will be the administrator? The larger your group is, the more helpful it is to have one person to be the administrator. This person will keep track of who is making what meal, keep the meeting moving along, send out email reminders, etc. You can even rotate who does this everyone once in a while.

how to start a freezer club

How will we evaluate meals? Our group determined early on to be really open to feedback each month. This is the only way to get better at what you’re doing and determine which meals are the very best freezer meals. To evaluate, we decided to vote at each meeting about the previous month’s meals and simply say if we want them again or not (or offer suggestions to make a meal work better next time, if we thought it had future potential). It sounds hardcore, I know. But, we all understood that everyone has different preferences and that we all have flops from time to time. The advantage of evaluating is that you can remake the successful ones again and again. The Google Doc we used to vote and keep track of our “successes” is our Homerun List, which you are welcome to download (just click HERE) and use.

Where Can We Find Freezer Meal Recipes That Work for a Freezer Club?

We wrote a cookbook just for you called From Freezer to Table, where we lay out the basics of freezer cooking, how to start a Freezer Club, and include 75+ of our favorite freezer meals recipes.

Rachel and Polly with cookbook

Every recipe in our book is well-tested, made with whole food ingredients, and family-friendly. We’re proud to say we’ve now sold over 16,000 copies and it still ranks as 5-stars on Amazon. We know you’ll love it! Take a peek inside here…

Buy our cookbook here now.

We also have a large collection of family-friendly, easy freezer meals right HERE on Thriving Home for you. 

70+ healthy freezer meals with instructions. Recipes your family will actually eat! |Thriving Home

Motivated to start a Freezer Club now? Questions about starting a Freezer Club? I’m happy to help! Please leave a comment and I’ll do my best to respond quickly.

*I am indebted to my friends Darcie and Carla for helping start, guide, and keep our Freezer Club going for so many years. This post would NOT be possible without their wisdom and friendship.

48 shares
  • Share
  • Email
Rachel Tiemeyer

Rachel Tiemeyer

As co-founder of Thriving Home, Rachel dreams about creating recipes (literally) and uses her husband, her 3 kids, and even the neighbors as guinea pigs several nights a week. She believes that good food has the power to bring families and friends closer together and continues to wake up excited about her job each day, even after 10+ years!

Read more...

Reader Interactions

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Have a question? Submit your question or comment below.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  1. AvatarBec says

    Posted on 2/9/19 at 6:09 pm

    Hi, this never occurred to me before! I love to cook, but I know many older single/coupled ladies who hate it. I’m new to my area, and think this might be an interesting way to meet new people and get better meals for others too.

    Reply
    • RachelRachel says

      Posted on 2/11/19 at 4:51 pm

      Yes, what a great idea! It builds community in a fun and helpful way for sure. Good luck!

      Reply
  2. AvatarHeather Swarthout says

    Posted on 1/27/16 at 11:52 am

    Hello Rachel! I have a few friends that live close to me and I know they would love to do a freezer meal club. I’m not sure how to go about doing it, and I want to make sure I have the money to do so! My biggest fear is organizing a meal plan and spending way over my budget, or spending under and not having enough to complete the meals. Any suggestions?

    Reply
    • RachelRachel says

      Posted on 1/28/16 at 2:07 pm

      Three important things come to mind in response to your questions:

      1) Have a group conversation at the get-go about finances and about how much you want to spend on meals and some of the other details I outline in this article. A price range and serving amount is helpful to establish (i.e. $8-10 per meal, which is 4 large servings) so everyone has the same expectations.

      2) I would suggest having everyone police themselves when it comes to how much they spend, instead of dividing expenses. That way you have control over your own budget and you can be thrifty with finding sales/couponing/buying in bulk. That being said, it’s nice to rotate around the more expensive meals from month to month, if you want to do say salmon or steak regularly.

      3) Stock up on chicken breasts or pork tenderloins, etc, when they go on sale and then suggesting a recipe for that type of meat.

      4) You may just have to grab a group and all commit to a trial period to see if it works for your family, that way everyone has an out after say 3 months if it’s not working for your family’s needs.

      5) Some of the cheapest and best freezer meals are meatless baked pastas, soups, and simple marinaded meats, which often don’t cost that much in the end.

      Does that help at all?

      Reply
  3. Avatarmonica binns says

    Posted on 11/18/15 at 12:59 pm

    I am starting a Freezer Club for the new moms in my area. Can I please get a copy of your google docs as well? Any other help and advice would be greatly appreciated!

    Reply
    • RachelRachel says

      Posted on 11/23/15 at 8:09 am

      You can find a link to them within the article now. Good luck!

      Reply
  4. AvatarFarrow says

    Posted on 9/23/15 at 9:48 am

    OMG! This is an awesome idea! I have been doing freezer meals for my family for a few months now, but I never considered starting a group! :0 So, now I have contacted my cousin to see what she thinks of starting a freezer group. This post covers everything that we will have to discuss and work out to make it work for the long haul (which is the plan). Thanks so so so much for sharing this post and your experiences with this! It’s a great inspiration!!

    Reply
    • RachelRachel says

      Posted on 9/23/15 at 10:05 am

      You’re welcome. Let me know if you have more questions. Also, we did a whole series about Freezer Meal Parties, if you wanted to start there. And we have several party plans, which you could use for Freezer Club, too. Check out the Freezer Meal tab on our Navigation bar.

      Reply
      • AvatarFarrow says

        Posted on 9/23/15 at 10:25 am

        Oh WOW! I didn’t even know all those freezer links were there! I came across this specific post via Pinterest, and Loved the idea. I hadn’t really taken the time to explore your site very much. Thanks for letting me know all of it was there! I can definitely use it!

        Reply
    • AvatarFarrow says

      Posted on 9/23/15 at 10:08 am

      P.S. Another thing I would suggest discussing to avoid confusion is to decide early on whether the group prepares main dishes only or a whole meal (casserole/one dish meal/crockpot).

      Reply
  5. AvatarErica says

    Posted on 8/9/15 at 6:20 pm

    Hi Ladies, I love freezer cooking and have done it for years. I moved and currently do not have a solid friend base in my location , but would love to make some with similar Interests. I wanted to know if you feel setting up a meetup group to find others to join a freezer group would be a great way to start.

    Reply
    • RachelRachel says

      Posted on 8/10/15 at 9:20 am

      That’s an interesting idea. How would you coordinate a meet up? I know being in Freezer Club was a way I developed friendships with other ladies I didn’t know so well, so I’m sure it would be a nice way to meet some others with similar interests.

      Reply
  6. AvatarRhea says

    Posted on 3/4/15 at 3:07 pm

    I would love your Google Docs! I am just getting this off the ground with some friends and even though we are doing it a little differently the guidelines are what we need to discuss!

    Reply
    • RachelRachel says

      Posted on 3/4/15 at 5:30 pm

      I will try to upload the Google docs to this post tonight. I can’t keep up with all the requests. 🙂 So please check back tomorrow.

      Reply
Older Comments

sidebar

polly and rachel

Welcome

We’re moms, cookbook authors, and freezer cooking evangelists. Our mission is to help your home thrive, one delicious meal at a time. Let’s make the most of your time in the kitchen! Read more.

Follow Us On Instagram!

freezer cooking

Order On:

Amazon • Target

Autographed Copy

Learn More

freezer to table

Order On:

Amazon • Target

Autographed Copy

Learn More
freezer meal quick start guide

Get Our Freezer Meal Quick Start Guide!

We’ll send you the best of the best recipes, tutorials, and freezer meal expertise. A $9.99 value for free!

Loading

Reader Favorites

marinades for chicken breasts in freezer bags

7 BEST Chicken Marinades

freezer meal

The 70+ Best Freezer Meals on the Planet

20+ Easy Crock Pot Recipes

smoothie packs

7 Frozen Smoothie Packs (+ Printable with Shopping List)

freezer meal update
New to freezer cooking?

Grab Our Freezer Meal Quick Start Guide!

5 days of recipes & tips from freezer meal experts.

Loading

Instagram

Facebook

Pinterest

YouTube

TikTok

About
About Us
Work With Us
Press
Recipes
All Recipes
Freezer Meals
Menu Plans
Shop
Cookbooks
1 Hour Prep Sessions
Gift Guides
Explore
Free Resources
Shop Our Favorites
Facebook Group
Privacy Policy
Accessibility
Disclaimers
Contact
© 2023 Thriving Home
Site Credits
Designed by Melissa Rose Design Developed by Once Coupled
Back to Top
48 shares