The 19 Best Food Gifts for New Parents in 2020

With Atlas Coffee Club, you can gift three, six, or 12 monthly deliveries. For each option, select between whole beans or ground beans, along with the quantity of coffee you’d like shipped each month. You can also choose between light or dark roast. This monthly subscription is the perfect fit for sleep-deprived parents!

Each shipment comes with a bag of coffee—that precious jolt of caffeine—plus tips for brewing it and a postcard from the coffee's origin country. The beans come from coffee-growing countries around the world, including Congo, Peru, Kenya, and Costa Rica.

There are plenty of reasons snacks are a good gift for new parents. First, typically you can nosh on them one-handed, which is convenient if the other hand is occupied holding a little one. And, new parents may be surprised to find out just how many friends and family want to drop by and meet their newest addition to the family. Having snacks on hand means something to serve. 

Knack’s Healthy Snack Haul care package comes with an array of tempting—yet also healthy—options in both sweet and savory varieties. Gift this care package, and the new parents in your life will get nuts, salsa, trail mix, beef jerky, and all sorts of other options, all packaged up together. Have a friend that doesn’t eat meat? This package—and all gift options at Knack—can be customized. Add two jars of salsa and remove the jerky, or start from scratch designing a personalized care package.

This jam-packed box has a little bit of everything, from coffee beans to keep parents awake to soothing tea to help them drift off. Beautifully packaged and tastefully selected items make this gift feel super luxurious, and ideal for a friend in your life who obsesses over food’s origins and prioritizes everything organic. The box also comes with a punny onesie that reads “I love curds and I’m whey cute.”

New parents get delicious treats like granola, fancy dried fruit, and cookies in this nicely designed package. In addition to snacks for parents, there’s also something special inside for the new baby: a swaddling blanket stamped with vibrantly colored polka dots.

The clichés about coffee-loving new parents are mostly true—so a gift of this Zojirushi travel thermos will be appreciated. The thermos has an amazing ability to preserve your drink's temperature. Pour in piping hot coffee at dawn, and in the late afternoon, it’ll still be steaming hot. That’s also true for cold beverage—you’ll feel ice cubes clinking hours after the beverage was poured in. Another impressive feature: a dependable lock function that prevents leaks. This is a thermos a busy mom can throw in a bag—the diaper bag, her laptop bag, a backpack—without concerns about leaks and spills. 

Love this idea? Read more reviews of the best travel mugs.

This NutriBullet blender can whip up a smoothie for new parents, then transition to helping blend baby food once baby's moved past a milk-only diet. It has incredible power—so it’ll pulverize foods with great speed. And, it’s easy to clean—no tiny, hand-wash-only parts to make using it unappealing. The blender comes with BPA-free plastic cups. And while yes, it’s an option to purchase a device specifically geared toward making baby food, a blender works just as well—with the advantage of being a more versatile household item that parents will be able to use for years (not just the weeks or months when baby enjoys pureed foods).

This sleek programmable coffee pot will become a staple for exhausted parents who might struggle in those pre-dawn hours to count out scoops of coffee. Perhaps one of the most appreciated features will be the “brew pause” option, which allows you to snag a cup of coffee when the machine is mid-way through brewing a pot.

Want to take a look at some other options? See our guide to the best programmable coffee makers.

Help keep new parents hydrated with a gift of this reusable water bottle, which conveniently opens with just one-hand. It’s a feature that parents holding on to little ones—and juggling a diaper bag—will appreciate. Beverages will stay cold all day long thanks to the bottle’s vacuum-insulated stainless steel. Note that the lid is dishwasher safe (top rack only) but the body should be hand washed. You can choose from 13 different color options. 

This gift box comes with four mason jars, each containing seven ounces of granola. Choose from flavors like Activation Energy (made with coffee, dark chocolate, and hazelnuts), Mediterranean Mix (a mix of sesame, almonds, pistachios, and figs), and other tempting varieties. This gift is a homey treat (even if it’s not homemade) that’ll delight parents—and hopefully, provide them with the fuel needed to get through their day.

Soft cheese and deli meats are off-limits during pregnancy, so chances are your friend has been craving a meat and cheese board for at least a couple of months. This 'bouquet' includes two kinds of cheese from Murray’s Cheese in New York City and three salamis from the West Coast’s Olympia Provisions. It’s packaged up to look like a bouquet, but it’s far tastier. This option is just one of a wide array available through Murray’s—choose from other cheese-focused gifts, or design your own care package if you know your friends' favorites.

For years, the best food gift for new parents was a giant pan of lasagna or a casserole delivered to their door in time for dinner. There’s good reason for that tradition: making a meal isn’t easy with a new baby. These days, let technology lend a hand—and make it easy for parents to choose the meal they’d prefer, along with their preferred delivery time with a gift card to Seamless.  

You can send moms and dads a digital gift card (straight to their email inbox) or opt for a physical gift, in the denomination of your choice. Send a digital gift card, and you can opt to personalize it by uploading a photo. Have Seamless mail a physical gift card, and you can alert the recipient in advance—or just let it be a delightful surprise in the mail.

When was the last time your friend opened up a bottle and poured herself a glass of wine? If it’s been nine months, a good vintage may be a welcome gift. At Winestyr, you can browse through gifts or create one of your own—either way, make sure to include a gift note. 

The wines mainly originate in California, Oregon, and Washington, although there is one producer based in Illinois. And just about every varietal is available, so you can choose a gift box that caters to your friend’s preferences, whether it’s pinot noir, chardonnay, and so on. Pre-made gift options typically come with two bottles per box, packaged carefully—and beautifully—to avoid breakage during shipment. 

Looking for another gift that pairs well with a wine subscription? Take a peek at our favorite wine gifts available online. 

Make it easy for new parents to host brunch at home—or just delight in a meal they haven’t cooked themselves—with Ess-a-Bagel’s bagel-and-lox spread. 

Through Goldbelly, parents around the country can partake of the New York institution. This brunch for 12 comes with a baker’s dozen bagels (in flavors that you can select) along with a pound of nova lox and a pound of cream cheese (you can select a flavor there, too). You can add white fish or smoked salmon salad to your order if you'd to gift some extra meat.

What could be more comforting than a bowl of soup with rolls on the side and cookies for dessert? This gift basket from Spoonful of Comfort, designed for new parents, comes with all of that, along with a ladle and personalized note. Choose from gazpacho, chicken noodle, broccoli cheddar, and other soup varieties—it comes in a 64-ounce jar that’ll serve four to six people. You can select the cookies you’d like to include as well (such as snickerdoodles or chocolate chip).

A fruit basket is a classic alternative to a bouquet of flowers. This 'fruit bouquet' features cantaloupe, grapes, honeydew melon, pineapple, and strawberries, arranged in sweet shapes. It’s available in three sizes, and on weekdays, it can be delivered the same day it's ordered. (It’s wise to order in advance if baby's birth coincides with a big holiday, such as Valentine’s Day or Christmas.) Edible Arrangements offers tons of options—like chocolate dipped fruit—making it easy to browse for the fruit basket that's the best fit for your gift.

Want to send a gift to a smoothie lover? With Daily Harvest, you can send friends a gift card or a gift box for the service’s ready-to-blend smoothies, delivered to their door. The smoothies come in tempting flavors like strawberry-peach and chocolate-blueberry. Ingredients arrive all chopped up, so all busy new parents will need to do is pop them in a blender—along with a liquid—and blend away. 

Gift a Freshly meal plan, and the service promises to deliver prepared meals that are tasty, quick to prepare, and nutritious. All exhausted new parents will need to do is pop the meals—each is a single serving—into the microwave and heat them up them for a few minutes. You can opt to gift four, six, nine, or 12 meals. 

Interested in reading more reviews? Take a look at our selection of the best meal delivery services.

It’s a pressure cooker and a slow cooker. It can make rice or even yogurt at the push of a button. It steams and it sautés. The Instant Pot is the very definition of a “does it all” device. And, for new parents who don’t have time to prepare elaborate meals, it's a lifesaver, since it monitors the temperature and time to ensure that dishes turn out well.  

Still can't decide on what you want? Our round-up of the best instant pots can help you find what you're looking for.

If you wish you could be serving up a meal for the new parent in your life, try sending one instead. Through Williams Sonoma, you can order three vegetarian meals made by Elephants Delicatessen in Portland, Oregon. This includes a Zuni stew, Polenta dolcetta, and vegetable lasagna. 

All meals are shipped frozen. After the meals are thawed in the fridge, preparation is easy: new parents can just pop them in a preheated oven for about 40 minutes, and then dive in.