My wife and I have used meal-in-a-box services. We both tweak the recipes without reminders. They don't aim to replace a cook, because they still need a cook.
They mostly replace some of the effort of shopping, portioning, and some part of prepping, plus recipe discovery.
> If you can afford a meal-in-a-box service, why would you not just go to a restaurant
Because with a restaurant, I don't have a cook that will tweak to my tastes without detailed prompting.
> where the wait staff will do a decent job as a substitute for your own live-in cook
You are confusing front-of-house with back-of-house staff.
> Someone else decides what you will be eating and you have to do the cooking.
The ability to select from a menu of options prior to delivery would be an improvement for many of these services.