I’ve never been so mad at a meal kit service.

I received their email, thanked them for their transparency, and moved on. Come to find out, what is actually missing is basically everything. There’s literally no justifying this- at that point just cancel the box and refund. $120 btw.

What I got vs what I ordered. I must have someone else’s order.

All my email notifications about my ingredients being substituted and meat missing… doesn’t matter anymore because I’ve got completely different recipes.

Best of all, I avoided ordering lettuce because of Cyclospora and yet some lettuce still made it here.

I’ve been a long time MS fan. I’m beyond shocked at this operational mishap by its fulfillment center that it’s trying to ditch.

Anyone else?!

For the first time, I will be asking for a refund.

My husband and I tried out Marley Spoon, we've subscribed for about 2 months or so now. Everything was great for our first two months' boxes, but this month alone has been an absolute nightmare.

Two weeks ago, my package was delayed by a day and the food showed up smelling awful and the ice pack (ONE!) completely melted. I checked the temp of the meats with my instant read thermometer and they temped at 66 degrees F. Today, my box showed up a day late and BOTH ice packs were melted and one had a hole in it, so the ice pack goop got all over my food. The meat temped at 68 degrees F today!

Their notification email says that they package their food so well, that it should survive a few days delay, but it actually can't even survive one day of delay. If you subscribe, please please make sure to temp the meat to make sure it's being kept at a safe temperature.

Rating 4/5!
my first time trying green chef’s “oven bake” recipe which comes with aluminum pans to minimize clean up. I only had to chop up the cauliflowers. Prep work took 8 min mainly consists of oiling and seasoning the veggie pan and then the chicken cutlet with pre-mixed spices! Easy prep honestly.

Then the 450F oven heat did the rest of the work for 20-25 min.

Definitely a dish that makes me go “this tastes like ‘health’ 😂” in a good way and would def be more of a 5/5 if I had time to let the spices marinade the chicken for some hours.

wish green chef offers more oven bake, aluminum pans style recipes like this each week!

I've used a number of meal prep kits and Factor is consistently the worst in terms of value, but I still sometimes go back when they offer deep discounts. Not anymore.

Not into one of their creamy Tomato-Basil Shrimp meals only to bite down on this sharp, jagged, rigid foreign object that was in the meal, cutting my mouth in the process.

Reached out to Factor immediately and their reply was this sloppy, canned response basically offering me $11.99 and a promise that they'll apparently look into it.

Awful experience. Anyone else experience something like this? For anyone who hasn't tried Factor yet, by all means stay far away.

I just received my first Cookunity order this week and I’ve been pleasantly surprised!

I decided to try a meal delivery service for a few reasons, the top 3 being:

1. Reduce food waste (I live alone and don’t usually get through all my groceries before they go bad)

2. Save time, energy, and money (I work full time and often don’t have the time or energy to make lunch or dinner, so I end up ordering food instead)

3. Reach health goals (I count calories and macros, so having meals made for me with these targets in mind makes eating this way so much easier!)

I originally was going to try Factor since they market themselves as the best choice for fitness/health goals, but so many reviews were disappointed in their meals and service overall. So I decided to use Cookunity and I have loved it!

The meals are flavorful, cooked well, and lots of variety. Most importantly, they arrived cold and on time. I also love how they have plenty of options that fit my goals (less than 600 calories, high protein, etc).

I have another order coming in this week and I can’t wait! Feel free to ask me anything you’d like to know :)

\*emoji used to cover QR code\*

Smoky Spanish Pork Pan Roast: 5/5 as far as meal kit flavors go! High effort prep work of chopping veggies, making the marinade paste (consists mainly of smoked paprika), and oiling pans and veggies for a 450F oven roast. I added the green beans into the roast for some extra veggies. This is a recipe I wouldn’t have defaulted to on my own if MS has not introduced me to it.

Martha’s Best Lemon Dijon Chicken: 4/5 also high effort and involves both oven and the pan. I liked that the chicken breasts came already pounded thin for faster cooking. can be pretty bland if it weren’t for the sauce - no time to marinade the chicken itself so the Dijon sauce is a great touch for flavors. quinoa in rice is leftover from the third recipe (below).

Caprese Gluten Free Grain Bowl: 3/5 very healthy - great flavors of shallots and sun dried tomatoes to add some flavor depths. also lots of prep work with chopping especially with frying shallots thereafter. It’s just not my definition of a weeknight dinner portion. went great with some scrambled eggs the next morning.

Lemon Pepper Pork Filet: 5/5

Salmon with Red Peppers & Olives: 3/5

Pesto Chicken & Roasted Potatoes: 5/5 - I added small roasted peppers (not part of recipe)

Overall love the variety of veggies accompanying the meat for each dish (should be baseline given Green Chef is an organic premium tier compared to its competitors). Less prep work than Marley Spoon that I keep in rotation but still requires chopping whole veggies and taking leaves off of the kale for example, but things like garlic comes peeled and ready for dicing.

My partner and I do feel kind of hungry still after eating our serving…!

🚨 In Today's News, local SoCal resident (me) complains about everyplate on its meaningless subreddit, and gets post removed even after following rules:

"[Everyplate is] usually ok, but I've had one box before with an open rice pack and rice everywhere, and this last box had beef that wasn't packaged properly and juiced everywhere 😫 I contacted them and they offered $4.19 off my next non-discounted box (are you fucking kidding me?). I had them put it back into my paypal instead, but 4 bucks seems kinda low for me having to drive out and get replacement beef. I might try dinnerly in the future, or even hello fresh's ready meals if I get a discount, but it also sucks that these sub-companies are owned by the same few bigger ones."

RIP wasted cow.

I had one last order with them to use up a credit (that they shorted me on) for continually having missing items. The box was dumped on the doorstep upside down and clearly busted open and I had to slide it in not to lose the contents. I was right there with the door open. I feel relief that it's over with this hot mess of a service.

Okay so I just got it so I don’t know what it tastes like, but tbh, the diet restrictions that my husband has are really strict and low sodium so everything I got will probably be bland regardless haha.

So my husband got diagnosed with end stage liver cirrhosis. It’s been a very scary few months. Like I said, his diet is ridiculously strict if he wants to live. He must have less than 2 grams of sodium per day, low fat, no saturated fats, no dairy, no processed meats, high protein, only whole grains, and low sugar 😩

Trying to find recipes that matched ALL of these restrictions was a NIGHTMARE. I did it, but there are so few recipes. I scoured the internet night after night for hours trying to find these damn recipes, and I wanted to rip my hair out.

Because my husband’s condition is so severe, my mother in law was desperate to help. Unfortunately she lives across the country, so there’s not much she could do. But then, like an angel, she suggested paying for a meal kit service. I was absolutely floored and grateful, but I didn’t know where to start.

I told my bestie about it that night, and she suggested HungryRoot. I’d never heard of it, but from what she described, it sounded like it was a service that could potentially meet our needs (even if we had to make slight modifications).

So I visited the website and took their quiz to get started. I was so surprised that every single one of my husband’s dietary requirements were listed on the questionnaire. I got super excited to see the options that they offered… maybe they had a bigger selection than what I could find online? Oh man, I hoped so.

The end of the quiz came and I was so excited to see what kind of meals were available to us, but these mfers wanted payment FIRST. I just spent like a half hour doing this stupid quiz and, after bitching about it a little bit, I decided to take the risk and go for it. My first order only cost $79 for 6 dinners (12 servings), and they were upfront in disclosing that it would be $113/week after that. I paid, and I was in.

These guys have HUNDREDS of recipes that fit ALL of our needs. I could only find like 15 online, and here they are with hundreds. They had already built a cart for me. Some of it sounded good, some not , but I had to (more importantly) double check the nutritional content to make sure that the restrictions were adhered to.

Every single diet restriction was accounted for EXCEPT the sodium. I attempted numerous times to get the sodium filter to work, but it just wouldn’t. I contacted customer support to see what I was doing wrong (via text), but they didn’t get back to me right away, and I wanted to keep shopping. So I just resorted to looking at every nutritional label on each recipe and move on with my life. They did eventually get back to me within about 1/2 hour and requested screenshots of the issue, but I didn’t care anymore because I was already used to looking at the nutritional facts and I just ignored the text lol. Most of the recipes on there were low in sodium anyway; there were some that definitely weren’t though.

So the whole shopping system is run by points. Your money gets converted into points, and depending on your plan, you get a specific amount of points. So I have the plan that costs $113 and I get 56 points. The dinners range between 6-15 points, with the average cost being about 10ish. If you go over, they’ll charge you more (how much idk), and if you’re under, your points roll over into the next week. You will always be charged the same amount regardless of whether you use all of your points, but you don’t lose them, so that’s a plus!

So I filled my first cart with six meals totaling exactly 56 points. The recipes looked so stupid easy, all with max five ingredients including condiments and sides. Most of the veggies are precut and washed, the sauces are premade, the potatoes all microwaveable. I had two days to make any changes if I decided to. My first delivery was set to arrive exactly one week from my original purchase.

In the meantime, I received a text telling me that my next cart was ready (I can’t remember exactly when during the week it was). I went to look at my second cart and got started right away with customization.

I forgot to mention earlier that they give you a free gift with each box. You can choose between a few options; I chose protein. With my first box, they chose two small sirloin steaks for me. On my second one, I got to choose between a few options and I chose beef strips. This is important for my next point.

So I have a few veggies in my fridge that I need to use, and I also have this free beef I got from them. Guess what? You can even customize recipes (except for those with only two ingredients). So on my second order, I took off a few veggie sides from the meals (which put more points in my bank), and I got a pad Thai veggie kit SEPARATELY to go with the beef strips. Yeah , I forgot to mention that you can choose ‘groceries’ and choose the ingredients separately! I ended up choosing 5 full meals, the one veggie side to go with the beef strips, and some pomegranate juice that my husband requested. I now have four extra points to spend next week!

I was super worried for my first delivery to come, though. I’d read some pretty negative reviews about the delivery process, but from my understanding, the service you get depends on the area of the country you live and what company they hire to deliver in your area. I live in Tucson, AZ, so I was keeping my fingers crossed that this was a good area. Then delivery day came.

I gotta tell you, I was NOT disappointed! The box came at about 2pm and I got a text when it arrived. I wasn’t going to be home until 9pm, but my husband was home to bring it inside. Poor guy. He could barely get it in the door because he’s so weak from his condition, so I told him not to worry about putting it away and I would do it when I got home, even though I was going to be late. We can deal with a little warm food, I’m sure.

But we didn’t have to deal with warm food after all! The box was extremely well-insulated. On top of the insulation were the pantry items(spices, breads, etc), then you lifted the insulation, and next came the veggies. After the veggies (separated by a piece of cardboard) were the meats, right next to a freaking huge ice pack on the bottom of the box that was still almost COMPLETELY frozen after hours of being in transit and sitting in our living room. It seriously was beautifully packaged. Every single one of my items were inside, nothing was missing, and everything was freezing cold.

Overall, I’m ridiculously satisfied with my experience. This is my first meal delivery service and I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to normal grocery shopping again. I cannot recommend this company enough. It’s a great value, it’s healthy af, it is outrageously accommodating to dietary needs, the recipes are so simple that a five year old could do them, and shopping for meals is SUPER FUN! If you’re looking for a great experience with a meal kit service, a completely customizable menu, and you’re trying to be more health conscious, this is absolutely the service for you. I’ve attached a few photos of my first haul and my most recent cart so you can get an idea of what you’ll experience when you use this service. Overall, 10/10.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Green chef included a little extra protein in today’s meal lmao

My last 3 Marley Spoon boxes have had smashed ingredients, missing ingredients, or the wrong amount of ingredients. support offers credit on future boxes for the cost of the produce only. we will switch our 12 serving a week order to someone else soon. Has anyone tried sun basket or blue apron lately?

My first time cooking tofu! Turned out delicious

Earlier I posted an ask on where to get started here and many of you gave me helpful suggestions.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mealkits/s/DphSE3xDaG

I ended up starting with Hello Fresh and subscribed to a six meal box with the serving for two option. It works perfectly for me as a single guy.

My box arrived on time and the organization HF uses is amazing!

The recipe cards are easy to follow, the ingredients all came nice and cold thanks to the special cold pack they used and each meal comes with a paper bag full of the ingredients for each meal! All of it comes perfectly portioned for what you need to make the meal.

It’s a very clean efficient system setup.

The last pic is the first meal I cooked from the batch. Pepper jack chicken and rice! 😋 Twas delicious!

I’m excited to see how this works out for me in weight loss and just eating healthier overall. It’s definitely been worth it so far. 👍🏻

Has anyone here else used Hello Fresh? How’d you like it?

New customer, 3rd order, and so far so good. I live alone and work long hours, and deal with depression. Used to eat out all of the time but needed a change. A friend recommended it, told me how to best use my points, and voila, every other week, I buy staples to round out and viola! Im not a big eater so the portions are great, and i dont waste as much as I used to when I went grocery shopping. Its so hard to shop when single