I travel quite a bit, and I don’t usually stay in hotels. I prefer Airbnb-style places, resorts, suites, and other accommodations where I have access to a kitchen. That gives me the opportunity to cook my own food when I want to, but it also means I can try meal delivery services that aren’t available where I live.
When I’m traveling, I can order a meal kit or prepared meals, have them delivered to where I’m staying, and find out what they’re really like when I’m the one eating them.
I’ve tried plenty of meal delivery services this way, and some have been genuinely good. These four did not make that list. I’m not saying nobody will like them, and I’m not claiming every meal they offer is bad.
I’m telling you what happened when I tried them, because if I’m going to recommend something, I need to be able to stand behind it.
But these four? I CAN’T.
Recap of 4 Types of Meal Delivery Companies… At-a-Glance
We covered the four types of meal delivery services in our last post. But, here’s a quick recap of what each one actually includes. Keep in mind that companies can use the term weekly meal delivery service for very different types, so it helps to know what you’re actually ordering before you order it:
- Meal Kits: Ingredients + recipes + cooking + cleaning
- Prepared Meals: Fully cooked food + reheating
- Hybrid Grocery/Meal Kit: Combination of groceries + ready-to-heat + ready-to-eat foods
- Weekly Ordering Daily Deliveries: One order per week comes with freshly cooked, hot meals delivered locally throughout the week
Hopefully, this helps you make a more informed decision when you’re comparing meal delivery services. There’s no single option that’s right for everyone, so think about how much cooking, planning, shopping, and reheating you actually want to do before choosing one.
Opinion Piece: The 4 Worse Meal Delivery Plans That Suck
Thinking about joining one of these programs? Well, I don’t blame you. Generally, they’ve been good to us. But there are four specifically that I would never recommend to anyone I actually care about:
1. HelloFresh
Maybe my standards were too high with HelloFresh. After all, I chose a cook-at-home meal kit, so I knew I was going to have to do the work. I wasn’t expecting a chef to appear in the kitchen and cook dinner for me. I just expected the ingredients to be there, the recipes to make sense, and the finished meals to taste good.
Instead, the three meals I received were underwhelming. Considering how many ingredients and how much preparation went into them, I expected more flavor. The dishes weren’t necessarily terrible, but they weren’t particularly memorable either, and I kept wondering why I had done all that work for something that tasted so ordinary.
Then there was the chicken problem. All three meals I received featured chicken, but there wasn’t enough chicken to make every meal as intended. That meant I had to skip the fairly involved fried chicken sandwich altogether. Maybe I’m picky, but if the recipe calls for chicken and the box doesn’t contain enough chicken to make the recipe, I don’t think I’m asking too much by questioning that.
There is one interesting twist, though. HelloFresh owns Factor, which is a prepared-meal service that I’ve actually had a much better experience with. So apparently, I can find something to like under the HelloFresh umbrella. I just wouldn’t recommend HelloFresh itself based on what I received.
2. CookUnity
Maybe I expected too much from CookUnity. The service offers chef-created meals that arrive refrigerated and are designed to be heated and eaten, with some meals ready to eat as delivered. I liked the idea of having chef-prepared food available while traveling, especially when I didn’t feel like cooking every night. The selection looked good, and the whole concept sounded promising.
Then… I ate the food.
The ceviche did not hold up particularly well during delivery and had an unpleasantly chewy texture. Ceviche is one of those foods where texture matters, so when I’m sitting there wondering why I’m chewing this hard, something has gone wrong. Maybe that’s just me being picky, but I’m willing to own that.
The hanger steak with red chimichurri was another disappointment. The meat had a rubbery texture and that unmistakable taste and texture that can come from reheated meat. I understand that prepared meals have to be transported, refrigerated, and reheated. I’m not questioning the concept. I’m questioning whether the finished dish was good enough for me to want it again.
Maybe someone else will have a completely different experience with CookUnity. I’m only judging what landed in front of me, and what landed in front of me didn’t make me want to place another order.
3. EveryPlate
I knew what I was getting into with EveryPlate. It’s a cook-at-home meal kit, and I was staying somewhere with a kitchen, so cooking wasn’t the problem. I’m perfectly capable of chopping vegetables, cooking meat, washing dishes, and making dinner. The problem was that the amount of work didn’t seem justified by what ended up on the plate.
One sirloin steak came with an overly sweet pineapple pico and a creamy mojo sauce that didn’t add much to the dish. The crispy Caesar chicken was forgettable and had the feel of something you’d expect from a catered meal rather than something I had gone through the trouble of preparing myself.
Maybe I’m being picky again, but if I’m going to cook dinner from scratch, I expect the finished meal to give me something in return for the effort.
The pork dumpling tacos were where EveryPlate really lost me. The recipe involved multiple steps, multiple bowls, and multiple kitchen tools, and after all of that, the result was a soggy, bland dish.
At that point, I’m looking at the dirty dishes and looking at the food and asking myself the obvious question: Why did I do all this?
I don’t mind cooking. I actually enjoy cooking when the food is worth the effort. But if a meal kit is going to have me working my way through a small kitchen obstacle course, the finished meal needs to make me glad I didn’t order takeout. EveryPlate didn’t do that for me.
4. Home Chef
Maybe Home Chef simply caught me on a picky day. I tried it while traveling because I had access to a kitchen and wanted to see how the recipes performed when I followed the instructions as written. I wasn’t looking for perfection. I was looking for instructions that produced the food they appeared to promise.
The fire-roasted tomato ragout served with the sirloin steak still tasted noticeably raw. That was the first thing that made me question the recipe, because “fire-roasted” and “noticeably raw” don’t exactly belong in the same sentence when I’m talking about a finished tomato ragout.
The carrots were another issue. The instructions called for boiling them before finishing them in a skillet, but the result was mostly soft, boiled carrots with only a small amount of caramelization.
Maybe I could have left them in the skillet longer. Maybe I could have changed the technique myself. But then I have to ask why I’m following a recipe that doesn’t seem to produce the intended result without me correcting it.
This service’s meals weren’t necessarily difficult to prepare, and I wouldn’t say every problem was a dealbreaker on its own. That’s why I had to question whether I was simply being too picky.
But when I’m following the instructions and the food still doesn’t turn out the way I expect, I’m going to question the instructions too.
Why? Because I question everything!
The 1 Meal Delivery Service I’m Trying Next Time I Camp Out at Hemet Lake
When I travel, I usually stay somewhere with a kitchen because I like being able to cook my own food. I’ve used meal delivery services for convenience, especially when the service isn’t available where I live.
Camping at Hemet Lake brought up a different problem, though. Packing enough food for a camping trip means hauling everything there, keeping it cold, and then figuring out what to do with whatever you don’t eat when it’s time to pack up and go home.
On our last night at the lake, we saw a couple getting a food delivery. The food was hot, and it looked and smelled delightful, so naturally we asked them about it. They told us they had signed up with WOW Chicken Life and scheduled their deliveries for the days they planned to be camping.
That meant they didn’t have to pack those meals with them, and they didn’t have to worry about taking leftover food home when the trip was over.
I haven’t actually tried WOW Chicken Life myself, so I’m not going to pretend I can review the food. Question Everything, remember? I did, however, get curious and started looking into the service. Here’s what I found interesting:
- One weekly order: You place one order for the week instead of having to order dinner every day.
- Fresh, hot dinners: The meals are prepared and delivered hot, so you’re getting an actual dinner instead of something you need to thaw or reheat.
- Choose your dinners: You can select your meals for the week rather than being stuck with one predetermined menu.
- Schedule around your plans: This is the part that really caught my attention for camping. You can plan your meals around the days you’ll actually be there.
- No subscription: You’re ordering for the week, not signing your life away to another monthly subscription.
- Locally prepared and delivered: The meals are prepared locally and personally delivered rather than handed off to a third-party delivery driver.
- Never frozen: WOW says its meals are fresh and never frozen.
- Full dinners: You’re getting a main course and sides, rather than ordering one lonely entrée and then having to figure out what else you’re going to eat.
Now, do I know if the food is actually good? Nope. I haven’t eaten it yet, and I’m not about to give a meal service a five-star review because a family at a campground told me they liked it.
But I do know that the concept caught my attention, and the next time I’m at Hemet Lake, I already know which meal delivery service I’m planning to try.
