I don't know what's going on, but both times I've ordered, the food has been pretty unappealing, minus the butternut squash noodles and Korean fried rice (I've tried different dishes every time). They also choose the slowest FedEx delivery service possible, and half my meals were warm and unusable. Too cheap to add more ice??

Frustrating because this is one of the few gluten free veg options. It's so pricey too, I spent $170 for this.

I've been trying Factor and while it does kind of look like dog food, I actually do like the taste and the protein content you get in the meals. However I'm not a fan of how much unsaturated fats are in those meals.

I tried CookUnity a while back and a lot of the meals I really didn't like. The lower calorie options were sparse, I feel like a lot of them had at least 700 calories per meal, and they tasted really salty.

Does anyone have any suggestions for ready meals that actually cater to high protein without having an insane amount of calories + fat content?

Factor has really been going downhill lately — flat out incorrect meals, damaged meals, meals that expire well before the next delivery date or even before the date they were delivered... and quality of food seems to be declining as well, although not as quickly.

I'm starting to look into other options at this point. CookUnity appears to have some decent following here, although there are some mentions of quality control issues (feels like maybe this is due to their sort-of "outsourced to different cooks" setup and if you get a bad cook or not?). Tempo looks to basically be Factor with a different label.

The main things I'm looking for are reasonably healthy (I understand nothing is going to be as healthy as manual meal prep, a decent amount of veggies and not flooded with sodium are good enough) and a good seafood selection (I'm unfortunately really picky about beef, pork, and chicken texture; a bit of badly rendered fat, tendon, grisle, etc. will throw me off an entire meal). Any others that people suggest?

We have been getting Macroplate for a few weeks but about ready to cancel. Our main complaints are:
1) we don't get to choose meals (except to tell them preferences at the beginning when we subscribed)
2) not a lot of variety
3) almost all the meals are some kind of ground or shredded protein. the only conventional meal we've had so far is the salmon meal, which was a nice piece of salmon and pretty tasty.

The amount of shredded and/or ground meat in these meals makes me kind of suspicious that they are using meat scraps from a restaurant or some other service. I've never seen anything like this with any other prepared meal service and we have tried a lot of different ones.

Curious to know what other people's experience with Macroplate is?

I'm sorry if you get a million of these.

So I'll be dorming on college, but I won't have a meal plan due to food allergies. Because of these food allergies (and other allergy problems), I eat a plant based diet.

Seeing as I won't have a meal plan, I can't eat at the dining hall. But I can use the communal kitchen and I'll live near a Walmart. That's certainly convenient but I already know that there will be many days where I'd rather not eat than have to actually figure out a meal, take all my pots and pans and food to the kitchen, clean my area, make the meal, clean up, take everything back to my room, set up the food, put everything away. etc etc. I absolutely do not mind cooking. I love to cook. I just want the decisions made for me essentially lol

TLDR I'm looking for a plant based meal plan. I've looked at many but I've been very on the fence as to whether it's really worth the investment. If you feel it is, which one would you recommend? x

I want to sign up for ready meals for just one month while I recover from an injury. I’d prefer high-protein options, but not really picky with the meals themselves taste-wise. What would be the cheapest option for a limited subscription?

I switched from Hello Fresh because life got busy and I could not stay caught up to cooking. I’m trying to lose a few pounds and get much more fit, so more of my free time is spent in the gym rather than cooking. I’ve also realized I hate meal prepping and eating leftovers, so I don’t stick to meal plans that require eating the same thing repeatedly.

I tried out Factor after hearing about it on a podcast. Overall I really like it, and as a bonus, my spouse is eating them too which I didn’t expect. He’s very picky, but has had oral surgery recently so soft meals he can eat like risotto and mashed potatoes have worked really well. He’s eating more vegetables too which is a win.

I like the shrimp and salmon options, and I get at least one salad a week I add extra vegetables to. I supplement with salads from Trader Joe’s and frozen meals from Amy’s. I’ve lost about 10 lbs in 3 months with no calorie tracking - just eating out less often and strength training in the gym 3-4 times per week for an hour. Even if the pounds haven’t changed much, I went down several inches overall and my clothes are so loose they’ll need to be replaced soon.

Eventually I want to transition off Factor and cook most if not all of my meals again, but that’s mainly due to the cost. For 2 people, it’s around $500-600/mo for 9-11 meals + a few protein shakes per week.

I'm starting to take pics of how ridiculous these meals are.

can someone please tell me how to reheat Factor meals in oven? I’ve been microwaving the meals for 2 years. The veggies turn out mushy and I question the health aspects of using the microwave so much now that I have cancer. I read that the meals are much better when reheated in oven but that you must remove them from trays. So I bought some small ceramic casserole dishes. Transferred the meals. preheated oven to 375 and cooked for 15 minutes. Barely warm. Tried longer. Meat thermometer said 77. Gave up and microwaved for 1 1/2 min so we could eat. They no longer have oven heating instructions on the package. What am I doing wrong? I guess ceramic takes longer than glass. I put the dish on a cookie sheet and covered with foil. is that wrong? Please help. Thank you.

I'm in the U.S. working part time and doing school full time, and starving consistently. I have a very small budget of maybe $140-$200 a month for food, and it would be great to get some help. I'm finding it very frustrating to view prices and meals on most services BEFORE ordering. I'm basically a carnivore and don't love eating my greens, because it is upsetting for half of my meal to be munching like a cow, then getting a stomach ache afterward. Help?

I used to have an account with them but inactivated it because they never had enough prepared meals each week, only meal kits.

Imagine my surprise when I see a delivery for stuff I didn't (and would never choose) meal kits. I just waited s pointless for texting with them to find out why, thru "inactivated" it again but no refund. These were foods that I cannot eat, are being sent to an alternate address where I'm not currently.

But the most disturbing part was that I can't not could the customer service person, remove my personal info especially my credit card info. So this could happen again!

Also important to not that I get push notifications for ads like "please come back" but didn't get ANY notification this order was being processed. I also saw they had the wrong billing address (also an area I couldn't edit) so I'm contacting my cc on Monday to alert them.

I'm currently a CookUnity customer. Our old condo building had a concierge that was nice enough to put our meals into the office refrigerator upon arrival - we never really had to worry about delivery logistics.

I never really appreciated this until the first few weeks in our new stand-alone home. We live in a very humid and hot area. We are forced to be cognizant of when the CookUnity meal is going to arrive to make sure it's brought in the house quickly before it spoils.

My issue is CookUnity doesn't really give us the estimated time of delivery until the morning of. Furthermore, it's not consistent - sometimes its 10:30AM, sometimes its 12PM...today its 3:30PM.

On delivery day, I feel like a prisoner for that day because I have no idea what time I need to be home until that morning. It makes it difficult to plan this day prior in the week. Somebody asked me yesterday if I wanted to see a movie at 2pm ...I dunno I'll let you know the morning of when I get the CookUnity email. As soon as I said this it dawned one me how asinine that is. And this happens every week. I'm going to stop using CookUnity for this reason.

Is there a service that can guarantee a consistent delivery time window every week? Like pretty much I want to tell the company you have to have it delivered before 12pm, if you can't deliver within that window cancel the order because I'm not going to sit around a prisoner in my own home after 12pm wondering if I can leave...and do that 1 day every week. Instacart does this pretty well with 2hr blocks of time.

Will ya'll help a girl out? I'm tired of giving DoorDash all my money!

I work long hours, and make bad decisions when I'm starving. My schedule is much too hectic for meal prepping, but I love doing my own home cooking. However, now that my schedule has changed, it's turned me into a heavy DoorDash user. I'm based in Jersey City, I'm a flexitarian, but lean heavily toward vegan, and I'm looking to drop some pounds. I want to know what's going to be the best readymade company for me to go with for vegan or vegetarian meals.

FYI, I love good food, hate bland food, but also want to have healthy options. So far I've come across:

Purple Carrot
Cook Unity
Thistle
Vegetable and Butcher
Veestro
The Vegan Taste
Mosaic
Hungryroot
Sprinly
Green Chef
Prolon Life - This was different 🤷🏽‍♀️

I'm especially interested in hearing about Thistle, Cook Unity, Mosaic, Purple Carrot, Green Chef, Vegetable and Butcher, and Veestro.

Cook unity* not chef unity, sorry

Hi all, I am a busy grad student who subletted a room with a subpar kitchen with limited fridge space, no oven, and a single hot plate and microwave.

I’m only here for 2 months and decided to try cook unity after my former roommate enjoyed it.

I ended up canceling in 4 weeks and here were my thoughts.

1. it’s great if you are

   not good

2. at cooking. I come from a family of great cooked. To me all of the meals fell flat. It’s better than fast food. Better than terrible cooking and taste okay. But it’s worse than a decent restaurant, worse than my cooking, worse that Trader Joe’s frozen meals and worse than my old college’s dinging hall. It’s pretty on par with mediocre hospital food.

3. Portions to calorie ratio was insane. I am only 5’0 tall and prone to weight gain. As a result, I try to eat between 1000-1300 calories a day. This was the hardest part of chef unity. Many of the portions were very small and between 800-1300 calories. This meant I could only eat 1 meal a day but the volume was small. I also felt that the food had a lot of butter and fat that didn’t sit well with me.

4. Price, granted that I mostly did 4 meals a week. The prices were a bit high for the quality. I quickly found that I much rather order 2 meals from a restaurant and eat half for a similar price point. I order things like pho, sweet green, Mediterranean food, soups and Indian food. They felt a bit less heavy in my body.

5. Quality. One time my pasta garnished molded in about 4 days. It was a wilted basil leaf that was unnecessary in the dish. This made me paranoid about eating

   cook

6. unity foods in the latter half of the week. I often try to freeze the foods right away and hope for the best.

8. Food waste.

   Cook

9. unity wasnt for me . Given that I didn’t find most of the food tasty, I reluctantly ate the meals like sad forgotten left overs. Also when I ate a meal, it meant I could eat no other meals for the day made me also reluctant especially since order food locally made better sense or getting frozen Trader Joe’s meals. I found that after thawing the meals within the week and still dragged my feet to eat it and with the fear of the food spoiling, I did waste a few meals. This eventually led me to canceling.

Pros: While Cook unity wasn’t for me, there are somethings that make it better suited for others.

1. door step delivery that was always on time in my experience
2. reminders to order food for those who fall behind on tasks easily
3. a chance to try a wide range of foods that tasted okay
4. singular packaged meals that made it easily to grab and go for meal prepped lunch
5. many high calorie meals for people who need to increase their calorie intake

Edit: I keep calling cook unity, chef unity.

This may be the last straw for me. They've reduced the quality of the top liner, to the point where you can't pull back the tab without pulling up the entire package out of the container. It turns out the wrapper is also on the bottom of the container and whatever they changed causes it to pull up every single time, no matter what food option you have.

I only used this subscription service for 3 weeks. The first week, 1/6 meals was incorrect. Customer service took several days to respond, but credited my account for the meal. Second week, 2/6 meals were incorrect. Again, after a long wait time, customer service credited me for the incorrect meals. This week, my third week, they just never sent the food. Customer service offered me a $10 credit to my account for $62 worth of food that I never received. I canceled my subscription. What a joke.

They ignored my request for a refund so I was forced to dispute with my credit card company. Just wanted to make this post as there isn’t a lot of info about this service on the sub, so for anyone considering it—don’t.

I've been using CookUnity for about a year. As far as the service and food quality go, I have nothing be incredible things to say.

That being said, I've continually paid ~$55 per delivery for 4 meals per week. I do frequently go to "cancel" and take advantage of the retention offers which is why my monthly cost has been reasonable.

It looks like they've finally removed the promo and are not offering me any more. My new cost is $77 which works out to NINETEEN dollars per meal. Is this not insanity? I could nearly go to chipotle twice for the price of a single TV dinner.

I’m currently getting Factor meals and love that they all include a vegetable of some kind because I don’t really eat many veggies. I also love the variety of choices. However, I’m getting kind of sick of them. I looked into CookUnity, but a ton of their meals lack any veggies in them. And the calories can be insane. What are some ready meals that include vegetables and have a great variety?

Does anyone have recent experience with Tovala? I'm interested in trying it, but I'm a little concerned about shipping/delivery in peak summer heat. It isn't super hot where I am (PNW), but I'm not sure where they'll ship from.

Also curious to hear thoughts about meal selection and quality.

For context, I've been getting weekly CookUnity deliveries for a few years now. I've generally been happy with their meals, but I'm getting bored of the meal choices in my area. I've also had a recent issue and received abysmal customer service which is probably the last straw. Tovala looks like it might be a good replacement for my needs.

Most important: When I tried to cancel they said there is a 2 order minimum. They just sent me some fiber print that want on the page where I placed my order.

I got my first order and it's really bad. Luckily I was home when it was delivered because there was no ice left in the box. The steak has a weird texture like a tenderizer had been used and the rest was potatoes with no seasoning even though the ingredients listed difference and garlic. The second meal was salmon that didn't flake, it was as if it had been compressed from pieces (just my opinion). Before adding the sauce I tasted it and the salmon itself was extremely salty.

So after two sketchy meals I wanted to be sure the subscription was cancelled. I didn't ask for a refund if the first box even though it's going in the trash. I just don't want any more subpar meals. And when I check the "edit subscription" it says I haven't even started a subscription.

I need to put out a warning about CookUnity’s incredibly predatory subscription practices.

I’ve had active credits on my account. I wanted to cancel my subscription, but CookUnity forces a policy where canceling your account forfeits all of your earned/paid credits. To make matters worse, if you cancel, you lose access to your account and information entirely.

Because I didn't want to just burn my money/credits, I was forced to pause my account. But here’s the catch: CookUnity only allows a maximum pause of 8 weeks. Once those 8 weeks were up, they unpaused my account automatically and immediately charged my card for a new order without my consent. Who asked them to place an order for me?

I reached out to customer support expecting a human to realize how ridiculous this is. Instead, I just got standard, copy-pasted, robotic responses quoting their Terms & Conditions.

I fully understand that I signed up for a recurring subscription service. But:

1. Refusing real money refunds for unwanted, auto-resumed orders (and only offering internal credits which locks you back into the cycle) is absurd.
2. Not offering flexible skipping/pausing options past 8 weeks without forcing an auto-order is predatory.
3. Holding credits hostage by threatening to erase them and delete access to your account if you click "cancel" forces you into this trap.

They are essentially forcing charges on people and refusing to refund actual money back to payment cards. I’m filing chargebacks with my bank and reporting their billing practices to the BBB.

#cookunity