Lost $80 on a meal prep service that just wasted my time

I signed up for one of those meal kit delivery boxes about 6 months ago. Thought it would save me money on groceries because I wouldn't impulse buy snacks. Instead I spent $80 a week on tiny portions and plastic packaging that piled up in my fridge. Half the time the produce was already turning brown or the meat would leak all over my counter. I finally cancelled after realizing my weekly grocery bill actually went up about $25 compared to just buying my own ingredients. Anyone else get tricked by those discount first boxes and then forget to cancel?

3 comments

3 Comments

keith_rivera191mo ago

Signed up for one of those and got two weeks of boxes where the "farm fresh" kale was basically yellow slime. The discount code I found still required a $60 minimum commitment so I ended up paying full price for produce I threw out. My fridge looked like a sad recycling bin.

victorhill1mo ago

Got a different take on this one. I actually stuck with a box service for about four months and had pretty decent luck. The trick was picking a company that lets you customize what comes in the box instead of sending whatever they want to get rid of. That yellow slime kale thing is real if you let them choose for you, but if you swap it out for something that travels better like carrots or potatoes, the waste goes way down. Sounds like you got stuck with a bad service that didn't give you enough control over the contents. The $60 minimum is annoying, but I found it worked out okay when I planned meals around what showed up instead of the other way around.

james_campbell121mo ago

Thing is, you're not exactly wrong about the slimy kale problem but the issue with those boxes isn't the concept itself, it's that they overpromise what "farm fresh" means. Most of those services source from distributors not actual farms, so you're getting produce that's already been sitting in a warehouse for days. The $60 minimum thing is where they really get you too, makes you feel stuck paying for garbage you can't even use. I've seen customers at my store buy those boxes thinking it's cheaper than the grocery store, but the math never works out with the waste. You basically paid for the privilege of composting their mistakes.