Prepared Meal Subscription Services?

[Anonymous]

MIL and FIL moved away from all family several years ago. Now MIL is caretaker for FIL who has dementia, is starting to fall, etc. Would like to send a meal kit to them for a few months to help out. But, I am concerned that even Blue Apron would be a bit too much. When looking for prepared meal subscriptions many of them seem local to DMV. Is anyone familiar with an affordable service with tasty food that is national or services the area around Myrtle Beach? I saw someone recommend the Tovala system but it looks like glorified frozen meals for which they make you buy their oven? Is that fair or is it an option. Any recommendations would be great.

[Anonymous]

Cook Unity is the best of the prepared meal services we have tried.

[Anonymous]

I like Home Chef. When our kitchen was getting renovated we did Freshly for awhile and that was fine (microwave meals, no cooking).

[Anonymous]

We like factor 75

[Anonymous]

We started ordering Home Chef in March. It’s affordable and they have lots of options that don’t take very long to prepare. I like that their meals are designed to appeal to a wide audience. Their customer service is responsive. The portion sizes are neither stingy nor excessive. You get to try lots of ethnic cuisines (tailored to American tastes, lol), but they indicate which ingredients you might want to use sparingly if you don’t like a lot of spice.

I’ve been very pleased with them, but the one wrinkle that might give me pause if I was gifting their meal service to an elderly person is that they have a bad habit of failing to include all of the recipe cards, so you have to go online for the directions. Also, I usually make my own meal selections instead of accepting their suggestions. It’s very easy to customize any given week’s delivery, but it’s all online.

[Anonymous]

There is a subreddit on meal kits that is really helpful... https://www.reddit.com/r/mealkits/

[Anonymous]

212 Meal Prep sells ready to eat meals that can be picked up. It looks like it’s designed for health conscious people, so I don’t know if the food options will appeal to your in-laws.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Cook Unity is the best of the prepared meal services we have tried.

Cook Unity was a big success for a family member across the country -- the recipient liked getting to try food from a range of chefs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We started ordering Home Chef in March. It’s affordable and they have lots of options that don’t take very long to prepare. I like that their meals are designed to appeal to a wide audience. Their customer service is responsive. The portion sizes are neither stingy nor excessive. You get to try lots of ethnic cuisines (tailored to American tastes, lol), but they indicate which ingredients you might want to use sparingly if you don’t like a lot of spice.

I’ve been very pleased with them, but the one wrinkle that might give me pause if I was gifting their meal service to an elderly person is that they have a bad habit of failing to include all of the recipe cards, so you have to go online for the directions. Also, I usually make my own meal selections instead of accepting their suggestions. It’s very easy to customize any given week’s delivery, but it’s all online.

I'm a PP who also mentioned Home Chef and this PP is right. Their quality control isn't great, with recipes missing or provided for a completely different dish. It happens often enough that I'm pleasantly surprised when it's all correct.