Freshly?

 After looking at my DoorDash/Grubhub/etc. spends, I’m going to try Freshly for a minute. Reviews seem promising:

Fingers crossed.

Meal 1: Steak Peppercorn with Sautéed Carrots & French Green Beans

September 21, 2020. Meals were delivered yesterday. Popped this in my ~1100 watt microwave for 3:30 and sat down with what was left of a bottle of Babcock’s Backroads Red Blend. Verdict: Not bad. Compared to Lean Cuisine? Blows it away. Compared to a homecooked meal from scratch? On par with what I’d whip up with budget ingredients. Nowhere near what I’d produce if I spent for even “high quality for the local supermarket” beef and veggies. But, it’s not meant to substitute for meals I actually make. It’s Bachelor Chow®: Now with flavor!™ Would eat again. Only 490 calories, too, well within where I want to be (I aim for about 600 calories per meal, give or take).

October 3, 2020: Hitting Pause.

So, despite signing up on or about the 7th of September, my first meals weren’t delivered until Sunday the 20th. My shipment for the next week had to be edited by 3 pm on Monday the 21st, giving me basically zero time to decide which meals I liked, which I didn’t, etc. So the menu repeated for week 2. I edited it a bit for week 3, which will be delivered tomorrow. But based on my experience over the last two weeks, I’m hitting pause for now (for at least the next two months), and am on the fence as to whether or not I’ll cancel. Issues;
  • Delivery hassle. The whole point of subscribing to a service like this is to minimize inconvenience. But when they can only give you a 12 hour window, that destroys your Sunday, if you wanted to make plans to do anything (like, watch the Rams play at a bar (“and grill,” COVID Karens)).
    • My first delivery (both so far have been delivered by “AxelHire”) was around 12:45 p.m., though the driver managed to find their way around the building, and up a flight of stairs, to leave the box underneath a sign that says “leave no packages here.” SMH. (But, once I found it, I at least had the rest of the afternoon.)
    • The delivery on the 27th arrived at the door to my apartment at 5:19 p.m., after we’d sat around all day waiting for it (and watching football on TV and munching on leftover pizza and wings).
  • Price and Quality. The first two orders had $20 promotional discounts applied, and so were about $50 for 6 meals. After that, it popped up to about $70 for 6, making the price per meal almost $12. The Lean Cuisines against which they’re directly competing are about $3/meal. The Freshly stuff is, well, fresher, and not loaded with sodium. Better. But 4x better? Eh, not so much.
  • Lack of Variety.  I was really hoping for more green veggies; the steak has green beans, as does the chicken mac & cheese. The chicken Parmesan has broccoli, that’s kind of over-steamed and mushy. At the end of the day, the meals quickly (over just 2 weeks!) got monotonous - especially the chicken dishes aren’t really strongly differentiated, and the overall effect just seemed to be, again, not that different than nuking a Lean Cuisine or similar entree.

 I had high hopes, but, this was not that. I might try one of those meal prep kit delivery services, but probably not, just because I know I’ll end up throwing away half of each delivery unused. :/ Pondering next steps.

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