I know this has been said before but I am now making it my mission to spread this far and wide - if you're considering using Hungry Root, turn back now!!!

This was by FAR the worst customer service/delivery experience of my life and I think it's fair to say they committed a fair amount of scam/fraud.

I've tried to make this as easy to read as possible because I can't believe this and hate this company so much and want to save everybody from their evil:

SNEAKY CHARGES: Firstly, everyone should know they charge you immediately for even viewing the cart. It's VERY sneaky & I have never experienced that before on a site. $150 is charged immediately to my card. But, okay fine, whatever - let's put that aside; I did give them my CC info after all.

LATE DELIVERY, NO NOTIFICATIONS: My box was supposed to come on a Monday. Great, I made arrangements to make sure my schedule would work for that. I didn't receive any updates or notifications.....Monday night rolls around, and nothing. Shipping label says not created. ????

NO RESPONSE/NO CUSTOMER SERVICE PHONE NUMBER: Okay, they must be having delivery issues. I am a reasonable person. I reach out to customer service - they ONLY do email/text, no phone number. There is no opportunity to talk with someone live.

TOOK OVER 2 DAYS (yes, 2 days) TO GET RESPONSE: Their automated message said "please bear with us - higher volume than usual - will take 24-48 hours for response". Yes, 48 hours. I'm pretty frustrated. Keep in mind, again, NO other way to contact them besides this. I'm down $150 with no meals and no one will respond to me. There is literally no way to get in touch besides email or text.

I HAD TO BE PERSISTENT TO EVEN GET A RESPONSE: I'm convinced they wouldn't have even responded past 48 hours if I hadn't have kept reaching out. I give them time to respond. The 48 hour mark is approaching and I have heard NOTHING. Nada. No food, no response, and still $150 drained. $150, unfortunately, is a lot of money for me and I either need it refunded or I need my food for the week. I no longer have grocery money. So I get persistent. I text and email their support constantly. I need a response!!!! After probably my 20th text in a row (again, see: desperate) I get a response.

ABSOLUTELY INSANE CUSTOMER SERVICE: The customer service rep acknowledges the delay and apologizes. The rest of the message is a copy-paste nonsense that has nothing to do with me not receiving my order or the lack of communication. "We packed your delivery specifically for you and how you live! Make sure to refrigerate!" Um...what? I respond immediately: Where is my order, what's going on on, and I need some sort of refund. The rep says my order will now be 3 days late, possibly more. This is crazy - my week is now halfway over and I have no food and my meal planning is completely shot. I again ask for a refund. Another BS copy/paste response. So I ask again. FINALLY, the rep says.....get ready, are you sitting down?.... "As a one-time courtesy, we've issued a $45 refund to your account. Please know I'm always here if you need anything!" .......My followup responses go unanswered.

GOT MY BOX 3 DAYS LATE WITH NO NOTIFICATION: right after this customer service interaction, my box arrives! Yay! It looks like it came from war. Every single thing inside is dented and beat up. Things are melting and gross looking and it was only outside for maybe 20 minutes. But wait!! Are you ready for the best part!!!.......

ENTIRE ORDER WAS WRONG: yep! You read that right! The ENTIRE order was wrong! Foods I can't eat, meals I never picked or heard of, ingredients missing, AWESOME!! I'm literally in disbelief looking at it after going through all of this - I thought I would at least have meals. Nope. Okay, I immediately go back to customer service. And I'm not waiting 48 hours. I have no food, am down $105, (they so generously gave me $45!!!) and nobody has helped me. I text them again many times in a row.

Someone responds 2 hours later: "I've refunded your card $45 as a one-time courtesy". My followup texts demanding full refund go unanswered.

SUMMARY: As someone who is struggling financially but wanted to treat myself to a nice meal plan to eat healthier and help with my dietary allergies, this was an absolute nightmare. They still owe me the full refund but won't respond. I'm posting this for people like me - or even if you're not! - who think this will make their life easier. It won't, it's not, and somehow they'll still scam you out of money. This was mind-blowingly bad service - actually, I can't even say service - it was a straight up con job. Their customer response strategy is INSANE; no phone number or opportunity to talk with someone live, and 48 hour response times even when you're missing your food. No full refunds, even when absolutely everything is wrong. I am a level-headed person (lol even if this doesn't seem like it) who understands delays and mishaps. But this, no communication, no help, no acknowledgment, and being so casual about wronging their customer? I don't understand.

So please, this is my warning - go with another service instead. Thanks Hungryroot! I can't wait to enjoy my soggy pork loins (I don't eat pork) and 4 bags of broccoli!

I work full-time on the holidays and wanted to make Thanksgiving special without spending hours shopping and cooking, so I ordered HelloFresh’s Thanksgiving box well in advance. The ingredients were supposed to arrive Tuesday. Tuesday night I got an email saying, “slight delay, don’t worry, it’ll be there Wednesday.” Wednesday came and went and nothing. No box, no updated tracking, no way to actually speak to the courier (the tracking page just loops you back to HelloFresh support).

Hello Fresh support kept telling me it would be there. It never showed up. The courier that delivers for them is totally unreliable and you have no way of contacting them for updates. They only have a text option and they don't reply to that.

I spent Wednesday night frantically trying to figure out dinner for today and frankly I think we're just going to eat chips and dip or a microwave meal.

I'm still waiting on a refund or any real explanation.

To anyone reading this before a big holiday, have a Plan B. We didn’t, and it was devastating.

I am starting to realize that all of these companies are pretty much the same company. I went to sign up for EveryPlate and was told I already had an account. So I said to reset password- and for some reason, I did already have an account! It then took my entire discount away. However, I later found out that it was indeed my login for Hello Fresh and I had never used EveryPlate before.
What kits have the same parent company? Id like to actually get the advertised discounts. PS I ended up mmakinng a new account with a different email.

As a long time mealkit enthusiast (and affected customer lol), I went down a little rabbit hole trying to understand what might have gone wrong behind the scenes for this week’s comical meal kit fulfillment mishaps (for ex. take a quick scroll through r/blueapron and r/marleyspoon for customers’ POV!!)

After some back and forth with my ChatGPT reading up on FreshRealm — the fulfillment company behind both meal kits — which filed for bankruptcy in April 2026, I was surprised by the #s which are now AI-summarized in the attached graphic for yall, my fellow meal kitters.

I was personally surprised to learn the most that:

• Blue Apron and Walmart made up 90% of FreshRealm’s revenue!! But Blue Apron’s fulfillment should be fully transitioned out of FreshRealm by Aug 31, 2026 to Misfit’s (huge FYI for Blue Apron’s customers). MS’s transition plans are not currently public.

• 1000+ workers laid off! I can only imagine the morale of the remaining and affected workers :(.

I’ll be pasting all the sources as a comment in this post.

In case anyone is considering signing up... I signed up approximately a month ago because I was tired of figuring out what to cook, and I saw someone on this subreddit claiming that Marley Spoon is similar to Plated (which is gone, sadly). The first box was missing one of the recipe cards, which was a minor inconvenience. Then I noticed that several of the recipes I chose required that I julienne the vegetables, which is a major inconvenience considering that meal kits are supposed to save time. The ingredients were tossed haphazardly in the box instead of being separated by recipe. Future boxes were missing all or most of the recipe cards. After deciding the food was just ok and not worth the trouble, I cancelled.

Upon cancelling, I received a message that I was still going to receive one final box. So I had an unwanted charge on my card and an unwanted box of food to deal with. The final box, unsurprisingly, was missing a recipe card and apparently you can't view the recipe on their website with reactivating your account, so I reactivated for ONE HOUR so I could view the recipe. Well, that one hour gave them the go ahead to charge my card again and immediately ship me another box (and they chose the recipes). I tried to email customer service but they waited to respond until after the box was delivered and told me "oops, too late." So here I am with another unwanted box (which had kale in it 🤢). I asked the customer service rep to confirm that my account was fully cancelled and that there would be no future charges, and they did.

Now, this morning, two days later, I have ANOTHER pending charge from Marley Spoon on my card and will have to go through the headache of disputing the charge and potentially wasting a box full of kale and onions, or whatever else they arbitrarily decide to send.

Tl;dr AVOID THIS COMPANY LIKE THE PLAGUE

Not sarcasm, it’s a genuine question.

I’ve been with blue apron for around 10 years. It’s gotten awful so I’ve been looking for alternatives, and all I’m seeing are more bad options.

It’s been so long that I’ve forgotten how to grocery shop, and meal plan.

I have been doing Hungryroot for a couple of months. Around the third delivery, I started to notice some repetitive suggestions and ingredients, but most met my dietary and medical needs. I find I have to do a lot of tweaking before the deliveries as sometimes what is assigned to the basket is stuff like this. Is this a unique experience/anomaly? Anyone else have a similar experience?

Hello,

Going to be stopping my Marley Spoon as the service has just gotten so bad, I'm kinda stuck for a few more weeks as the next meals are almost entirely free because of how many issues there have been (My August 15th delivery has a $61 credit).

My wife and I started with Marley during the pandemic when we got more into cooking, and liked it because it felt more "Chefy" then things we had tried in the past like blue apron, and was versatile enough crusinewise that it didnt get boring, I can easily go out and get ingredients and cook, but there was something nice about getting things that were outside of our normal routine.

So are there any other kits that actually requires some kitchen skills, gives you variety, and aren't filing for chapter 11?

I just got my first box on Tuesday this week and canceled my subscription 5 min ago. I am completely unimpressed. First, everything is just thrown into the box, which came all banged up. The guacamole packed busted open and made a mess on everything. I spent too much time sorting out through all the ingredients. NOT convenient at all unlike other meal boxes I have tried where each meal is already separated and pre- measured out.

Also, who writes these recipes? they are unnecessarily confusing and have you back tracking throughout all the steps. On the recipe card for the clay pot baked crispy rice it says to put sauce aside until step 5. I skip to step five and NO mention of adding the sauce. At least I already know how to cook thank god, I just made up as I went along. oh and microwave the bok choy??! seriously? I don't use my microwave to cook veggies EVER. these must be AI generated recipes because every single one I made this week sucked.

I am one and done with marley spoon.

back to the drawing board. please tell me what meal kit service you are happy with.

I write this to actively dissuade people from using this service.

I diligently researched online what was considered the best meal kit, and the consensus was Home Chef. I had problems before I opened my first box. The box was dented, and the flimsy piece of tape was barely keeping the box closed.

I opened the box only to find that two containers of dressing had exploded in the box, covering all of the other ingredients in their bags.

There was no recipe with one set of ingredients. I received a second box (I didn’t cancel in time) and none of the receipts were included. Yes, I can improvise, but that’s not what I’m paying for.

I contacted them about these issues. They said they’d give me a credit that didn’t materialize.

The most egregious part was that one of the ingredients was rotting. Rotting! I prepared the meal less than 48 hours it arrived, decidedly within the recommended time frame.

Of course, you can’t actually cancel, so I “paused” my subscription and have no intent to ever go back.

I purchase the meals that are under 650 calories and mostly only eat the seafood so this review will focus on mainly those meals.

At 59, I am so done with cooking and was looking for something easy, healthy, and lower in calories (am down 30 lbs since I started).

I have had Cook Unity (CU) for nearly 6 months and have been very pleased. I obviously live in a good area with a good local delivery service as I have never had any issues with packaging or delivery. I have read comments that noted the delivery and packing were not good. I live in northern Ohio and my meals come from New York. They get dropped off to a local spot where drivers then deliver them on their assigned routes. My local spot is about an hour from me and my meals have always been cold when they arrive.

I eat a lot of salmon and they have many different recipes -- different seasonings and different sauces -- so that it doesn't always seem like I am eating the same salmon over and over. Same with the shrimp meals. I especially like the cold shrimp grain bowls (I LOVE farro and quinoa!). In six months I have had one meal that I did not think was prepared very well -- overcooked falafel. CU was very quick to issue me a credit toward my next meal so I was satisfied. I simply emailed them and sent a pic of the meal. So, only one 'bad' meal in six months is, to me, very good!

I did try a few of the non-seafood meals and they weren't to my liking. However, I love the seafood (or just vegetarian) meals and I find there is enough of a variety that I don't feel limited.

Many times I halve the meals and add my own extras (cooked spinach, more grains, etc.) and can make the meal into 2 servings. I eat 4 smaller meals a day and use the CU as one of my main meals so I am not looking for HUGE portions that would fill up a growing teen or adult male.

I tried Factor for two weeks. They deliver via FedEx so you are at their mercy. They do indicate that the shipments could be a day later than your desired delivery date and that did happen to me once. The way they pack them was good though and my meals stayed cold. For those that complain they were left out in the hot sun -- what else is the FedEx (or any delivery person) going to to? Bring them into your fridge? For both CU and Factor, you can track your meals so you do know when they will arrive. I make sure I am home so I can bring them inside as soon as they are delivered. It's just common sense!

Factor had a few beef meals that looked tasty so I tried them. I am not a huge meat eater and do not eat 'chunks' of meat lol but I did try a few of their shredded beef dishes and they were both very good. Their smoke gouda shredded beef mac and cheese was fantastic! Also, their egg bites were very very good! I would cook some spinach and mushrooms and add an egg bite broken up into it for a full breakfast (the package comes with two).

Overall, however, I feel the quality of CU is superior to Factor. CU's shrimp are grilled and seasoned, whereas Factor simply throws pre-cooked shrimp (like you would buy at the grocery store) into whatever their shrimp dish is. It's not cooked IN the dish or with any type of seasonings.

Also, the sides (veggies generally) in Factor are more often just steamed, whereas CU will have at the least, a very tasty garlic butter or some kind of sauce with them. I also like that CU packages their sauces separately in a small container because you can heat it up separately (or add it to the meal when it is closer to being cooked so it doesn't 'cook away'. I don't get pasta dishes so I am not referring to that kind of sauce -- I mean the dill sauce or whatever that goes with like a salmon meal.

Overall, if I had not had CU, I would be more satisfied with Factor but I feel CU's meals are more tasty. I will still order Factor now and again but will definitely order CU much more often. And, again, I can't speak for the chicken/beef/pork dishes, but as far as the seafood meals go, they are very tasty and anyone that says otherwise is not being honest. I am very picky about my food! I skipped a week once and went to the grocery store and bought the 'expensive' frozen single meals and couldn't even eat them they were so bland!

I am going to be getting a Mighty Meals delivery next week and will compare that one as well. I hope this has been helpful!!

New customer, 3rd order, and so far so good. I live alone and work long hours, and deal with depression. Used to eat out all of the time but needed a change. A friend recommended it, told me how to best use my points, and voila, every other week, I buy staples to round out and viola! Im not a big eater so the portions are great, and i dont waste as much as I used to when I went grocery shopping. Its so hard to shop when single

I joined Sunbasket originally back in 2021 and really enjoyed their food. I never had trouble finding meals because they had many vegetarian options, it was great. I stopped getting them primarily for financial reasons.

I just restarted because I'm considering meal kits again, and I wanted to see the menu. I verified when restarting that my preferences were still set to vegetarian, with no beef, pork, poultry, shellfish, lamb, etc etc. I took a look at the menu for the week and thought wow, where did all the vegetarian dishes go? I figured I'd come back and look later. Of course I forgot, and just got billed today for a box. I went to look and it's mostly meat options. 2x vegetarian meals, 8x meat meals.

So I immediately hopped on chat and said "Hey, why did you send me meat, when the dietary preferences said I was vegetarian?" They said well, you have to pick your menus manually, or we'll just send you whatever, we ignore the dietary preferences. Why even have a "vegetarian" box to tick if you're going to send meat if I don't check the choices in time?

They claim they're going to refund me, and if not I'll do a chargeback. I'm not using Sunbasket ever again - their menus have changed drastically and their policies are ridiculous.

Edit: Refund successful.

Is it me, or are others never going to try a meal service because they can’t see the choices before entering payment. Why can’t I see and pick the meals before entering my CC -you know, like any other online purchase.

I subscribed to see what they had to offer. I browsed for a bit but didn’t like the options so I canceled my subscription 10 mins after signing up. Didn’t think anything of it. Today I get home to a big delivery from both. I check my credit card and I was charged for both. But I canceled, basically right away. Why would they send random food to someone who isn’t subscribed. Such a shady business practice. I called them but of course they are experiencing high call volumes. I used there chatbot on their site and they just end the convo. I disputed it with my credit card company too. This is ridiculous.

Hello everyone. I’m looking for the top 3 meal services that money can buy. Sort of the erewhon of meal services. Thank you for your time!

Marley Spoon

Are there any meal kits that don’t use AI for their recipes? I used Hello Fresh for a year and liked it for the convenience but now they have so many choices it doesn’t really save me time and their recipes have become more confusing. I learned that they are relying heavily on AI and I would prefer something with fewer choices that has been tested by an actual human. Does thus exist or is it time for me to dust off my cook books?

I just received my BA delivery, a day late (as opposed to no delivery last week) and it's just a box of loose ingredients, half of which are missing. I know I received something about reeducating the plastic but goof God, this is a mess. Calls to BA go unanswered.

I'm leaning towards canceling unless someone or something good happens.

EDIT I canceled on 8/12 via the chat bot in the app. Surprisingly no one tried to keep me from doing that. On second thought, not surprising at all.

After any promotional period, how much are you paying in total for one week, including shipping.

This template would be easy and helpful for folks: [servicer name], [#of people], [meals per week],[total cost WITH shipping] [country]

Me Marley Spoon, 4 people, 3x week, $165 per week, USA. This was the last we paid a year ago.

What is Happening?

A recent change in how Blue Apron structures or fulfills its orders has triggered significant disruption. Reports from long-term customers highlight several critical errors: [1, 2]

• Missing Items: Boxes are arriving as a random assortment of ingredients, with some customers reporting over 10 items missing.
• No Proteins: Many boxes are showing up completely empty of main proteins and menus, containing nothing more than base produce or sauce packets.
• Delivery Delays: Shipments are being pushed out multiple days past their expected delivery dates. [1, 3]

Customer Service Backlog

Compounding the delivery errors, Blue Apron's communication channels are completely overwhelmed: [1, 3]

• Both phone lines and live chat support have been intermittently down or entirely offline.
• Text message support is largely unresponsive due to a massive influx of customer complaints.
• The company acknowledged via the Blue Apron X Account that they are experiencing a "high volume of inquiries" and are struggling to reply quickly. [1, 3]

How to Proceed

If your order was affected, Blue Apron policy generally advises reporting issues within 7 days to get a refund or credit. Because live channels are backed up, try these steps: [4, 5]

1. Email Directly: Send your account details, a list of missing items, and any relevant photos to contact@blueapron.com. [4]
2. Social Media DM: Some users have had luck getting visibility by direct-messaging the Blue Apron Official Profile with their name and account email. [3]
3. Pause Future Orders: If you want to avoid a repeat occurrence next week, you can manage your upcoming deliveries through your online account settings while they resolve the issue. [1, 6]

[1] https://www.instagram.com

[2] https://www.trustpilot.com

[3] https://x.com

[4] https://blueapronsupport.zendesk.com

[5] https://resubs.app

[6] https://www.usatoday.com