The service: Before I started looking into meal plans, I was just telling my partner how it’s not any cheaper to buy groceries anymore. We were spending the same amount to eat out every night than if we had been buying groceries to cook. I felt awful, and I love cooking, but we were on a budget. I was scared when I looked into Dinnerly and saw how cheap it was—I thought for sure something had to be wrong with it. Fortunately, I was wrong. I pay about 70 bucks a week for me and my partner to eat dinner every night, which according to my calculations is probably saving us around 150 or 200 bucks a month. It’s cheap, all right, but it comes with fresh vegetables and pre-cut meat. I’ve not had a bad tasting meal, and it’s so easy to prepare. I let my settings sit at mid range for difficulty and quality, and they’re just perfect for our lifestyle. I’ve already been annoying about it to several people, but I’ll catch a recommendation some day.The app: I like that I can view the ingredients before I prepare the meal, and it gives me simple step-by-step directions. On my weekly email, it also tells me what ingredients I will need that won’t be in the box (which are usually just condiments). I like that I can adjust what meals I want, too. The app is simple and easy to use! Some people have complained about interface issues, but for me, a simple home cook only cooking for two people, it’s perfect.

I’m a pretty big fan of this meal kit, I’ve tried a bunch so far and usually pause because I can’t handle the endless supply of freezer bags or get bored of the recipes. I’m cooking for 2 and usually get 4-6 meals a week with 2 servings each. Overall, I like that it’s a smaller ingredient list to keep things simple (and cheap) and it’s easy to add additional vegetables/items. The variety of recipes is good, I’d tried Marley spoon for a bit (the ‘fancier’ sister brand) and there are some very similar types and recipes across the two which makes me appreciate dinnerly all the more for being far cheaper and simpler to make. I actually reorder meals again vs being sick of things and annoyed about it repeating in the list of options. The app is a little barebones but it works fine. If I could request an interface update, however: I wish that after cooking a meal I could “check it off” in my weekly list. That way I wouldn’t have to swipe through all of my meals every time, it would just show the remaining ones.

I wanted to like this so bad. I ordered a box for my family and one for my mom and dad. The app is fine. I didn’t have any problems with it. The service was not so great. First of all, my delivery was a day late. Now, that may not be much, but for a poor quality box, it is. They get their produce from the same company ALDI does (the little market). It will go bad very fast and they were already browning. So I get my box the next day and the meat and cold pack is punctured. There was gel and blood on everything. I was also missing two ingredients. I did a chat to let them know. I took a few pictures just in case. They contacted me via email 4 hours later. They said they wanted pictures of the box. Im glad that I had taken a few before I washed what I would keep and threw away what I wouldn’t. Who would leave that sitting around waiting for them to respond? I have no vegetables for my meals. I haven’t heard anything back since I sent the pictures. On another note, the serving size is very small. The vegetable portions are small. The meat is small. The lettuce is small. They sent one small heart of romaine for a salad dinner for 2 along with 1 soft Roma tomato, 5 olives, and the smallest package of feta cheese I’ve ever seen. It was enough for one small salad plate. I could have bought full size groceries for 6 for the same price I paid for the “two serving meal”, $8.83 (I priced it in Walmart’s app).

As a big fan of Dinnerly, and someone who discovered the app before the announcement, I am genuinely enjoying and loving this app. Finding recipes and making changes to boxes is simple. Now that generally offers eight options each month, it is easy and fun to scroll through the titles and photos of each meal. From there I can quickly check each recipe for specifics and decide if I do indeed want to swap out meals. Organic beef and chicken and pork is another great benefit. The quality of the ingredients, in general, is high.The ability to quickly see what will be needed and used for each recipe is appreciated. This app makes it convenient and loved service even more so. Make no mistake, Dinnerly meals are nothing super fancy. However, that means can re-purposed ingredients if I choose and nothing goes to waste. I may be this meal box’s greatest fan! And the fact that Marley Spoon also does Martha Stewart’s boxes makes me feel like I am her distant, distant, distant, very distant poorer cousin who eats well LOL!