Gobble Meal Delivery Service Review 2023: All You Need To Know

Feature_Gobble

In this post, we will review the Gobble meal kit delivery service and tell you who it is for its meals and its pricing structure.

How did Gobble start?

Gobble logo

Gobble was founded in 2010 by Stanford engineering graduate Ooshma Garg. She desired to bring together families over home-cooked food.

Gobble started with just four people in the Bay Area and has grown to over 200 employees inside the US and Canada. Gobble has become the go-to solution for low-calorie comfort food that require only 15 minutes to prepare. Gobble’s chefs do the prep work. They simmer your sauces, marinate meats, chop and slice vegetables and more.

According to Oohsma Garg, she could always rely on her family for home-cooked dinners and lunches no matter the situation. This gave her a great deal of comfort and boosted her mental health. She wants the same for her customers.

Gobble delivers great meal kits that require little effort from your end to transform into fully-cooked meals. The menu offers plenty of variety and great-tasting meals. However, the quality and variety should have been better for the price.

Gobble meal kits are trying to be the middle choice in fancy dinners and making speedy dishes.

The meal kit delivery service wants to do most of the meal prep for you and does everything they can to help you cook meals quickly.

The website says Gobble helps you create dinners in 15 minutes flat. With fast cook times, you get meals that need virtually zero preparation work and minimal cleaning up after you have done your cooking. Gobble’s chefs do most of the work. The price per meal is about $11.99, which is way higher than most services’ meal delivery kits.

We gave Gobble a test drive to determine if the convenience was worth the cost.

How Gobble works?

Once you create an account (a fairly simple process), you get three plan options depending on your food preferences: Classic, Lean, and Vegetarian. If you choose the Classic plan, you can choose which animal proteins you want. However, you get no additional options for plant-based options.

The service has limitations in giving you meal options tailored to your dietary restrictions, but here’s the broader picture of what you can get. A few meals are free of some allergens. You can quickly recognize these allergens like gluten, shellfish, wheat, and dairy. Gobble also suggests removing some optional ingredients from your meal for you to cook to build an allergen-friendly meal.

Another surprise with Gobble is that the vegetarian plan offers meals at the same prices as the other plans. Usually, most meal services price their vegetarian options at a relatively lower price.

Once you have chosen your plan, you can choose the number of meals you want weekly. The number of meals comes in options such as these: dinner for two members for two, three, four, or five nights a week. Once you have chosen the plan, it’s time to choose your delivery days and select meals for the next week.

Read more: Proper Good Review

How to choose your meals with Gobble?

Like other meal-delivery service providers, Gobble’s menus change every week. You are offered a weekly choice of chef-prepared meals.

Here are further details. You can choose from 12 main entrees from all meal plans every week.
Then two premium dinners are expensive, going up to $20 a meal. Then there are specialty kits for kid’s meals.

In addition to the meals, you can choose add-ons like salads, sides, proteins, soups, and desserts.

In addition, as a customer, you can switch out some animal proteins for a better protein version, say organic meat, or switch to another protein. These switches cost a lot more.
Add-ons like proteins are the only customization you get. You can see the nutrition and allergen information for each item. You can also choose ” off-plan ” meals if you want something else.

The menu options cater to a European diet mostly. You also get meals inspired by international cuisines. You can view information on the sustainability of the meat or other proteins, but a similar option isn’t available for the produce you buy. This has led most of us to believe that the produce isn’t sourced from sustainable farms.

Gobble delivers food to the entire United States with a few exceptions. They don’t deliver to Montana and have restricted delivery in Nebraska and New Mexico. If you want to make any changes to your order, you should do so before Wednesday 11:59 pm in the week before your scheduled delivery.

Gobble-rich Recipe Cards

Gobble has recipe cards inside the boxes it delivers. These cards measure 8 by 10 inches and are large. Despite the size, the information inside is in small print because of the information they cover. You get a description of the dish, an ingredient list with allergens for each item in the dish, and tools and add-ons like butter, salt, and pepper. Lastly, you get cooking instructions, complete with pictures. They also include cooking tips, notes, and fun facts inside the card. This slew of information ensures you have no trouble making your dish.

The recipes are listed online. This is helpful because the packaging and delivery ensure that all recipes are wrenched up.

Sometimes the sauce spills over, covering the card, and you can’t read anything off it.

What's Gobble packaging like?

Gobble’s meal kits come inside a cardboard box placed on top of an insulated inner bag. Inside, you get a gel ice pack at the bottom to keep the contents inside cool. You can drain these ice packs and then send the packs to a recycling center.

The meal kits are assembled inside a plastic bag and a recipe card. The proteins are kept separate at the bottom. They’re closest to the ice packs and separated from the rest of the meal with the help of a cardboard divider.

Packaging is a highly efficient way to choose your ingredients for a meal with relative ease. However, there are a lot of plastic bags, not all of which are fully recyclable.

Inside each bag, you get raw ingredients like tomatoes and packaged items like eggs wrapped inside bubble wrap and put inside a tough plastic container. Other ingredients are wrapped in paper.

There’s a lot of care that went into the packaging. However, if you are more concerned about the sheer amount of plastic, choose another meal-delivery service.

What do Gobble's meals taste like?

According to most reviewers, the flavors are spot-on most of the time.

However, many reviewers report problems with the texture of the meat.

There are both international and European cuisine options inside a single kit. In a kit, you may find a burger, ingredients for a curry and other recipes. The sauces are seasoned well.

It’s the same with Gobble’s produce and dairy. According to reviews, they all seemed fresh. The meat, including chicken, had problems with texture and wasn’t very enjoyable.

Most of Gobble’s meals include proteins, salads, or vegetables. There are comfort dishes like pasta, burgers and other meals.

There are Thai, Japanese, and Southern Central American dishes.

In a week, you will find about 23 recipes. 13 of these are dinner recipes. You get breakfast options, appetizers, soups, snacks, and desserts. There are four vegetarian meals weekly, plus five seafood meal options. The meals are customizable, meaning you can swap equal amounts of proteins for a shrimp or chicken or upgrade to a higher-quality protein like organic meat.

Remember, these upgrades are expensive, and the exact costs differ based on what you’re swapping with what else.

It’s easy to prepare these meal kits. We can’t buy the claim that most meals will be ready in 15 minutes. Most take 20 to 30 minutes from start to finish. However, the good news is there’s nothing a beginner can’t do in these prep steps. Gobble will have your diced carrots and peeled vegetables ready for you. Gobble’s meal kits give you a holding hand with pictures and detailed recipe plans.

Read more: Good Eggs review

Nutritional value of Gobble's meals

Gobble has three meal plans. There’s the classic plan, the vegetarian and the lean and clean plan. The last option offers dishes that are low in calories and rich in lean proteins and omega-3 fatty acids. Gobble has meals free of nuts, dairy, gluten and other common allergens. Plus, you can choose between option ingredients and eliminate those from your diet.

The add-ons are great with Gobble

Gobble offers plenty of add-ons. You get extra proteins, sides, and desserts. They change weekly. You can choose from three breakfasts. There are two desserts, two salads and two soups too.

The items are priced individually, with some of them priced moderately, and some of them seem too expensive.

How does Gobble's delivery work?

The box with everything you ordered is delivered once a week. You can also choose to cancel the weekly deliveries or skip a week. You can choose a Wednesday or a Thursday for delivery, and the box should arrive between 8 am to 9 pm.

Gobble Pricing

Here’s what the pricing looks like:

  • Meals for two people for three days a week: $89.94
  • Meals for four people for three days a week $143.99
  • Meals for two people for four days a week $103.92
  • Meals for four people for four days a week $191.84

The math behind the meals is simple. Meals cost $12 per serving despite how many times you order or how many meals you order. That’s why the total of six meals for two people will cost $71.94. Plus, there’s $6.99 for shipping. Gobble is an expensive meal-delivery service.

Gobble Sample Recipes

Here are a few sample recipes:

Cilantro pesto salmon with cauliflower couscous: This is a tasty and quick-to-make recipe. It has a hint of salt and pepper. The salmon used is fresh and tastes good.

Vegetarian tofu noodle bowl with peanut sauce: It’s a tasty meal that you can prepare in roughly 20 minutes. You get tender tofu with matched flavors. It’s a Thai takeout dinner.

They totally nailed the 20-minute tofu pad Thai, and it’s a huge hit, according to the reviews on the site.

What makes Gobble different from other meal kit services?

It’s easy to prepare Gobble meals; you can prepare them in 20 minutes or less. Only a few meals take longer than half an hour. Just because you can prep these meals quickly doesn’t mean they’re basic meals. There are multiple exciting choices like paid Thai, Aji Verde and different combos of Bento bowls.

Gobble’s menu has several classic homestyle dishes and recipes you would not consider making alone. There’s a range of proteins and a vast number of vegetables on the menu.

The seafood options are great. You are not confined to shrimp or just one type of seafood. Other dishes containing meat or chicken can be swapped for their vegetarian alternatives.

In the box, the ingredients for each recipe are grouped separately in separate plastic bags. So when you want to prepare something during dinner, grab the bag, take out the contents and use the ingredients. The pre-made sauces are put inside plastic bottles, and fragile items like eggs are inside rigid plastic containers.

The separate bags make it really easy for you to make quick meals, but there’s a lot of unwanted plastic. This is something many customers find distasteful. The plastic can be recycled if you take the time to put it in a recycling station after cleaning it. The cardboard box can be placed inside the recycling bin, and the gel packs are non-toxic.

To recycle the plastic bags containing the gel or the food, wash and dry them in the sink and then pay a visit to your recycling center.

Gobble uses sustainable ingredients

As per Gobble’s site, the service sources sustainable, organic ingredients. This may not always be possible, but they try their best. To break things down, the chicken in Gobble meals is antibiotic-free and hormone-free. The pork is hormone-free, and the eggs are sourced from free-range chickens. Dairy products are sourced from cows that don’t get hormone treatments.

Gobble makes use of wild-caught and farm-raised seafood. The guidelines they use in sourcing seafood are according to recommendations by the Marine Stewardship Council. This ensures that you get seafood of the highest quality that doesn’t damage ocean habitats.

How to sign up for Gobble?

A Gobble subscription is easy to get. Gobble has a simple sign-up process that ends in a few minutes. Start by entering your email address, add a password, and enter your zip code to see if they deliver to your area.

Next, choose a meal plan that best suits your eating preferences.

You can order dishes from any of the three plans despite your chosen plan. Choosing your favorite helps you organize your preferences. You can choose the number of servings you like.

You can choose the number of meals per week and the address to get these meals.
After entering the information and starting the subscription, you can see next week’s menu and make selections. You can also visit the menu page for this.

Each dish has information that shows if it has allergens like gluten or dairy. There’s more information that tells you if you need to be wary of the dish or not. You can choose from the entrees, salads and soups.

How to change skip, or cancel meals?

On the website or the mobile app, Gobble makes it really easy to skip weeks, you can change recipes or pause the subscription whenever you want.

How to make changes to your order or cancel your Gobble account?

Once you place the order, you can make changes a week before your delivery date. You can change the items, the delivery dates, or the address.

You can do this on their site or their app.

Some other kits require zero meal preparation time and cost much less. Gobble is inconsistent with its dishes, with some items taking much longer to cook. If you plan on finishing dinner in 15 minutes flat, be ready for a surprise.

Gobble’s dinners are much more expensive and offer plenty of additional variety. They may not be worth the cost, especially since there are far too many competitors.

Gobble's Pros and Cons

Pros
  • Organized ingredients
  • Decent menu variety
  • Minimal effort
  • You get prepped ingredients
  • Plenty of variety in seafood options
  • Lots of flavors that you can change to your liking
  • There's a minimum meal prep required, but it doesn't take much time
  • Beginner-friendly recipes
  • Ready-to-eat meals ready in 15 minutes
  • Menus for gluten-free recipes, vegetarian recipes, and high-protein recipes
  • Swap proteins on a few dishes
  • You can view the menus up to four weeks in advance.
  • The sign up offer is great, where you get 6 meals for just $36
Cons
  • Prep and cook times longer than expected
  • Excessive packaging
  • Expensive for quality
  • It's much more expensive compared to other meal-delivery services
  • The taste and quality of the meals are inconsistent
  • The minimum order you need to make is three meals a week
  • A few ingredients weren't fresh
  • If you are environmentally conscious or on a budget, Gobble isn't that great of an option for you.
  • No free shipping option
  • Packaging makes use of single-use plastic. It's not recyclable
  • Less transparency on ingredients used

Who is Gobble good for?

Gobble is a great choice if you want to prepare your meals quickly. A 20-minute meal sounds more like fast food and should taste like it, but it doesn’t. There are plenty of customization options, which means it’s a great choice for anyone who bills himself a picky eater.
Gobble has a lot more variety of seafood options than comparable meal-delivery services. This is great if you love fish recipes.

Gobble is a great option for anyone with a busy schedule, for beginner/amateur cooks looking to grow their skills, and for couples or small families who desire home-cooked food but, between kids and jobs, can’t find the time for it.

Who is Gobble not so good for?

You need to choose at least three meals for a week. There’s no one-time meal ordering option. It isn’t ideal for anyone who doesn’t want to cook most nights. The service also offers only three total plant-based meals a week, so the service isn’t great for vegans or vegetarians.
It’s much more expensive and not ideal for someone on a budget.

We wouldn’t recommend Gobble to anyone who wants to know where each of their ingredients is sourced from or those who frown upon the use of so much single-use plastic.

Gobble support materials

The recipes are clear, with images showing the finished product and the steps that took to reach there.

There’s a list of tools along with nutritional information for each recipe.

Gobble Pricing: Comparable to Other Meal Delivery Services

Gobble’s pricing compared to other services is undoubtedly on the higher side. HelloFresh and Blue Apron, similar meal kit delivery services, price their kits at $8 per meal kit.

Gobble is more convenient than other services. With this, you can save up to 20 to 30 minutes in the kitchen compared to services with longer cook times. Heat-and-serve meal kits like Factor or Freshly offer the same service at a much more discounted rate.

Gobble's Customer Service

Most people feel Gobble’s customer service is great. You can contact the customer support team through chatbot, email or phone.

The customer-service agents are helpful, kind and respond in under 5 minutes.

Once you reach out to an agent, say, Mike or David, you can work with that persona until the issue is fixed. The same is true for texting; you don’t have to explain your situation repeatedly.

For asking any questions, reach out to Gobble’s customer service team on the number (888) 405-7481. You can also text your question to (650) 600-7776. You can submit a message on the support page. Customer service agents are available from 5 am to 8 pm every day from Monday to Friday and from 5 am to 1 pm on weekends.

Gobble Reviews

According to TrustPilot, there are over 2000 Gobble reviews. The service got a 4.2 average out of 5 stars. The 5-star reviews loved the convenience and eased you get with the meals. Others recommend that customer service iron out issues.

According to one reviewer, who tried more popular meal services, Gobble is the best choice. Most reviewers say they love to cook but don’t get time for the same during the week. The best part of Gobble is you can prepare restaurant-quality meals at your home in 30 minutes.

A few other reviewers praise the service for the minimum cleaning required after cooking. There’s enough food for the couple who order Gobble weekly, and there’s no cleanup afterward.

The poor reviews are due to receiving the shipments late or being unable to cancel on time, which has nothing to do with food quality or taste.

Read more: RealEats review

Gobble: Final words on the meal delivery service

Gobble is a great solution for those who want quality consistent. The dishes are amazing and offer plenty of variety.
The cleanup is minimal. A subscription to Gobble cuts down on the visits to the supermarket and frees up time from your busy schedule.

The basic premise behind Gobble is interesting. Bland food doesn’t have interesting flavors, and we may not always have time to create interesting dishes in our busy lives. The plan is to make the work behind a gourmet, enjoyable dish very little. As someone who wants to eat fish or try meat but doesn’t have the time to go to the market and prepare the dishes after cleaning and cutting, there’s not much in terms of options for you.

Most people are busy with their work, and kids often find very little time to dedicate themselves to making a lunch or dinner. Even though they love cooking, they want to experiment with new flavors whenever possible.

A meal-delivery service like Gobble sends ingredients inside a meal kit using which you can make easy meals in your home, cooking dinner every night is easier than you ever imagined.

As a subscriber, you can access a few select recipes weekly. The menu rotates every week. Every recipe has quick and easy-to-follow instructions to create a complete meal with the ingredients.

The service is promising, with three subscriptions in classic, protein-rich dinners, side dishes, and desserts.

If you’re new to cooking, have a tight schedule, or simply want to dedicate time to things that are more than meal prepping, Gobble might be the best meal-delivery service.

When you order any plan, all the ingredients for preparing the meal come to your front door. All you need to do is follow the recipes step-by-step.

The dishes taste good because Gobble as a service sends you pre-marinated ingredients, you get good sauces, and you make the cooking process really simple. You must chop up vegetables, cook the meat, and add spices to the meal.

Gobble FAQs:

To deactivate your account, go to your account and follow the instructions on the page. You can also cancel Gobble by emailing sous@gobble.com or calling (888) 405-7481. When you email or call, add your full name and registered email address and state why you want to deactivate the account.

Gobble is different from other meal delivery services because it takes only 15 minutes to cook the meal. They never send you whole ingredients. Gobble vegetables and meats are presliced, pre-chopped and measured.

Go to the delivery calendar and click manage delivery for the week you want to skip. Select skip this delivery and provide a reason. The feedback helps them improve the service.

Yes, you can freeze Gobble deliveries. When you get your dinner kits, we recommend freezing them. This helps you keep the meal kits fresh for 7 days. You can also free ingredients like proteins, pastas, soups, and sauces. They will last for 3 or more months in the fridge.

The dinner kits from Gobble are designed to go from kit to prepared food in as little as 15 minutes. Pre-cooed sauces, presliced vegetables and meat help you lower your cooking time. Plus, there’s zero meal planning, grocery shopping or spending time prepping a meal. This gives you restaurant-quality food in no time.