Goodfood Review

Written by: Natalia S

 I’m a Vancouver-based mom and writer who loves to cook. Hope you enjoy!

What’s just as bad as cooking fatigue? Meal kit company decision fatigue. There is so much to think about when choosing a meal kit service. If Goodfood is on your list of services to consider, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve broken down all the information for you and summarized the good, the bad and the value.

Goodfood claims to be one of Canada’s biggest meal kit delivery services after just 4 years in business. With more than 1,000,000 meals delivered each month, they must be doing something right. While they do have a large customer base and some great variety, we did spot a few aspects of their service that could use some improvement.  Here’s our review of Goodfood meal kit service.

Goodfood Meals Quality & Taste

Goodfood nails it when it comes to recipe variety and creativity. Chefs create 18 new recipes every week to keep your meals exciting and new.

One week of recipes was packed with flavour, featuring ethnic influences from the following regions:

• India
• Italy
• Spain
• Korea
• Thailand
• Greece

In that same week, the menu included a wide variety of protein options:

• Salmon
• Cod
• Shrimp
• Pork
• Beef
• Chicken
• Plant protein (tofu)

Compared to other meal kits, that is an impressive number of protein choices to offer in a week.

Pan-browned Chicken and Broccoli

Quality of Ingredients

Goodfood claims that their ingredients are up to 7 days fresher than what you find at your grocery store. Although they package ingredients for delivery right after they’ve been received at the production center, “7 days” is still a stretch. If they marketed their ingredients to be “as fresh”, we wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. But taking into account the transit time to and from the production centers (in Alberta and Quebec), depending on where you are located, we don’t see how they can stand behind that claim.

Additional claims are that at least 85% of your delivery is sourced from Canadian farms and that meat and fish are ethically sourced. Their website says that they don’t compromise on “freshness and transparency” when it comes to their ingredients. However, when asked for which Canadian farms they work with, customer service wasn’t willing to disclose that information.

While those may or may not be marketing tactics, there is an undeniably low number of online complaints against the quality of ingredients, and the taste holds up, so we still rank this amongst their strengths.

Goodfood Customer Experience

Pros

Cooking Instructions: When you order, your delivery comes with easy-to-follow instructions that are also available on the website.

Goodfood recipe cards

Online Customer Support: In our experience, you’re never waiting long when you contact Goodfood through their online chat support and the staff is very helpful.

Cons

Cooking Level Unclear: While they claim that all their recipes are beginner-friendly, Goodfood suggests that you check instructions for level of difficulty before ordering a recipe. This seems like unnecessary work, relative to American companies like Blue Apron that just indicate recipe difficulty level. A simple way to sort easy recipes from the more complicated ones would be ideal.

Unreliable Cooking Times: Although some recipes indicate a prep time of 20 minutes, in our experience this can go over, especially when cooking for the first time. We advise allotting between 30 and 60 minutes depending on the dish.

Inconvenient Cancellation Process: Subscription cancellation seems to purposely require extra effort. Most subscription companies allow users to cancel subscriptions by simply logging in to their account and hitting the “cancel” button. With Goodfood, you need to email them to “pause” your subscription.

Inconvenient for Dietary Restrictions: Online plan selections are not intuitive if you are looking for gluten-free and vegan recipes (which are available). Once again, customer service staff recommends that you do the work of looking through ingredients to determine whether recipes qualify.

Meal Kit Dietary Accommodations

At first glance, it seems that Goodfood only accommodates vegetarian and low-carb diets (referred to as Clean15 on their website). But they do offer vegan and gluten-free options as well, upon close inspection of their recipes.

Overall, Goodfood has fairly limited options for those with dietary restrictions – if you’re looking for a service because you’re tired of doing that research yourself, this may not be the service for you.

Goodfood Plans & Pricing

Goodfood subscription plans are organized into 3 categories: Easy Prep Basket, Classic Basket and the Family Basket. The sample prices below for each plan include servings for 4 people with 2 recipes per week.

Easy Prep Basket

The Easy Prep Basket comes with pre-cut veggies and protein to reduce cooking time to 15 minutes per Easy Prep recipe. This plan is the most expensive option but also the biggest time saver. It is the only way to access low-carb recipes and also includes recipes from the Classic plan. You can choose from 12 new recipes every week.

Cost per serving: $11.88
Cost per week: $95.04

Classic Basket

The Classic Basket is the most popular choice. It suits those who enjoy being adventurous and spending a bit more time in the kitchen. The Classic Basket provides 12 weekly options and has the most variety of creative recipes.

Cost per serving: $11.40
Cost per week: $91.20

Family Basket

The Family Basket provides 8 weekly options that are kid-friendly. All recipes in this basket use neutral spices. While this plan is the cheapest, the number of options are fewer and the dishes are relatively bland. So, the recipes may not result in the most exciting meals that you could get with Goodfood but at least the kids will eat.

Cost per serving: $10.91
Cost per week: $87.28

Goodfood also offers breakfast subscriptions and ready-to-eat add-ons that are accessible once you choose a plan.

GoodFood’s Greek-style Cod

Goodfood Delivery & Shipping

Goodfood is Canada-based: they deliver to Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, and the Maritimes.

Delivery boxes include all the raw ingredients you need in exact portions plus printed recipe cards and step-by-step instructions.

Shipping is free and there are no annoying delivery windows forcing you to be home for hours. In fact, delivery boxes are insulated so that you don’t need to be at home at all. The best part about their delivery service is the full credit that they offer in case your box is lost or stolen. That is reassuring.

Turnaround times are between 5-7 days depending on when your selected delivery day is. Weekly recipes are randomly selected for you. You can change your selection before the cutoff day (which is, again, 5-7 days before your delivery date).

Overall, as a Canadian company, their delivery system is one of their strengths.

Sustainability

While Goodfood states that its packaging is made of recycled materials and is entirely recyclable, there is arguably too much plastic. Keep in mind that some cities don’t accept certain plastics in their residential recycling programs.

Furthermore, relying on customers to recycle is not optimal as an eco-friendly practice. Goodfood would be far more progressive by if they provided packaging that could be returned and reused—a common practice with other comparable meal kit companies like Cook It.

Read More About Goodfood

• Goodfood vs Chefs Plate: Who Comes Out On Top?
• HelloFresh vs Goodfood: Canadian Meal Kit Face Off
• 5 HelloFresh Competitors To Try Instead
• The Best Meal Kit Delivery For One Person

Recap: Is Goodfood Worth It?

When compared to other Canadian meal kit services, the price is average. There are cheaper options out there.

Goodfood isn’t a good fit for busy beginners. They rotate their recipes very frequently, which can be a challenge to those just looking to build confidence in the kitchen by practicing the same recipes a few times.

It’s also not the best option for those who are looking to save time in the kitchen. Although they offer 15-min recipes, it comes at a higher cost. Their main selection has recipes that can take up to 60 minutes to prepare which is longer than most people want to spend in the kitchen.

Goodfood is not ideal for those with dietary restrictions either, other than vegetarians and those on a low-carb diet.

So who is it good for? If you are someone who enjoys variety and doesn’t get intimidated in the kitchen easily, you would find great value in Goodfood’s weekly recipes. This meal kit company allows you to practice creativity in the kitchen with unique recipes and flavour combinations.

It is a great service for the foodie who wants to hone their skills in the kitchen.

Would you give Goodfood a try? Make sure you leave your own review to let us know what you think of their meal kit service.