Cook Unity Meal Kit Reviews

CookUnity Overview

About the Brand

CookUnity is a chef collective that ships hand-crafted prepared meal subscription boxes curated by skilled, award-winning, local chefs right to your door. Their mission is to become more than just a meal subscription – they want to bring the creations of talented chefs to your kitchen table.

Ratings Breakdown

‍Taste ★★★★

CookUnity offers food that tastes better than any food delivery service I’ve tried before. It takes a few weeks to find your faves on the menu, but when you do, you can count on your choices.

Quality ★★★★★

CookUnity meals are made with almost all whole and natural ingredients. Ingredients and sourcing are transparent for all meals. You won’t see any preservatives or unpronounceable additives here.

Price ★★★

In short, CookUnity is pricey. The headline price for my 4 meal plan is $13.59/meal. With “shipping taxes and fees” through, this comes out to $18.33 — significantly more expensive than cooking, but still cheaper than delivery.  

Experience ★★★★★

The experience of signing up and then choosing meals weekly is easy and consistent. CookUnity is constantly offering new recipes. When I have had questions about my order, support has typically responded within a few hours. 

Dietary Flexibility ★★★★★

CookUnity caters to your diet and allows you to filter by meals by diet type: Paleo Vegetarian, Keto, Vegan Low Carb, Low Calorie, Pescatarian, and Mediterranean. You can filter by meals you’ve tried, favorites, and chefs and sort by calories, fat, carb, sodium and customer review.

How CookUnity Works

CookUnity gives you access to small-batch meals curated by talented chefs, which means the first thing CookUnity needs to know about you is where you live to know what’s available in your area. While their reach is limited for now, they are rapidly expanding – check their delivery map to see if it is available in your area.

To get started after that, you first pick how many meals you want each week. You then have access to pick what meals you want based on the menu that week. If you don’t feel like picking, the chefs can pick for you. From there, meals will show up each week based on your shipping preferences!

CookUnity: An Overview Of The Brand

CookUnity was started by Mateo Marietta in 2015. Mateo started this company after struggling with his health while working long hours in the technology industry and finding that he didn’t have the time or energy to prepare healthy meals for himself.

And when he looked around, he found that he was not the only one who suffered through this issue.

Due to this, he created a platform where people could get healthy food from chefs and keep working with that enthusiasm all day long. Today, you can find CookUnity kitchens in some of the most popular cities, like Austin, LA, and Atlanta.

The brand has also been featured in several renowned media houses, such as The New Yorker, Tech Crunch, and CNet.

At present, they have 81K followers on their Instagram handle and 19,988 followers on their Facebook handle. We believe that every brand comes with pros and cons that the customer must know before getting involved with it. Some of the pros are listed below:

Pros: 

• CookUnity offers a diverse menu for meals that has various dietary restrictions and preferences, such as vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free.
• The source of vegetables and other ingredients is fresh and locally grown. They prioritize quality over quantity.
• The brand has partnered with professional chefs, including Michelin-starred chefs who create its meals and ensure a high level of culinary expertise and innovation.
• The meals are directly delivered to the home which saves time shopping for groceries and cooking.
• Customers can customize their meals as per their diet and as well as choose the frequency of delivery and number of meals per week.
• The company gives all the information regarding its ingredients and from where they have sourced them. This helps the customers to have all the information regarding their food.
• They also give 40% off to their new customers.
• They serve over 300 recipes per week.

Pricing Options

CookUnity has free delivery. The price is based on how many meals you get per week. When we went through the sign up process, this is what we saw for one person:

Meals Per Week	Price Per Meal	Price Per Week	Monthly Total
4 meals/week	$13.49	$53.96	$216
6 meals/week	$11.99	$71.94	$288
8 meals/week	$11.49	$91.92	$368
12 meals/week	$10.99	$131.88	$528
16 meals/week	$10.49	$167.84	$671

What Does CookUnity Offer?

CookUnity offers a wide range of dishes based on the different dietary options available. The dishes include Italian, Mexican, and Asian-inspired dishes.

Down below, we will be talking about a few such dishes to help us understand them better. 

How CookUnity Compares to Other Top Meal Subscriptions

CookUnity VS Freshly: Both CookUnity and Freshly are prepared meal subscriptions, so they are both fast options for quickly heating and eating. However, CookUnity is more expensive at a minimum of $10.49 per meal versus Freshly at $8.99 per meal. With CookUnity, you are paying a little more for the award-winning chef curation and variety, whereas Freshly is a good option for more average day-to-day eating if that isn’t as important to you. Freshly also has a wider reach for delivery (for now, as of September 2021. Check delivery in the FAQ below).

CookUnity VS HelloFresh: First, CookUnity comes prepared and HelloFresh does not, so you’re saving time with CookUnity. Second, CookUnity is chef curated whereas HelloFresh offers more standard fare. Put those together and you end up saving about $3/meal with HelloFresh. Third, CookUnity has much more specific filtering for dietary restrictions with lots of options for most. One other small difference is that HelloFresh assumes you are serving at least 2 people, whereas CookUnity is more centered around one person – but you can always order as many individual meals as you like and serve however many people you want either way.

CookUnity VS Home Chef: Home Chef, through it’s Fresh and Easy service, and CookUnity both offer prepared meals. They also both offer many dietary filters. The key difference between these is also the chef curation that CookUnity offers which leads to more variety and creativity in the dishes. This leads to CookUnity costing about $1.50 more per meal.

CookUnity Pros and Cons

Pros

• Food is all restaurant quality at home
• Wide variety of meal options
• Filtering options are easy and robust
• Fast to prepare

Cons

• Cost per meal for fewer meals almost as high as eating out
• Some portions are small
• Not available everywhere yet with some areas more limited

CookUnity FAQ

Is the packaging of CookUnity meals environmentally friendly?

Almost all materials that go into the packaging are recycled. Boxes are paper recyclable and their liner is plastic recyclable. The meal trays are also recyclable if cleaned properly. If your delivery comes in a bag or with cooling packs, they are only recyclable if you research proper drop off locations near you.

How much does CookUnity cost?

CookUnity starts at $13.49 per meal, but you can get as low as $10.49 per meal if you order 16 meals/week.

Is CookUnity good for families with kids?

There are plenty of dishes that kids might enjoy, but the meals and service overall are catered more towards adults.

When does CookUnity ship meals?

You select which day of the week you want meals to ship when you sign up, and can always change that day in your profile later based on local availability.

Where does CookUnity ship to?

CookUnity delivers meals from real top chefs, so while CookUnity is growing, their reach depends on how many chefs they work with near you. They ship to most of the continental US, but to find out if your area is available you can check their delivery map here.

How to skip a week of CookUnity ?

Through your profile you can choose to either skip one of the next four deliveries, or alternatively pause your subscription if you want to put it on hold and come back later.

What skill level do you need to cook CookUnity meals?

The only required skill is to reheat prepared meals – the chefs take care of the rest! If you want to use your cooking skills, you can use more complex reheating methods to emulate what the chef’s who curated your meal would do.

CookUnity Reviews: What Do The Customers Say?

If you look through the internet, you will find several platforms where people have shared their experiences with the brand. We have collected some of them for you so that you can keep an eye on them.

After trying at least three other meal services, this one is a keeper! I am impressed with the range of different cuisines and the fact that this is a co-op. When I have had questions or needs related to my account, their customer service has been outstanding. The meals are always so fresh, and the delivery is spectacular, even in inclement weather!

Moma

I loved the food, the great flavors, and the international selection. This has been helping me tremendously with my blood sugar, gluten intolerance, and staying away from sugary snacks. I work alone at a flower studio, so your services are keeping me healthy, happy, and well-fed!

Lisa 

Food was delivered late in the afternoon in two wonderful cloth-insulated bags. Had one dinner that evening; very good. I didn’t know what to do with the bags and ice bags, so I communicated with customer support. I got an answer quickly. I am very pleased with the service so far.

Patrica

The package came at a very reasonable time and was packaged excellently! Nothing is wasted, and I am able to pick it up and carry it without help. An insulated bag is reusable. I also received a text message, which is very helpful.

Anette 

Most of the meals I ordered were delicious. I will say that for the heating instructions, if you are going to use the oven to heat your meals, it does say to preheat to 350 and heat for 10 minutes (some will say to heat for 12–15 minutes); however, I preheat my oven to 375 and heat my meals between 15-20 minutes. It seemed like 350 and some heat times were not enough. After following the heat instructions on the first meal I had, it didn’t seem enough.

Julia