Review: Gardencup

My days usually start out with me waking up 10 minutes before I need to start work, chugging an energy drink, logging in to my laptop, and then getting a headache around 3 pm when I realize I haven't eaten a single thing (let alone a nutritious thing). Between my ADHD hyperfocus and simultaneous ADHD time blindness, I have a tendency to eat like a toddler and accidentally let produce go bad because out of sight is absolutely out of mind. Sometimes I feel like a Sim from The Sims 4, wandering aimlessly around my house in search of something, not realizing my Needs bars are all flashing red. When I do remember to eat, I'm a grazer, and I could eat charcuterie or adult Lunchables for 90 percent of my meals. I like containers. I like finger foods. I'm a foodie that can't doesn't like to think too hard about their next meal.

Gardencup. Gardencup is the answer.

Gardencup is a meal subscription service that sends freshly prepared, single-serving salads, bowls, soups, produce, and snacks to your front door. And I'm a little bit upset about having tried it because now I don't think I can ever stop getting them.

Where Have You Been?

Gardencup is a little unlike some other popular meal kit services because you get to fully customize your order each week. Choose either a six-pack or nine-pack, build your pack (there are vegan and vegetarian options), and choose your shipping frequency. Order totals vary by item. Protein-heavy salads cost $12, whereas snacks and produce cost between $6 and $9. You can sign up for the Gardenclub after placing at least five orders to earn a percentage as cash back. You can pause or skip auto-deliveries and cancel your shipments easily in your account settings.

Photograph: Louryn Strampe

Each jar is packed to the brim full of goodness. The filling salads are packed smartly, with dressings and wet ingredients toward the bottom and fresh veggies toward the top. Simply shake them up when you're ready to eat and you'll have a dressed, fresh salad in no time. They're also packed tightly—sometimes I had to eat a few forkfuls of undressed spinach in order to have enough room inside the jar to shake it thoroughly. Of course, you could also just dump the whole thing into a bowl. For products like Producecups—cut-up pineapple or apples with almond butter, carrot and celery sticks with hummus—or spreads like tuna salad, simply dig in. (Note that you'll need to bring your own crackers.)

The primary thing I love about Gardencup is how easy it makes my life. I'm already thinking about money, doctor's appointments, going to the gym, career growth, maintaining my friendships, my godforsaken emails, the state of the world at large, and whether or not I can pull off a cool-toned purple lipstick. (I can't.) Despite my love of delicious food, the last thing I want to think about is having to eat a freaking meal three times per day. Gardencup lets me go on autopilot for a little while. I reach in my fridge, grab a cup of Something, and eat it knowing that it's nutritious and ultimately tastes good. Sometimes the meals are a little bit bland—my chicken noodle soup could have benefited from some black pepper, and I'd add my own dressing to a few of the salads if I wasn't reviewing them. But the trade-off is absolutely not a problem for me and my lifestyle. ’Tis better to have a cup of food and need to add your own dressing than to not have a cup of food at all. And these weeks eating well more easily and frequently with the help of Gardencup means that cooking or going out to dinner has felt more like a luxury and less like another thing on my to-do list.

Photograph: Louryn Strampe

It's hard to find words to describe how fresh everything is. The cherry tomatoes inside my Caprese salad were the freshest, best-tasting I've had all year. And it's winter! My chicken noodle soup was full of delicious carrots, celery, and zucchini. Despite the cup having sat in my fridge for a few days, the vegetables were as fresh as if they'd just arrived. My Pesto Pasta Salad was filling, bright, and balanced. My Italian Pasta Bowl was full of good greens, perfectly cooked noodles, smoky meat, and crunchy peppers. Everything arrives washed, prepped, and ready to eat—even the cups filled with raw produce don't require washing. And Gardencup has a fresh guarantee to boot. If something arrives warm or wilted, you have 24 hours to contact them, in which case they'll replace your meal. Easy peasy.

Gardencup says that over 98 percent of its orders arrive fresh. That's probably due to the smart packaging. Per the company, the boxes are insulated to maintain their temperatures for over 60 hours in the heat of summer. And you have time to eat the food once it arrives, too—around five or six days is the recommendation. The individual jars are insulated and packed tightly. I also really, really appreciate that the jars are made of no. 1 PET plastic, which is very commonly recyclable. You can hand-wash the jars (be sure to remove the lid's foam liner and wash underneath it, and let it dry separately), then repurpose them or recycle them. The cups are durable and leakproof in my experience, though they aren't dishwasher- or microwave-safe, so meals that need to be heated must be transferred to another container. The labels also peel off cleanly. How … say it with me … convenient.

So, What’s the Catch?

Photograph: Louryn Strampe

I'm asking myself the same question. I guess Gardencup is on the expensive side. As one example, a cup packed full of apples costs $7, which is comparable to an entire bag of them at the grocery store. But my grocery store apples don't taste like these. I don't know what they put in the water over at Gardencup, but I swear it makes produce taste like it grew on a vine directly in front of my eyeballs before being delivered on a silver platter by a cute little cherub. I can't believe I'm saying this, but the $7 apples are worth it to me. On the days where I'm running on fumes and I want to cram my face full of processed nonsense, it's very handy to have a drawer full of better-for-me options that I don't have to work hard to eat.

Gardencup isn't going to be for everybody. It's not hot home-cooked meals for an entire family. But there are other, great meal kit subscriptions for those needs. If you live a busy life and you're sick of packing lunches, or you just want to take a break sometimes and not think about food, I can't recommend it enough.