Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
I've been a customer of Imperfect Foods since 2020. Every Monday I get a box of produce, protein, and pantry staples delivered to my front door, and, the bottom line is that overall Imperfect Foods does make my life and my meal prep cooking easier. But, let's just say that Imperfect Foods is... not perfect. If you're considering signing up for Imperfect Foods or looking for an honest, real review of this food delivery service, look no further.
You Can't Choose Your Grocery Delivery Day with Imperfect Foods.
Imperfect Foods will assign you a grocery delivery day based on their delivery schedule and your zip code. For us, that means that we get our box of groceries on Mondays. We had to change our meal prep cooking schedule around this Monday delivery day, and now my husband will make his meal prep meal after he comes home from work on Monday nights. Neither of us have traditional 9-5 work schedules, so we were able to make our meal prepping work around their designated delivery day. I can imagine for the majority of people getting their grocery list together, making a trip to the supermarket, and doing the actual meal prep cooking happens over the weekend, which with Imperfect Foods that likely won't be able to happen.
If you want to do your cooking over the weekend but you still want to give Imperfect Foods a try, I would recommend stocking your Imperfect cart with ingredients that you'll need for your second or third meal prep recipe of the week. That way, your ingredients will arrive to you fresh. You can also use Imperfect Foods to restock your fridge or pantry with those items that you run out of mid-week (like almond milk, eggs, bread, etc.) to avoid making multiple trips to the grocery store.
There's a $5 Delivery Fee for Orders Under $60.
This wasn't a make or break fee for us and our budget, but it's important to know up front. Some weeks I'm tempted to add way more to our Imperfect Foods cart just to make it over the $60 threshold to get our groceries "for free." Some weeks I feel like a dummy only getting 3 or 4 items in my box and paying a delivery fee for them. All things considered, I think the temptation of going to a grocery store and adding extra items to my cart will cost me way more than reaching the $60 Imperfect Foods bill or paying the $5 delivery fee. And at least for me, the convenience of not having to run the errand of getting groceries is totally worth it.
There Can Be Pretty Wide Window on The Imperfect Foods Delivery Time.
More often than not, our Imperfect Box gets delivered between 10 am - 3 pm. The account holder will get a text when the delivery driver is on their way, and this text comes through 1-3 hours ahead of time. There have been days that our box has been delivered a few hours before this window, and there have been a couple of days that our box is delivered way later, like at 8 pm. This does take flexibility on the recipient's end to receive and unpack your grocery delivery. There are times that our Imperfect Foods box hasn't arrived, and I have to head out to work. There have been a few rare days where my husband comes home from work in the early afternoon ready to start meal prepping and our delivery hasn't arrived. The good thing is Imperfect Foods does an awesome job of packing groceries in a recyclable insulated bag with recyclable ice packs, so even if you aren't home to receive your groceries, your ingredients will stay cold.
You May Not Get Your Weekly Grocery Delivery At All.
This is rare, but it still happens. Totally understandably, we weren't able to get our Imperfect Foods delivery during the wild winter polar vortex that hit Texas hard in February 2021. This is no fault of Imperfect's, but because we meal prep week by week and only buy what we need for our recipes, we were kinda fucked for that winter storm because we didn't get our box of groceries. At the time that I'm writing this, the Imperfect Foods warehouse in Austin is going through some changes with their inventory system, and last week we got our delivery two days late and only received about half of the original order, and this week our delivery was outright cancelled for the week. We've built our whole meal prep cooking schedule based on getting our ingredients on Monday, and if that doesn't happen, our week of cooking is totally thrown off. While I appreciate that Imperfect is trying to make it right, their offer of a $5 credit each week for this inconvenience doesn't cut it for me needing to scramble to figure out what to eat and make two extra trips to the grocery store.
Items May Be Sold Out Fast.
Our window to shop for Imperfect groceries opens at 3pm on Thursdays and closes at noon on Saturdays. If you want an ingredient that's in high demand, like sweet potatoes or green beans the week of Thanksgiving or hot dogs and buns the week of 4th of July, you may not be able to add the item to cart fast enough and it may be sold out. If you're able to swing it, try to do your shopping as soon as your shopping window opens!
You Might Not Get All of the Items in Your Order.
Similarly, there are times that the warehouse doesn't have enough of an ingredient, and you may find out the day before your delivery that you're going to be missing some items in your order. FYI, the missing items will be refunded to the credit card you have on file. If you're using Imperfect Foods to meal prep like us, each ingredient on your grocery list is crucial. Since going to the grocery store feels like a massive chore for me most days, if this happens I'll usually wing it and figure out a way to substitute the missing items in our recipe with what we have on hand.
Imperfect May Not Pack Your Box Perfectly.
There have been a few times that Imperfect Foods has accidentally given me more than what I ordered or straight up added an item that I didn't order (wooooo) and there have been times that my box is missing items that weren't listed as sold out in my confirmation email the day before. It's not the end of the world, but there have been some times I've needed to reach out to customer service to negotiate a refund for items I didn't receive. I've had a really positive experience with all of the customer service reps I've emailed with though.
Photo by The Creative Exchange on Unsplash
You're Not Saving Every Single Grocery Item From Impending Landfill Death.
If you're considering an Imperfect Foods subscription, then you're probably interested in reducing food waste. The cool thing about Imperfect is there is information about why an item is available on Imperfect. The reasons can include excess inventory, size variability (either a fruit or vegetable is too big or too small to be stocked on the shelves at a traditional grocery store), scarring (visible imperfections on produce or in a prepared ingredient like peanut butter or butternut squash soup), oddly shaped ends or pieces of protein like fish or bacon, or a prepared food uses upcycled ingredients. However, not every single item available to purchase is imperfect. It seems that Imperfect Foods has partnerships with certain brands and they offer their perfectly normal pantry staples to their customers. If this is really important to you, I still think it would be possible to buy a week's worth of groceries that are all imperfect.
You May Not Save Money on Non-Organic Produce.
Overall, prices on Imperfect Foods are pretty comparable or even cheaper than my regular grocery store, and this is especially true for organic produce. However, if you opt for conventional produce you may not be saving as much as you expect. Below are some side-by-side comparisons of the price of conventional produce from Imperfect vs. the price of conventional produce at my local H-E-B.
Grocery Item Availability Is Not Reliable.
There have been many weeks where my husband starts rattling off the ingredients he will need for the recipe he's selected for the week and several items are not available on Imperfect, which can be frustrating. Now that I know that items may change from week to week and season to season, I'll usually start by checking out what's available on Imperfect and then go back to finding a recipe to cut down on the back and forth of finding a potential recipe for the week. On the flip side, I've become hooked on items that I've discovered on Imperfect (like this vegan Not Milk Whole Milk) that my local grocery store doesn't carry that aren't consistently available through Imperfect.
You Can't Take Advantage of Credit Card Bonuses or Points.
We have two credit cards that we primarily use to take advantage of points and bonuses for our highest spending categories: The Chase Sapphire Preferred to get double points on restaurants and travel, and the American Express Blue Cash Preferred Card so we can get 6% cash back on our groceries. The fine print of the AMEX grocery store cash back explains that merchants have to be in the supermarket category to be applied, so stores like Walmart or Target and services like Imperfect Foods don't count as a supermarket. This means that we're not able to take full advantage of their cash back option, which sucks because we do have an annual fee for that card.
With all of this to say, I'm still a weekly customer of Imperfect Foods. I have become reliant on their items and the ease of having my groceries delivered to me. It is now a part of our weekly meal prepping routine to put our order in on Thursday nights and get a delivery on Mondays. They're not perfect, but hey, neither am I. At the end of the day, they are a business with a mission that I'm on board with and I'm willing to practice some patience and flexibility in exchange for a service that makes my life easier.
What do you think? Are you still thinking about starting an account with Imperfect Foods? Is there another grocery delivery service that sounds like a better option for you? Let me know what you think in the comments below.
This blog is not sponsored by Imperfect Foods, but it's where I get a lot of my groceries. Getting a box of Imperfect Foods delivered to my door has been unbelievably helpful during the pandemic when my energy to go to a grocery store has been at an all-time low.
If you want to give it a try, use my referral link to get $20 off your first 4 boxes of groceries (that's $80 off total). This is my personal referral link as a customer of theirs.
If groceries is one of your biggest spending categories like it is ours, look into getting the American Express Blue Cash Preferred Card. It'll give you 6% cash back on trips to the grocery store, which ends up saving us about $265 every year after we pay the annual credit card membership fee.
Personal finance is...personal... but if it seems like a good fit for you, use my referral link to get a $300 cash back bonus. This is my personal referral link as an AMEX cardholder, they're not a sponsor or affiliate of Imperfect Meal Prep.
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