Dinnerly: Meal Kit for Pc

As a big fan of this app, and someone who discovered the app before the announcement, I am genuinely enjoying and loving this app. Finding recipes and making changes to boxes is simple. Now that generally offers eight options each month, it is easy and fun to scroll through the titles and photos of each meal. From there I can quickly check each recipe for specifics and decide if I do indeed want to swap out meals. Organic beef and chicken and pork is another great benefit. The quality of the ingredients, in general, is high. The ability to quickly see what will be needed and used for each recipe is appreciated. This app makes it convenient and loved service even more so. Make no mistake, this app meals are nothing super fancy. However, that means can re-purposed ingredients if I choose and nothing goes to waste. I may be this meal box’s greatest fan! And the fact that Marley Spoon also does Martha Stewart’s boxes makes me feel like I am her distant, distant, distant, very distant poorer cousin who eats well LOL!

I’ve enjoyed this service for about 6 months, averaging two boxes of three meals each per month. I find the meals tasty, the kids have largely enjoyed them, and the ingredients come simply packaged, fresh, and are quality. Only once out of that 6 month was there a missing ingredient. I find the boxes generally come late in the day, so I plan on starting that box for dinner the next day. I think the price of the box is frankly very competitive with groceries, and 4 servings per meal is enough for males ages 11, 14, and adult, usually (but not always) leaving leftovers. If you order more than three meals per box, there is a discount, increasing value. The service is easy to suspend week per week, although going from 4 servings to 2 servings is harder than it should be. Knocked off star for bad UX: No portrait views, which makes using a kitchen iPad hard. The 4th+ recipe is hard to find in the view for the week Step counter is much more prominent than the recipe itself Ingredient list (and final meal image) is separate page than recipe, so I find myself going back and forth for reference Ingredient quantities are intermittently listed in recipe Tl;dr the service is good, but the UX needs work. I expect it to get better in time, although it hasn’t shown any changes in 6 months, even ones that should be easy to implement like portrait view.

I was excited to see that this app has an app. Finally, I thought, I can just throw the recipe up on my iPad, prop it up, and no longer need to do all kinds of scrolling and unlocking my phone with dirty hands. But... nope, the number images between each recipe step are MASSIVE (...MASSIVE) and I still can only view one step at a time. Because, obviously, when I’m reading, it’s very important that I focus on the fact that the items towards the bottom come after the ones before them. Snark aside, it works well and looks nice, but that’s such a fundamental usability issue and missed opportunity that I’ll probably stick to my phone.

The food has been excellent so far and there are enough options to keep even a picky eater like myself happy. The portions are even great for two people and most meals don’t take that long to make (although I wouldn’t be upset if there were a few quicker options). The bad: most of the recipes are very hard to understand and might as well be Greek to someone not handy in the kitchen. Also, the app could be more user friendly. There needs to be an option to text/message the recipes without having to take pictures and send each step individually. It’s a huge pain in the rear.