MealPal Review- one month trial

After a few months of an aggressive campaign via both email and fliers from MealPal, I decided to go ahead and try it out.

Why ?
My finances meant I needed to not spend between £5 and £10 every lunch time. I needed to check my expenses and reign in my spending.

The MealPal offer (there seems to be one every week), was to sign up to have 20 meals for just over £50. So this was the equivalent of spending around £2.60 every day for lunch.

How does it work?
Every day at 5pm, an email comes in to your inbox saying that the "Kitchen is now Open". When signing up, you enter your details and address and when the Kitchen is Open a list of participating restaurants for the next day will show up.

A key point here is that each restaurant will offer a dish for you to choose from. An example is on the latest  Wednesday, you could get a Patty & Bun Smokey Robinson Burger with a portion of chips. You then choose the 15 time slot you wish to pick it up and then collect it and EAT!

So my views on MealPal are below:

Pros:

• My offer worked out at less than £3 a lunch. Lunches in Covent Garden are usually 2 or 3 times this amount usually. So I managed to save a lot of money here.
• Options: Based in Covent Garden, there was about 15-20 and there were some faves (Patty & Bun), but also a lot of new restaurants that I would not have tried before.
• Convenient - the time slots and location worked really well and for the most part, the food was ready to collect and go.

​Cons:

• After two weeks, the menu is very similar, so not much variety
• Only one dish per restaurant (except for Rosa's Thai)
• Small portions, I got duped by Rossopomodorro, who gave me a pizza which was half the size. This felt a but underhand.

Overall, I would recommend MealPal to people on two pre-requisites. One, make sure you get a good offer. Ideally under £4 a meal. Secondly, make sure that you have at least 10 good options for lunch, otherwise, you will get bored of having the same things every two days.

MealPal offers you the chance to have both your favourite meals as well as new and never tried before food too. Give it a go. I am sure you will enjoy it.