Gobble Review

Gobble is a meal kit delivery service that offers pre-prepped ingredients and recipes that can be easily prepared in just 15 minutes. When Gobble first started in 2010, it was not successful delivering pre-cooked meals to consumers. The company's founder and CEO Ooshma Garg changed course and decided she wanted to meet the demand of busy working households with quality meals that save time prep time in the kitchen. Given her own takeout ordering habits and lack of healthy eating, and she wanted fresh home cooking without spending time in the kitchen. 

Gobble has established itself as a niche in the meal kit delivery industry due to its promise to give consumers a fresh and fast eating experience. Here’s a deep dive into Gobble to see how it scores overall.

Pricing: Several Options

Gobble offers two plans for either two or four people, with a lowest per-serving price of $11.99. Shipping is $6.99 per delivery, and you can order meals for either three, four, or five nights a week. Here's a brief price breakdown:

• 2 meals with 2 servings each: $16.99 per serving
• 3 meals with 2 servings each: $14.99 per serving
• 4 meals with 2 servings each: $12.99 per serving
• 5 meals with 2 servings each: $11.99 per serving
• 2 meals with 4 servings each: $12.99 per serving
• 3 meals with 4 servings each: $11.99 per serving
• 4 meals with 4 servings each: $11.99 per serving
• 5 meals with 4 servings each: $11.99 per serving

How It Works: Choose From 3 Plans

Gobble follows a simple signup process that centers around three basic protein options: classic, vegetarian, or lean & clean. Next, adjust your meal kit settings based on the number of nights per week and the number of people. You are then prompted to select your first delivery within a week, pick your meals, and finalize the order. Meals are delivered weekly and continuously unless you skip or cancel your subscription before the previous week's scheduled delivery.

Gobble meals are chef-designed and come with prepared fresh ingredients that are portioned out and require little chopping or measuring skills. These flavorful meal kits are expected to be easily prepared in 15 minutes. Gobble offers gluten-free, dairy-free, low-carb, and vegetarian meals but no other restrictive eating plans. Menus changes weekly and features a variety of different cuisines.

Choosing Meals: A Short Selection of Appetizing Meals

Gobble offers a somewhat limited weekly menu of dinners, salads, soups, sides, desserts, and breakfast options in addition to specialty kits for four. Compared to other meal kit delivery services, Gobble does not offer a lot of variety if someone desires a menu with dozens of options at any given time. 

At the time we tested Gobble, there were nine dinner options, three lean and clean dinners available, two salad options, two soups, three sides, three desserts, and three breakfast options and one specialty kit for four. Meals are automatically assigned based on your preferences in the sign-up process, but you can customize your meals in the delivery calendar to try out different cuisines. Add-ons on a typical meal include additional protein options, side dishes, breakfast, and desserts. The deadline for modifying any delivery including skipping an order is Wednesday at 11:59 p.m., the week prior to your delivery.

What We Made

Our Gobble selections included a specialty kit for four, a premium dinner, and chocolate chip cookie dough that we baked into cookies for dessert. Of those, we focused on these five meals for this review:

• Potato pierogi with butternut squash puree & sautéed kale
• Butter chicken with basmati rice & naan bread
• Scallop & shrimp pasta with lemon caper butter sauce
• Hawaiian loco moco plate with fried egg & toasted garlic rice
• Teriyaki pineapple salmon with vegetable fried rice and bok choy

Packaging: Excess Packaging Materials

The package arrives in a recyclable cardboard box with an insulated liner that encompasses the ingredients. The food is kept cool with the insulation and gel ice packs at the bottom, which the company says should keep until you unpack everything within 24 hours. The ingredients are grouped by recipe and are wrapped in plastic, with the meats packaged separately at the bottom. This aspect is important because if you order 10 or more meals, the organized can further cut down the preparation time.

That said, the amount of plastic felt excessive. In total, our Gobble order contained 59 pieces of packaging, including the delivery box. Of those 59 pieces, 48 were able to be recycled either curbside or at a special facility. The remaining 11 items had to be thrown in the trash.

Customer Support: Responsive and Helpful

Gobble provides a simple recipe card that is matched with each kit’s ingredients. Don’t worry if it gets damaged during delivery because you can access it in your email or your account in the delivery calendar for reference. 

We emailed customer support regarding the missing flour ingredient in our Hawaiian loco moco meal. They reached out promptly with a courteous response that included an apology and were able to refund $6 for the inconvenience. However, there was no information available online that indicates how much of a refund would be provided if other ingredients were missing. We used the chatbox to ask if any nutritional experts participate in the menu planning and nutrient analysis. Immediately, this generated links to company articles for possible answers. There were no specific details on experts used but there was information on what constitutes healthy meals for Gobble. There is also an option for calling during their hours Monday through Sunday and texting as well.

Nutrition: Transparent 

The weekly, semi-varied menu offers dietary choices that address regular diets, lean and clean options, and vegetarian meals. The lean and & clean meal highlights low carb and lean protein options that are under 600 calories. The classic dinners are consistently between 700 and 900 calories and utilize different ingredients along with various cuisines. Some meals are dairy-free, nut-free, or gluten-free, which can be viewed in the meal kits description and recipe card. Full nutrition information is available in the delivery calendar section of your account, along with ingredients and recipe details.  

The Cooking Process: Almost 15 Minutes

For starters, the recipes for the dinners for two were summarized into three steps and were simple to follow. Gobble does a good job of pre-prepping most ingredients such as dicing the chicken, and packaging the caramelized onion and sauces that simply need to be added in the cooking process. The only other ingredients we needed were salt, pepper, oil, and, as mentioned above, flour for the Hawaiian loco moco plate. In addition, the Hawaiian dish took more time than expected as there was chopping involved and the meat had to be molded into patties.

Otherwise, the cooking process was beginner level. The rice, for example, just needed to be microwaved for 90 seconds, stirred, and then put back in for 60 seconds. Cookware such as a saute pan, knife, cutting board, spatula, tongs, and a pasta pot and strainer were used.

Flavor, Freshness, and Quality: Fresh Ingredients

Gobble brought the gourmet flavors that we expected from this service for the majority of the meals tested. We were particularly impressed with how tasty the butter chicken was and felt a cultural connection to the Hawaiian loco moco plate because our tester was from Hawaii. It was a little on the sweeter side, but overall it was delicious. The potato pierogi with butternut squash puree and sautéed kale serving size seemed more appropriate for three or four people, rather than two. However, the flavor was tasty with each bite and the ingredients provided the expected flavors.

The shrimp and scallop pasta fell short on the bold savory flavors that we anticipated and could have benefited from additional seasoning like salt. The teriyaki pineapple salmon was also disappointing. The sauce was too salty and the bok choy lacked any flavor. We found no issues with the quality of the meats and the produce was fresh and in good shape. No sourcing information was provided, however.

Gobble is Good For

Gobble is ideal for someone with a busy lifestyle who wants a simple cooking experience with fresh pre-prepped food. It offers a sense of empowerment behind the stove without the need to chop and measure out ingredients. Gobble is also for people who may not have access to a variety of food locally, and it’s a good fit for those on non-restrictive diets who don’t have dietary concerns and want to try convenient home cooking. 

It’s important to mention that Gobble is not recommended for those with serious food allergies, food intolerance, or dietary restrictions, even though meals can be adjusted by excluding certain ingredients. It’s also not suitable for anyone on a strict budget.

Methodology

We ordered, cooked, and evaluated meals from 40 different meal delivery services to rate each one’s offerings, nutrition profiles, prices, sustainability, and, of course, flavors. We contacted the customer service teams at each of the companies, collected data, and rigorously reviewed each one.

Our Verywell Fit writers are all registered dietitians who relied on their research and its resulting data to inform their reviews.