As a former reviewer of services like HelloFresh and Chef’s Plate, I thought I would share the less-than-impressive experience I had with Factor, a new competitor in this space.
Factor is a meal delivery service acquired by HelloFresh in 2020. Rather than delivering ingredients for meals like many other meal delivery services, Factor delivers microwaveable meals, with the promise that the meals are never frozen. The appeal is that Factor users don’t need to spend time cooking meals and cleaning up afterwards.
In this story, I’m going to talk about some fulfillment issues and then do some rudimentary cost analysis, ultimately showing that Factor isn’t really worth it.
Fulfillment issues
First, I’ll share a timeline of my experience with Factor. Much of this information is anecdotal, but I think it speaks to a possible underlying problem with Factor’s fulfillment capabilities.
Week 1:
My credit card gets declined, so no box arrives. The same credit card was perfectly useable at other online stores, so I assume this is just a growing pain on Factor’s part, and I give Factor the benefit of the doubt.
Week 2:
Well before the deadline to pay for week 2’s delivery, I change to a different credit card. I confirm, by chatting with a support agent, that I’m set for this week. I receive a confirmation email. I assume that the box will be delivered, but delivery day comes and goes, and I don’t receive a box. I reach out to support, and they tell me that my card was declined again, despite the lack of any email. I sign up with a new email out of frustration.
Week 3:
This week, my credit card finally gets charged:
Surely, this means a box will show up on delivery day right?
Nope. The delivery is scheduled for 8/1 according to the shipping company, delayed to 8/2 according to Factor, but it just never came. My roommate had previously used Factor without any issues, so it’s not like it was a geolocation issue. I’m adamant that Factor just has problems fulfilling orders. I contact support, and they can’t refund the $73 USD I paid, so they just give me that in store credit to my account. Of course, the credit can’t be used while a discount is active, and I’m only using Factor for the discounted prices, so I’m down $73 with no explanation.
Week 4:
Finally, a box arrives. It took 4 tries, but it finally came. Of course, I still have something to complain about. Factor’s signup discounts are front-loaded, so that you get the most discount on the first week and gradually pay more in subsequent weeks. Since I had paid for the previous week without getting a box, I had expended the biggest discount, while also getting that smaller amount as store credit. For this week, I paid $110 USD for 10 meals.
Still, I finally had my hands on a box, so it was time to judge the food itself.
The Actual Food
After all the fulfillment problems, I was very hopeful that Factor would be the product it promised to be. In my opinion, the food is actually decent. The two main things to know are that:
- The food is tasty: the meat always had some sauce which could be mixed with the vegetables/other carbs to make a pretty meal. The vegetables on their own were usually pretty disappointing, so the sauce definitely carries here. HelloFresh meals are still much tastier, but Factor definitely beats frozen meals from the supermarket.
- The portions are small: meals were usually between 400–700 calories which is not really enough for my dinner. This the biggest reason I wouldn’t use Factor going forward.
For fun, I did a calorie per dollar analysis of HelloFresh and Factor. For the currently available Factor meals, I calculated an average of 561.9 calories per meal:
Here’s the full distribution, if you’re interested:
A full box has 10 meals and costs $135 with shipping included, giving a calorie-to-dollar ratio of 41.6 calories/dollar. For every dollar spent, you get 41.6 calories from Factor.
Doing a similar analysis for HelloFresh, I found that the average calorie count per meal was 769.1, with this distribution:
With 8 meals in a box and a cost of $89.31 for the box, this gives a calorie-to-dollar ratio of 68.9 calories/dollar. From a calories-per-dollar-spent perspective, HelloFresh is over 1.6x better than Factor!
As a consumer then, you have to decide if you value the money more or the time saved from not having to cook and do dishes. The same tradeoff has to be considered for using a service like HelloFresh, which remove the need to go grocery shopping and plan out meals, but Factor takes this tradeoff to the next level. I found the convenience of Factor to be worth the money while my discount was still active, but I cancelled when my discount ran out. Normally, I would suggest using the discount to try out a service like Factor, but the shipping issues left a pretty bad taste in my mouth, and personally think it’s better to wait for this company to mature before giving them a shot.
If after hearing me bash Factor for 5 minutes, you still want to try it out, you can use my referral link. I hope your experience is better than mine!
