About CookUnity
CookUnity offers restaurant-quality meals in a convenient subscription model. The service connects experienced chefs with consumers and serves high-quality dishes at an affordable price.
The meals are fully prepared and packaged in recyclable and compostable materials. CookUnity chefs use local, sustainable, and organic ingredients. After preparing creative dishes in the service’s certified kitchens, they are delivered directly to your home.
The first of its kind, the service has attracted a lot of attention due to its rapidly growing business and has been featured in The New Yorker, Tech Crunch, and CNet. To date, CookUnity has gained 34,000 followers on Instagram.
Are you looking for something a little more upscale than your average delivery service? Then this service might be just right for you. To be sure, we invite you to read this CookUnity review. Here, we’ll give you an overview of the company and how its service works, show you customer feedback, and much more to help you make your final decision.
Overview of CookUnity
Everyone dreams of having a personal chef, but few can afford one. CookUnity acts as a kind of marketplace, offering a wide selection of high-quality dishes prepared by chefs found in Michelin-starred restaurants and popular eateries—only at a much lower price than a private chef.
CookUnity was founded in 2015 by Mateo Marietti, who came up with the idea after realizing that there was a limited selection of food delivery services on the market. It seemed that customers always had to choose between low prices and sufficient variety, and although all the options were convenient, none of them were exceptional.
Want to learn more about how the service works? We’ll get to that next. But first, this CookUnity review will highlight some pros and cons.
Pros
- Over 300 recipes per week
- Offers a variety of meals, including vegan, keto-friendly, and low-calorie meals (under 600 calories)
- Uses recyclable and compostable packaging
- Pause, skip, or cancel anytime
- 40% discount for new members
- You don’t have to be home to receive your order
- Free shipping
Cons
- Only delivers to certain locations in the US
This service delivers complex-tasting meals, but makes the process really easy for customers. Learn everything you need to know in the next section of this CookUnity review.
Why Choose CookUnity?
CookUnity is the first meal delivery service that connects top chefs with hungry customers via a subscription platform. The taste of first-class dishes prepared by experienced professionals is far superior to that of an average meal delivery service, which is appreciated but simply cannot compete.
CookUnity not only serves high-quality food, but also sources its ingredients from local, sustainable, or organic farms and packages its meals in compostable, recycled, and reusable containers.
CookUnity Food Review
The folks at CookUnity believe in striking the perfect balance between nutritional value and taste in a dish. With a diverse team of chefs, the service offers over 300 dishes every week, ranging from vegan and keto to simply delicious.
Below, we’ve listed a few menu options that caught our eye while browsing and that we think reflect the brand’s incredible variety.
Roasted Butternut Squash Tacos
By Chef Ruben Garcia
Light yet full of intense flavors, the creaminess and sweetness of the pumpkin contrasts with crisp cabbage salad, hearty black beans, and the Mexican flair of guacamole. Vegan and gluten-free, this dish is a great choice for meatless Mondays or a Friday night dinner with friends—don’t forget the margaritas!
For our health-conscious friends: each serving of this delicious dish contains 580 calories. That includes an impressive 24 g of protein and 21 g of fiber!
Red Wine Braised Short Ribs
By chefs Larry and Marc Forgione
This simple dish with its rich flavor is a bestseller at the renowned New York restaurant “An American Place.” The slow-braised, tender ribs are served with sweet potato purée and bacon Brussels sprouts—the perfect meal for a romantic dinner for two.
Each serving of this high-fat, delicious dish has 750 calories.
Glazed Sheet Pan Chicken
By Chef Andres Mendez
These juicy chicken thighs are roasted to perfection and glazed with a rich brown sugar and date sauce. They are served on butternut squash and Granny Smith apples coated with a sweet and savory mixture of cinnamon, sugar, ground black pepper, and Dijon mustard.
This paleo-friendly dish has 850 calories. And the best part? It delivers an amazing 48 g of protein.
Who Is CookUnity For?
This service offers stronger, more intense flavors than your average delivery service, making it a great choice for anyone who enjoys more sophisticated tastes.
The meals are all pre-cooked, so all you have to do is heat them up and eat. This makes these dishes perfect for busy adults or simply anyone who wants to enjoy a delicious, high-quality meal a few times a week.
However, we should note that there aren’t many kid-friendly options on the menu. While we did spot a crispy chicken tender dish and a turkey burger, overall, the service caters more to adults.
CookUnity: What Do Customers Think?
Technically speaking, CookUnity works like ordering from your favorite restaurant, except that the dishes are cheaper, you have a wider selection, and you can order food from several different chefs at the same time. It’s actually a pretty good concept, but we need a little feedback to get an idea of the taste, quality, and portion size of the dishes.
In this section of our CookUnity review, you’ll find a selection of comments and reviews that we’ve compiled from various websites on the internet. To start with, we’ve compiled several dishes from this week, their ratings and reviews, and sorted them into a neat little list below:
- Chicken thighs with mushroom crust: average 4.1/5 stars from 190 reviews
- Pork ribs in red wine: average rating of 4.5/5 stars from 1,393 reviews
- Tacos with roasted butternut squash: average rating of 4.1/5 stars from 542 reviews
- Moroccan chickpea tagine: average rating of 4.4/5 stars from 723 reviews
- Salmon and ginger cakes: average rating of 4.4/5 stars from 806 reviews
We decided to take a closer look at the ribs in red wine sauce, as they come from chefs who run a fairly upscale restaurant.
The comments were overwhelmingly positive, with customers praising the “great” size of the ribs. One CookUnity review, which mentioned the taste of the entire dish, said: “The sweet potato soufflé had a great texture and taste, the Brussels sprouts were tender and well seasoned, and it came with Kronprinz short ribs.”
It’s really cool that the service offers a mix of dishes, including high-end ones like this. But they’re offered at the same price as simpler dishes like vegan chili.
Hoping to learn more about the quality and taste of a variety of the service’s dishes, we looked at a CookUnity review on Foodbox HQ, which gave it 4.7/5 stars.
Regarding quality, the review states: “CookUnity’s dishes tend to be higher quality than many other ready-made meals I’ve tried in the past. These aren’t simple meat and vegetable dishes. They have something special that sets them apart from others.
Regarding taste, it continues: “When you give them a try, you can taste the difference. Whatever it is, these meals are among the most delicious we’ve ever had from a meal delivery service.
Is CookUnity Worth It?
If you’re looking for something higher quality than your average meal delivery service, CookUnity might be just the thing for you. The meals are prepared by real chefs, many of whom are highly experienced and own their own restaurants. The meals you receive are equivalent to those from your favorite restaurant, except that you have to heat them up yourself.
You can set your preferences, pause if needed, and change your order at any time, giving you complete control over what you eat and how often. As for the price, you can expect to pay the cost of a simple takeout meal. All in all, we think CookUnity is absolutely worth the money.
Where to Buy CookUnity
This service is a kind of online marketplace that connects real chefs with customers throughout the United States. Access is easy via CookUnity.com.
FAQ
Who founded CookUnity?
Mateo Marietti founded CookUnity.
Does CookUnity provide nutritional information?
Yes! The company is very transparent about the ingredients in each dish. When you select your recipe for the week, you can see all the ingredients in the dish, as well as its complete nutritional profile (calories, fat, carbohydrates, etc.) and helpful tags such as “high fat” or “low carb” to help you make your selection.
When your food is delivered, it is packaged in individual containers with calorie information and a QR code that allows you to access all this information again.
Is CookUnity organic?
CookUnity uses organic products whenever possible, but the team places an emphasis on sourcing products from local farmers, who may not all be organic.
Is CookUnity food considered healthy?
That depends on the recipe, but in most cases, the meals are fresh, local, and, when possible, organic, containing a balanced mix of high-quality proteins, vegetables, and grains. CookUnity also offers users the option to set dietary preferences, including keto, Whole 30, vegan, and under 600 calories.
What do I need to know before signing up for my weekly meal plan with CookUnity?
First of all, the service only delivers to certain locations in the US, but is working on expanding its coverage. It serves most of the southern and northeastern US. To find out if your location is covered, check the delivery map.
When you sign up for CookUnity, you’ll receive meals weekly, but you can pause or skip the service at any time if you need a little break. Otherwise, the number of meals you selected at the beginning of your plan will continue to be delivered to your door until you cancel your subscription.
Deliveries are made on the same day each week. So if your first order arrived on a Wednesday, you can expect your next meal to be delivered on the same day each week.
You have several delivery options that you can set in your account settings:
- Leave with your doorman
- Deliver to your doorstep
- Leave at your door (contactless)
Every week, 3–6 days before delivery, you will receive a text message from CookUnity reminding you to make any changes to your order. If you do not change your order or add any meals, the service will use the settings you specified when you registered to put together a menu for you.
How to Contact CookUnity
If you require further information that is not included in this CookUnity review, please contact the brand at:
- Email: support@cookunity.com
- Phone: +1 (347) 835-5020
