Charleston Fit and Fresh

I started using this service for my son who is a student at MUSC. Where he wasn’t too complimentary of the food, I knew he would be getting a few healthy meals each week. What happened next was VERY DISAPPOINTING. The most critical week, the week before finals, they dropped the cooler off in the driveway instead of the front door. He rides his bike to school and around the city so he never saw the food. When I called to complain I was completely blown off. They were going on vacation for 2 weeks and would be closed. They could have cared less about standing behind their service. It’s now weeks later and I still have not heard a word from them about how they are going to resolve this. BEWARE!!! This is a very slipshot company to deal with. For a Mom now a thousand miles away from her son, it was very disheartening to know this type of company exists in my hometown of Charleston, SC. Charlestonians deserve much better than this.

I’ve ordered from the May and June menu from Charleston Fit and Fresh on five occasions and my experience with this company has earned them 3 stars (not terrible, not fantastic). Please read below for more details about my experience:
WEBSITE: Time-​consuming design, «glitchy», and overall subpar when compared with other food delivery websites (Veestro, DietToGo, Nutrisystem, QuickFoxes). Every time I ordered I had to enter my delivery address and credit card information (it is not saved despite the fact that I had an account). Placing an order involves scrolling through drop-​down menus for each entrée and for each side item that accompanies the entrée. There are no descriptions of the food on the ordering page; the only way to see the descriptions while ordering was to open up another page on my web browser. During the process of entering items, if a glitch occurred I had to start from scratch and enter my entire order over again. The website does not offer nutritional information for its sides.
DELIVERY: Delivery is reliable, on time, and the food always arrives cold in reusable coolers. This is a major advantage compared to using non-​local food delivery services. Other programs send their products in a large Styrofoam cooler and since Charleston doesn’t have a recycling program for Styrofoam it can be quite the dilemma to figure out what to do with these coolers.
PRICING: 15 meals cost $ 140 on the «lifestyle» menu and this includes the price to have it delivered once a week. I feel that it is a reasonable price for the quality of ingredients they use in their meals.
FOOD: Sometimes great, sometimes not. The quality of the ingredients is top-​notch but the same doesn’t always hold true for the end product. Charleston Fit and Fresh does a really great job with vegetarian dishes (entrees, veggie sides, couscous, mixed fruit, yogurt, etc) with the exception of their avocado-​containing salads. The avocados always arrive browned. My favorite vegetarian dishes from their current menu have been the Summer Veggie Plate (non-​paleo) and vegetarian lasagna. Both are delicious! Their grilled fish entrees are usually pretty dry with a texture reminiscent of a pork chop. My husband’s experience with their other meat dishes has been so-​so. He has enjoyed some of the dishes and has been disappointed with others.
CUSTOMER SERVICE: Their customer service is mediocre but I wouldn’t say it is bad enough to discourage somebody from trying the service. I’ve reached out to them a couple times about some of the problems mentioned in this review (e.g. glitchy website, avocados) and my experience wasn’t aligned with my expectations. Also, they are inconsistent about responding to emails– sometimes they didn’t respond at all and other times they responded within a few hours. Calling isn’t better as they are difficult to reach and sometimes their voicemail is full.
BAG DEPOSIT: I emailed them twice over the course of 4 days to request that my $ 35 bag deposit be refunded. They failed to respond to either email. The $ 35 fee was refunded to my bank account 5 days after I made my initial request.
CONCLUSION: This company is lacking in some measures, but what they do well, they do really well. The quality of their ingredients is superior to the other programs I’ve tried (Nutrisystem, Diet to Go) and the best dishes I’ve had from food delivery programs have been from Charleston Fit and Fresh. However, other program’s end product and customer service met my expectations more frequently.