Splendid Spoon Review 2023: Clean + Vegan Prepared Meals

Splendid Spoon in a Nutshell

Splendid Spoon offers a range of nutritious plant-based meals, soups, and smoothies, all of which are gluten-free, non-GMO, and ready to eat. Its plans are designed to help you establish healthier eating habits. 

Pros

• No cooking required

• Vegan, gluten-free, and GMO-free ingredients

• Free shipping on all plans

• Special deal: Get $100 off your first 4 boxes of plant-based meals!

Cons

• A little expensive 

• Lacks hearty meals

• There’s only so much liquid food one can take

Splendid Spoon Is Ideal For

• Busy people in need of quick meals

• Those who want to eat healthier, especially for health reasons

• People who enjoy – or want to try – a plant-based diet 

Splendid Spoon Overview

Splendid Spoon’s mission is summed up nicely by its tagline: “We power your 9-5.” The vegan meal delivery service takes the work out of eating healthily by providing breakfasts, lunches, and light dinners that come ready to eat. If you’ve got a busy schedule, this is an ideal meal plan to keep you on track with eating clean and vegan, wherever you are.

However, Splendid Spoon is known for being expensive. I wanted to find out if it’s really as good as they say, and whether it’s worth that hefty price tag. 

How Splendid Spoon Works

Let’s walk through the signup process first, starting with how to choose a Splendid Spoon plan. There are five basic plans to choose from: Breakfast; Lunch; Breakfast + Lunch; Breakfast + Lunch + Reset; and Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner + Reset. 

I chose the Breakfast + Lunch + Reset plan.

You’ll then be asked to input some personal details to see when Splendid Spoon ships to you.

I was impressed to see an Allergies or Avoidances box at this point, too. It’s perhaps not the most extensive list, but kudos to Splendid Spoon for even including this option when its meals are already plant-based and gluten-free. Many other meal delivery services don’t.

The final step before choosing your meals is adding your payment information. Currently, Splendid Spoon only accepts credit cards, which always rubs me the wrong way.

I would have liked to see more payment options, such as PayPal, to make ordering as convenient as possible. Some meal delivery services, including Purple Carrot, get that. 

Splendid Spoon Menu

Splendid Spoon prides itself on its clean, nutritious, and tasty meals that are ready in five minutes or less. It has a strong focus on wellness and making healthy food accessible to even the most time-poor of Americans, all the while encouraging them to establish better eating habits. 

This is an example of what the most extensive plan offers per week:

If you think that you’ll want a heartier dish at dinnertime after a day of consuming liquid meals, you might want to check out the alternative meal delivery services I’ve suggested below. 

Splendid Spoon offers more than 65 meals, broken down into breakfast smoothies, soup and grain bowls, light soups for your “reset” day, and noodle bowls. There’s also a menu of shots, which provide a quick fix of vitamins and nutrients.

That sounds like a lot of choice – and it is – but keep in mind the options don’t change weekly. Still, I was excited to discover the menu because everything looked delicious.

I learned that the Reset is a designated day of the week when you allow your digestive system to take a break – which means eating only the five light soups.  

While the aim is to reset your gut and recharge your energy, the soups are said to be a great way to prevent spikes in blood sugar when doing so. Plus, the cooked and blended veggies allow for increased nutrient absorption.

You can filter Splendid Spoon’s menu by selecting tags such as Higher Protein, Higher Fiber, Lower Calorie, Lower Carb, and more. You can also filter by dietary needs, such as Lower Sodium and Blood Sugar Friendly, for example. 

If you’re looking for meals to fit into a keto diet, the Lower-Carb meals could be just the thing, as each item has less than 20g of carbs. 

The Lower-Calorie filter kind of seems redundant, as that’s almost everything on the menu! Everything in that category clocks in at less than 200 calories, so that’s super low. So although Splendid Spoon doesn’t specifically market itself as a weight loss program, it’s quite possible to use it in this way.

Here’s a quick recap of the pricing and dietary needs that Splendid Spoon accommodates:

Splendid Spoon Delivery

Splendid Spoon only delivers on Wednesdays and Fridays, regardless of your location. It also delivers to all 48 contiguous states, like most meal delivery services, to any residential or business address.

You won't receive an exact delivery time when you place your order, but your box will be well-insulated with dry ice to keep the contents fresh  – so open with care!

A cool thing about Splendid Spoon is that you don’t have to subscribe to a specific plan in order to try the meals. You can order an On-Demand Box where the meals are either picked for you, or you can mix and match 10 to 15 items that you’ve chosen yourself. This is completely commitment-free, too. 

Orders placed Monday to Wednesday will ship the next day, while orders placed Thursday through Sunday will ship on the following Monday. Once shipped, you’ll usually get your order in one to two days. 

Another win: you’ll enjoy free shipping with your Splendid Spoon orders. 

Splendid Spoon Unboxing

All the packaging that arrives in Splendid Spoon's box is recyclable, including the ClimaCell insulation, and any plastic used is BPA-free.

The individual items come wrapped in recyclable paper to keep things neat. The combination of the dry ice and the cardboard creates good insulation to keep the food and smoothies cool. 

The plastic containers for the soups and grain bowls, and the plastic bottles for the smoothies, should be super easy to recycle locally. Even the dry ice is easy to dispose of: you can just allow it to evaporate in a well-ventilated area – and that’s it.

It’s clear that Splendid Spoon cares deeply about its environmental impact, and it’s great to see that all the packaging is recyclable. Though it could cut down on its plastic use to make it even more eco-friendly.

Favorite Splendid Spoon Meals

When browsing the menu, I particularly liked the sound of the Mint Chip Smoothie with Cacao Nibs and Almond Butter. I mean, who would say no to eating mint choc chip ice cream for breakfast?

The smoothie flavors are really varied – everything from Chocolate Cherry to Coffee Frappé, and antioxidant-packed Matcha varieties, too.  

When it came to choosing the Light Soups, I loved the looks of the Pumpkin Pear Bisque. The autumnal flavor combination – pumpkins, pears, nutmeg, and cinnamon – sounds both yummy and filling, yet light. The perfect snack for a cozy day.

The Cumin Sweet Potato soup is also my kind of thing – filling without being too heavy. 

As for the mains –  what caught my eye was the Cauliflower Tikka, made with cashews and turmeric, for a healthy twist on my favorite Indian food. 

If you’re worried about the meals lacking texture or bite, you needn’t. You’ll find plenty of veggie buddha-style bowls packed with wild rice, chickpeas, beans, or grains. Look out for dishes like the Moroccan Spiced Buckwheat Bowl with Butternut Squash and Broccoli, or the Brown Rice Taco Bowl with Black Beans and Tomato Salsa. 

Splendid Spoon Customer Service

Splendid Spoon has an in-depth FAQ section, complete with subtopics and a search bar. There’s also a self-service support center, with shortcuts to all the important actions you may want to complete, from pausing your subscription to changing your billing info.

The customer support team is available Monday to Friday, 9 am to 9 pm EST, or 9 am to 6 pm on weekends. You can reach them by emailing via an online contact form, and the expected time for a reply is two hours.

The only other option is to write to the team on Facebook Messenger, where they typically respond within an hour.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed by the lack of support channels. Luckily, if you need to pause or cancel your order for whatever reason, it’s extremely simple to do so. You can read about it in this short blog post.

Splendid Spoon Prices

As a vegan, gluten-free, and non-GMO meal delivery service, I was expecting Splendid Spoon to be ridiculously expensive. After all, most specialty meal programs that use premium ingredients (my colleague wrote an extensive review of Sunbasket, which is an exemplary service when it comes to responsibly-sourced ingredients) are usually at the pricier end of the spectrum.

It turns out, though, that two of the plans are on par with some other specialty meal delivery services out there. The Breakfast + Lunch + Reset plan works out to be $9 per portion, while the plan that also includes dinner averages at $9.25 per portion.

On the other hand, the Lunch and Breakfast plans are pretty pricey at $13 per meal. It’s a little unclear why these meals cost so much, but alongside premium ingredients, it could have something to do with the “free” shipping. 

Purple Carrot is another vegan meal delivery service that offers free shipping, as described in our latest Purple Carrot review. Similarly, though, prices can range from $6.50 to $11.99 per serving, so perhaps shipping is taken into account when it comes to working out costs.

Alternatives to Splendid Spoon

Not sold yet? Here are some alternatives to Splendid Spoon that might be more up your alley:

Sunbasket offers a range of meal plans for different dietary needs, including Diabetes-Friendly, Carb-Conscious, and Paleo. And though it doesn’t offer a dedicated vegan plan, many of its meal kits and prepared meals are plant-based. 

Veestro provides you with a boatload of frozen vegan ready meals that you can order a la carte. Many of the meals are twists on popular dishes that feature plant-based meat alternatives. You can also sign up to the company’s Weight Loss plan for three meals a day.

If you’re not so much into meat alternatives, Purple Carrot focuses on veggies and plant-based protein sources for its tasty meal kits and prepared dishes. 

Bottom Line

Splendid Spoon is certainly not for everyone. Unless you’re on a real health kick, it can be tough to get excited about a diet that includes a lot of smoothies and soups. But taking into account the menu variety and quality ingredients, it does a pretty good job at offering appealing, colorful, and nutritious meals.

You might think $9 to $13 is expensive for a smoothie or soup, and you're right. But this is not about value for money – it’s about convenience. 

Everything on the menu is clean, vegan, and designed to make you feel good. I think it’s worth paying the price for Splendid Spoon if it means a healthier lifestyle overall.

FAQ

How much does Splendid Spoon cost?

Splendid Spoon prices vary based on the plan you choose. You could pay $65 per week for just breakfast or lunch, but that works out at $13 per serving. The best value plan is the Breakfast + Lunch + Reset, which works out at $6.50 per serving. 

If you want Splendid Spoon to take care of all your daily meals, the Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner + Reset plan costs $185 per week, or $9.25 per serving. 

Is Splendid Spoon healthy?

Yes! Splendid Spoon offers purely plant-based, non-GMO, and gluten-free meals. The company says its focus is on making healthy eating easier and helping people to create better eating habits.

Not only that, a plant-based diet will encourage better sleep, increased energy, stress reduction, a healthy glow, and even weight loss in some cases.

Check out our list of the healthiest meal delivery services today for more inspo.

What are the best alternatives to Splendid Spoon?

If smoothies and soups aren’t your thing, there are plenty of great alternatives. Sunbasket is certified organic and offers paleo, gluten-free and carb-conscious plans, among others.

If you’re strictly vegan and want the ultimate in convenience, Veestro has a huge selection of vegan meals that arrive frozen and ready to heat and eat.

Purple Carrot also offers prepared vegan meals as well as easy meal kits that focus on veggies as the main ingredient.

How do you cancel your Splendid Spoon subscription?

Splendid Spoon allows you to cancel your plan directly from your account. All you need to do is log in, click Edit Plan then scroll down to Cancel Your Plan. You do need to give your reason for canceling, but in just a few clicks you’re done. 

Just make sure you cancel ahead of time to avoid extra charges. Check out our short blog on how to cancel Splendid Spoon for more information.