Splendid Spoon Review

Splendid Spoon is a meal delivery service that offers smoothies, soups, grain bowls, and a few other options shipped to 48 states.

While some meal delivery services aim to deliver raw ingredients for a recipe that you then prepare yourself, others provide more complete meals that you just reheat (or some that you can eat cold). Splendid Spoon is in the latter camp, offering only meals that are quick to reheat—and some that don’t need to be reheated at all. We tested a variety of meals from Splendid Spoon. Read on to learn more about our experience.

Learn More: Read Our Full Methodology

How It Works: Choose From 6 Plans

Step one when signing up with Splendid Spoon is to choose from one of five different box sizes: Breakfast; Lunch; Breakfast + Lunch; Breakfast + Lunch + Dinner; or On-Demand Box. These plans range in price from $82.92 for seven smoothies to $191.79 for a delivery of 21 meals.

We picked the promotional Breakfast + Lunch + Reset option to get a wide range of choices, and then moved on to select the meals.

Choosing Meals: Wide Variety of Smoothies and Soups

While the meals do rotate some, they focus on smoothies, soups, and grain bowls. When we selected our meals, we were able to choose from 18 smoothie options, seven light soups, and 25 different grain bowls. We picked mainly soups and smoothies, which was in line with the plan we selected.

Splendid Spoon will recommend options if you want to simplify the selection process. You can always change your meals up until the weekly deadline, but if you are overwhelmed with the options or just want to try new things, the company will send you a grab bag of smoothies and soups.

What We Made

Splendid Spoon meals do not require much in the way of cooking. The most you have to do is reheat some soup, which can be done in the microwave or on the stovetop. Here's what we ordered:

Smoothies:

• Cacao almond
• Blackberry basil
• Green matcha
• Power greens
• Raspberry cacao

Soups

• Red lentil dal
• Green tomatillo chili
• Lentil and kale
• Kimchi fried quinoa
• Cauliflower tikka
• Cauliflower potato
• Butternut turmeric
• Garden minestrone

Support Materials: Built Into the Packaging

The reheating instructions are on the packaging for anything that needs to be reheated. It’s simple and straightforward. The Splendid Spoon website also has reheating instructions for anything that needs it, and includes directions for doing so using a microwave, stovetop, or simply defrosting.

Other than that, nothing else was included in the packaging—which was a breath of fresh air, given the amount of material some other meal delivery services include in their boxes.

Packaging: Smart and Minimal

The box we received seemed small given that we knew were receiving multiple smoothies and soups. The packaging is smartly designed though, and once you open the box, you’ll find a recyclable liner, cooler packs, and the smoothies and soups stacked nicely inside.

The soups are packaged in microwave-safe plastic containers, but you can also pour them into pots to reheat on the stove. The containers are recyclable. The smoothies come in sleek plastic bottles, and you can drink from them after shaking. Another option is to transfer the smoothie to a blender to make it even smoother before consuming. Like the plastic containers, these bottles are recyclable.

Our Splendid Spoon shipment included a total of 47 individual pieces of packaging. Of those 47 pieces, 16 were eligible for curbside recycling and 20 could be recycled at a specialty facility. The remaining 11 pieces, however, had to be thrown in the trash.

The Cooking Process: Very Minimal

The cooking process is very minimal for Splendid Spoon meals. For the soups, reheating them on the stovetop is a slightly better option than the microwave, just so they are reheated gently. We also tested the soups in the microwave and didn’t notice much of a difference. This makes Splendid Spoon soups a really nice option for workday lunches.

You can drink the smoothies from their containers, but we found this to be less than ideal. The smoothies separate quite a bit during shipping, especially if you let them sit in the fridge for a few days before drinking. While you can shake them up, it’s hard to completely recombine the ingredients. We found that reblending the smoothies was the best way to enjoy them.

Flavor, Freshness, and Quality: Unique Recipes

We found all the soups and smoothies to have high-quality ingredients. Nothing seemed off or even close to spoiling. We would have felt comfortable freezing some of the soups for months and coming back to them later. All the ingredients seemed truly top-notch.

The soups had good, solid recipes and flavors, but the smoothie varieties were more unique and interesting. While they are on the pricey side, they are combinations that you won’t be able to find in stores and would be hard-pressed to recreate at home without spending a lot of money on ingredients.

We reheated the creamy, butternut turmeric soup on the stove. It had a nice texture and wonderful, deeply spiced turmeric flavors. The butternut squash also had a sweetness to it that was really nice. To change it up, we opted to reheat the Moroccan lentil stew in the microwave. It reheated perfectly, although we did stir occasionally. The lentils had a meaty texture to them and we found this stew to be very filling.

As for the smoothies, the raspberry cacao hit a major home run for us. The flavor was balanced perfectly between the raspberry and cacao, and it wasn't overly sweet. We also really enjoyed the cacao almond smoothie, which was thick and filling. The power greens smoothie had some nice fruit flavors, although the consistency was more like a juice than a smoothie. We didn't love the blackberry basil smoothie, as it contained pea protein which overwhelmed the other flavors, and the green matcha smoothie was a bit on the bland side.

Nutritional Value: Very Healthy

Splendid Spoon caters to a health-conscious audience and it shows in the recipes and the way the food is packaged. Both the soups and smoothies have nutritional information printed on the packaging, and the same information is available on the company's website. The recipes focus on higher-protein meals with low calorie counts. The raspberry cacao smoothie, for example, has 310 calories in the entire bottle (two servings) but also features 12g of protein.

In general, the soups have fewer calories. The entire container of lentil stew, for example, has only 340 calories, plus 12g of protein and 16g of fat.

Splendid Spoon also offers a range of lighter soups that it brands as its “reset” products, which are intended to be consumed in a day to work as a natural cleanse.

Splendid Spoon Is Good For

A health-conscious eater who is short of time, but has a large food budget may appreciate what Splendid Spoon has to offer.

Splendid Spoon Is Not Good For

Budget-conscious eaters or people who eat meat may not find options they want at Splendid Spoon.

Add-ons: Nutritious Shots

Splendid Spoon only offers a few add-ons to their delivery options. These are branded nutrition shots that you can add to any order. The best deal for these seems to be the 7-day Reset Shot Bundle, which includes seven detox shots and seven digestion shots for $58.75.

Customer Service: Quick to Respond

We wrote to the Splendid Spoon team with some questions regarding the smoothies. They all seemed a bit on the grainy side and had separated a lot during shipping. The customer service team responded via email in less than 2 hours and confirmed that because of the natural ingredients used, some separation is normal. They gave us the tip to reblend the smoothies with perhaps a splash of almond milk or ice.

You can also contact Splendid Spoon via Facebook Messenger.

Making Changes and Canceling: Couldn’t Be Easier

Splendid Spoon makes it very easy to make changes to your order up until the deadline when they need to package and ship your box. Just edit the meals in your delivery and switch out any of the smoothies or soups available.

You can also skip any delivery with the push of a single button, while changing your mind and un-skipping is just as easy. If you do decide to cancel, it’s also easy to do directly from your account profile.

Methodology

Our testers ordered from, cooked, and rated 40 different meal delivery services. We carefully scored each one based on meal selection, nutritional information, sustainability, and customer service, as well as the flavor, freshness, and quality of each meal and ingredient. Our Spruce Eats tester panel includes dietitians, chefs, and longtime food writers. The one thing they all have in common is their love and knowledge of food.