Yumble Review

Yumble was created by a mom of three, Joanna Parker, who felt exhausted trying to plan and feed her family. To solve the problem, Yumble teams up with chefs to deliver kid-friendly meals directly to your door with a weekly subscription.

Yumble boxes are delivered each week, and every meal is in its own serving plate that you can reheat the meal in the microwave, although we found a few of the meals do better in the oven if you transfer them to a baking sheet. The meals Yumble sends are interesting and a bit different than the typical kid-friendly assortment of chicken nuggets and hot dogs. We tried several of Yumble's menu items and enlisted a tasting panel to help us rate the service.

Learn More: Read Our Full Methodology

How It Works: Streamlined Sign-up Process

When you first sign up for Yumble, you must decide how many meals you want per week. We found that the meals work best for quick lunches (maybe on the weekend) or for time-strapped weeknight dinners. Choose between four, six, eight, and 12 meals upon sign-up. Of course, the more you order, the lower the price per meal. If you choose the 12 meals per week, they cost $6.99 each.

Once you choose your number of meals, you can allow Yumble to send you the most popular dishes or scroll through the more than three dozen meals on offer. You could choose all the same meal if you have a particularly picky eater or change it up and choose all different meals.

Yumble then sets you on a delivery schedule and you receive your first box within a week or so, barring any shipping issues.

Choosing Meals: A Good Variety

Choosing meals from Yumble is a fun experience. There are some standards that kids typically like, but also some inventive dishes like a baked taco pocket. Yumble will change up your meals by default each week, but you can easily go into your account and adjust your meals to add ones you loved and delete ones you know will be a miss.

What We Made

• Chicken nuggets and super spirals: This gluten-free meal was easy to reheat in the microwave although the chicken nuggets did better if you took the time to put them in the oven to make them slightly crispy. That said, our tasting panel enjoyed them out of the microwave and they were really a good, quality nugget.
• BBQ chicken sandwich and superfood lunch: This was the only meal we tried that didn’t need to be reheated. The sandwich was intended to be served cold and was good. It was light on the sauce and not messy. While we thought the superfood chips served on the side were really wonderful and fun, the kids didn’t want anything to do with them, unfortunately. 
• Chicken pot pie pocket: This meal was a bit of a miss for us. Especially out of the microwave, the dough for the pie pocket was soggy and the filling seemed to be mostly gravy with a few shreds of chicken and veggies. It wasn't exactly the stuffed pocket in the photos shown on the website.
• Baked taco pocket: We had an issue with this one similar to the chicken pot pie pocket—the dough just didn't do well in the microwave.
• French toast & frittata: These little French toast nuggets had good flavor and didn’t need syrup on the side. The frittata tasted nice and everything in this plate reheated well in the microwave. It was one of the better meals our panel tried.

Support Materials: A Box of Fun

Yumble includes more than just the meals in each delivery. For starters, you'll get some reusable silverware. There is also a fun coloring book for kids, some stickers, and table questions that young readers can read to the family. The 6-year-old on our tasting panel had fun reading the questions to us as we tried some of the meals.

Packaging: Sturdy Paper Plates

The Yumble box arrives in recycled cardboard and the pieces of it are all recyclable, assuming you live in an area that can handle recycled plastics. Each meal comes packaged individually on a sturdy plate with a plastic wrap on top, and most came with a printed cardboard wrapper that described the meal with nutritional info. Assuming you are microwaving, you can reheat in the package it comes in and after you're finished eating, rinse the plate and recycle it.

The Cooking Process: The Microwave

These meals are clearly intended to be microwaved. That’s the only instruction that is given for reheating them, even though we found that some of the meals would benefit from a slower oven bake. Just pierce the plastic wrapper in a few spots to allow steam to escape and microwave the meals for anywhere from 45-90 seconds, depending on the item. We did find, however, that items with dough tended to get soggy with this heating method. However, Yumble's customer service team did tell us that some items could be reheated in the oven using oven-safe containers.

Flavor, Freshness, and Quality: No Issues

Once we got our Yumble box, everything was fine in terms of freshness. The included side veggies seemed to be approximately what you would expect from frozen vegetables (green beans, corn, etc.) in that they were quite plain with no seasoning or anything on them, but the meat in the chicken nuggets, pot pie pockets, and taco pockets all was seasoned well and of good quality.

The flavors of each plate were well thought out. The adults in the room thought the flavors were interesting, but the kid testers, however, leaned into the chicken nuggets and were unimpressed by many of the other plates we tried.

Nutritional Value: A Good Mix

Yumble offers balanced meals for children. Each plate includes a mix of protein, carbs, and healthy fats, with a serving of vegetables included. Most of the meals we tested had between 8g and 12g of protein. The calories in the meals all landed in the mid-200s. It’s worth noting that the pie pocket meals we tested, the chicken pot pie pocket and taco pocket, both had 4g of saturated fat.

Yumble Is Good For

A busy family who is struggling to find time for well-rounded meals for the kids and has a budget to support the subscription could find Yumble useful.

Yumble Is Not Good For

Families on a budget or families with particularly picky eaters or who have the time to put together even basic meals for kids may not get much out of Yumble.

Add-ons: None

Yumble doesn’t offer any add-ons to its base service, focusing solely on its meals.

Customer Service: Fast and Friendly

We interacted with the Yumble customer service team twice. There was a shipping delay with the first Yumble box we were sent, and the company reached out to us and said to discard the box when we received it because of spoilage concerns. We received a replacement box soon after.

The second time we contacted Yumble was to ask about different methods of reheating the meals. We received a response in less than an hour, which contained information on reheating the meals in the oven.

Making Changes and Canceling: Very Easy

Yumble makes it quite easy to change your meals before the cutoff date and you can even skip entire weeks, all on the website. You can cancel your account online as well.

The Competition: Yumble vs. Little Spoon

Yumble and Little Spoon are very similar. In our experience and testing, Yumble tends to offer slightly more chef-inspired meals while Little Spoon offers meals that look like foods that kids already recognize (tots, nuggets, etc.) There are other differences between the two services; for instance, the Little Spoon plates are completely washable and reusable, while the Yumble flatware needs to be discarded or recycled after use. In terms of price, Yumble's meals cost as low as $6.99 each, while Little Spoon's lowest price per meal is $5.99.

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.

The criteria we used to evaluate each company included:

• The ordering process
• Meal selection
• Packaging and support materials
• Recyclability
• The cooking process
• The flavor, freshness, and quality of each meal and ingredient
• Nutritional information
• Customer service