Factor Meals Review: I Paid $14 a Meal and Couldn’t Get the Taste Out of My Mouth

I ordered Factor meals because the pitch is genuinely compelling: chef-crafted, dietitian-approved, ready-to-heat meals delivered to your door. No cooking, no prep, no cleanup. For a busy week, that sounds like money well spent.

It wasn’t.

I ordered six meals at the introductory price of $54.96 — which sounds reasonable until you realize the regular price for that same six-meal box jumps to $83.94. That’s $13.99 per meal. And after eating all six, I can tell you: not one of them was worth $13.99. A few of them weren’t worth eating at all.

Here’s my honest breakdown.

What Factor Promises vs. What Shows Up

Factor’s website is a masterclass in food photography. The meals look vibrant, restaurant-plated, and loaded with fresh ingredients. The Pomegranate Maple Chicken Grain Bowl with Quinoa, Garlic Walnuts & Goat Cheese is described as “bursting with textures and layers of flavor” — tricolor quinoa in rich chicken stock, herb-seasoned chicken, crumbled goat cheese, garlic-roasted walnuts, and a maple-miso dressing infused with pomegranate juice. The website photo looks like something a food stylist spent three hours arranging.

What I actually plated looked like a pile of brown quinoa mush with pale, rubbery chicken chunks drowning in what appeared to be dark gravy. The goat cheese had melted into the background. The walnuts had gone soft. Any visual resemblance to the website photo was gone.

That gap — between marketing and reality — is the story of Factor Meals in a single image.

The Meals I Ordered

I ordered six meals from Factor’s current menu:

• Pomegranate Maple Chicken Grain Bowl with Quinoa, Garlic Walnuts & Goat Cheese (High Protein, Fiber Filled)
• Parmesan & Sun-Dried Tomato Chicken Penne (Calorie Smart, Low Carb, High Protein)
• Chicken Shawarma Salad — Factor x Sakara collaboration (Calorie Smart, High Protein, Fiber Filled)
• Parmesan & Garlic Cream Shredded Beef (Calorie Smart, High Protein, Fiber Filled)
• Two additional meals
• Bonus: Chorizo Egg Bite (included free with the order)

I went in with an open mind. I came out reaching for gum.

The Taste Problem Is Real — And It’s Baked Into the Recipe

Let me be specific, because vague complaints don’t help anyone.

The seasoning on multiple meals was so aggressive and overpowering that I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth — not with gum, not with brushing my teeth. Whatever spice blend they’re using lands with all the subtlety of a freight train and then parks itself in your mouth for the rest of the evening. It’s not “bold flavor.” It’s a garlicky, artificial aftertaste that outlasts the meal itself by a few unpleasant hours.

The Pomegranate Maple Chicken Grain Bowl — the one that looked nothing like its website photo — came with a label specifically noting it should not be eaten without heating. I tried a bite cold anyway, partly out of curiosity, mostly as a reviewer. It was genuinely terrible. Not “well, it’s better warm” terrible. Just bad. And heated, as you can see from my photo versus theirs, it didn’t get much better looking.

Here’s the part Factor doesn’t put in the marketing copy: look at the ingredient list for that bowl and count the garlic entries. There’s granulated garlic, roasted garlic oil, and toasted garlic powder — three separate garlic-heavy ingredients layered into a single dish. Then add red miso paste and smoked black pepper on top. Factor’s own recipe explains exactly why I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth after brushing my teeth. It’s not bad luck or a bad batch. It’s the formula. There’s also xanthan gum listed — a thickener that, once microwaved, helps turn what should be a vibrant grain bowl into the brown sludge that showed up on my plate.

As for the heating instructions: I had to run the Thai-Style Peanut Chicken Grain Bowl for 2 minutes and 30 seconds — 30 seconds past Factor’s recommended 2-minute time — before the center was anything close to warm. Even then, the result looked nothing like what I ordered.

The Chorizo Egg Bite: A Special Kind of Bad

Factor included a free Chorizo Egg Bite with my order. I assume this is meant as a bonus, a taste of their breakfast lineup, a goodwill gesture.

It tasted like a sponge soaked in chorizo flavor concentrate. The texture was dense, wet, and rubbery in a way that suggested it had been microwaved into submission. The chorizo flavor wasn’t “oh, nice, a hint of spiced pork.” It was “someone spilled chorizo seasoning powder directly into this egg” — overwhelming from the first bite with nothing to balance it.

I would not eat this again if Factor paid me. That’s not hyperbole. That’s the review.

The Math: What $83.94 Actually Buys You

Let’s talk about the number that matters most: the full, non-promotional price you’ll pay after that first discounted box.

Factor 6-Meal Plan Pricing:

That $13.99 per meal — before shipping — is what this product actually costs when you’re a real subscriber, not a first-timer. Add the $13.99 shipping fee that kicks in after your first box, and you’re looking at $16.32 per meal for food you’re microwaving yourself.

For that same $83.94, I could eat extremely well across Northeast Ohio — at any number of independently owned restaurants where the food is prepared fresh, seasoned with actual intention, and plated to look like, well, food. That’s the comparison that kills me. The convenience promise of Factor only holds up if the food is good enough to justify the premium. When it’s not, you’ve just paid $14 for a mediocre microwave meal with a garlicky aftertaste that won’t quit.

Factor’s BBB Rating: Not a Surprise

Here’s something Factor doesn’t put in their ads: their Better Business Bureau rating is 1.14 out of 5 stars based on over 300 reviews.

The complaints aren’t just about taste. A recurring pattern in the reviews involves customers being charged after canceling — because, according to Factor, canceling your account and canceling a pending box are apparently two separate things. Multiple customers report being billed for shipments they believed they’d already canceled, with customer service refusing refunds.

One reviewer put it directly: “Its clearly a scam, because if I’ve just signed up and immediately cancel, I obviously don’t want to be charged $277 for a box.”

That billing structure is worth knowing before you enter your credit card number — which Factor requires before you can even see the full menu.

Who Factor Might Actually Work For

I want to be fair here. Factor isn’t universally terrible — the 90,000+ Trustpilot reviews skew mixed-to-positive for many users, particularly those who:

• Follow a specific diet (keto, low-carb, high-protein) and prioritize macros over taste
• Are extremely time-constrained and value the zero-prep convenience above everything else
• Use the promo pricing strategically and cancel before the regular rate kicks in
• Stick to their premium protein options (the filet and premium beef dishes get better reviews)

If macros are your primary metric and you don’t particularly care whether food tastes like it was prepared with any love, Factor delivers on the nutrition math. The meals are dietitian-approved, calorie-labeled, and protein-heavy by design.

But if you’re expecting something that tastes like a restaurant meal — which is exactly what the marketing implies — you’re going to be disappointed.

The Local Restaurant Argument

Here’s the honest case against Factor that I keep coming back to: Northeast Ohio has incredible restaurants.

For $13.99 to $16.32 per meal, you can eat very well at dozens of independent spots across Cleveland and the surrounding area. You get food prepared by actual cooks with real seasoning that doesn’t haunt you for hours, plated to look like the photo — because there is no photo, it’s just dinner — and you’re putting money directly into your community instead of a HelloFresh subsidiary.

Factor is owned by HelloFresh, a publicly traded company. When you pay $83.94 for six microwavable meals, that margin isn’t going to a local chef. It’s going to a corporate supply chain.

Northeast Ohio’s restaurant scene punches well above its weight. From hole-in-the-wall spots with $12 plates that would embarrass Factor’s best meal on taste alone, to mid-range sit-downs where $83 covers a full dinner for two with drinks — the options here make Factor’s value proposition even harder to defend.

I’m not saying every local restaurant is great. I’m saying that at Factor’s price point, you have real options — and those options don’t come with an aftertaste or a confusing cancellation policy.

Final Verdict

Factor Meals earns a 4/10 from me — and most of those points are for packaging and delivery reliability.

The food looks nothing like the website. The seasoning on multiple meals was so aggressive it lingered after brushing my teeth. The chorizo egg bite was an experience I’d prefer to forget. And at $13.99/meal (more with shipping), there is simply no shortage of better ways to spend that money — including, prominently, actual restaurants.

If you’re drawn to the convenience angle, try it with a promo code and go in with calibrated expectations. But set a calendar reminder to cancel before the full price hits, and read the fine print on what “canceling” actually means per their billing policies.

For everyone else: skip it. Call a local restaurant. Tip well. Taste the difference.

Factor Meals: Quick-Reference Scorecard

FAQ

Is Factor meals worth the money? At the promotional introductory price, Factor is worth trying if you’re macro-focused and prioritize convenience. At the full price of $13.99/meal plus shipping, most people will find better value — and better taste — at local restaurants or competing services.

How does Factor’s regular price compare to the intro price? Factor’s 6-meal plan goes from roughly $54.96 at the intro rate to $83.94 at full price — a jump of about $29, or 53% more per box.

Does Factor have good reviews? Reviews are genuinely mixed. Factor has a positive Trustpilot presence from users who love the macro-focused convenience, but carries a 1.14/5 rating on the Better Business Bureau with recurring complaints about billing practices and taste quality.

Can you cancel Factor easily? Multiple customers have reported confusion and unexpected charges around cancellation. Factor distinguishes between account cancellation and box cancellation, which has caught many subscribers off guard. Read their cancellation policy carefully before subscribing.

What’s a good alternative to Factor meals? For fresh, ready-to-heat meals with better taste reviews, consider CookUnity or Territory Foods. For meal kits where you control the cooking (and the seasoning), Blue Apron and Home Chef both price competitively. Or — radical suggestion — find a great local restaurant that does weekly meal prep or takeout. Your community will thank you.

Have you tried Factor? Tell me what you ordered and whether it actually tasted like the photos. Drop it in the comments below.