FAQ
Are the meals fresh?
Yes! The main reason for our offering KCMeals is to provide healthy and freshly prepared meals to people in our City - at the lowest price point possible. We see too many meal prep companies using repackaged, frozen foods packed with sodium & preservatives. We refuse to be like other meal prep companies who are repackaging frozen foods (like chicken nuggets) and passing it off as a chef prepared meal.
How are they so affordable?
The short answer is, volume. We produce thousands of meals each week, which lets us leverage our food cost to get groceries at a substantially cheaper rate than an individual would be able to buy. It is very likely that as an individual you would not be able to even buy the groceries to prepare a variety of our menu options for less money than we are able to prepare them & ship them to you. Another key in our pricing, is focusing on Kansas City. It's where we live, which makes our shipping & packaging cost much less than if we were shipping a package to another State. We also have partnerships with larger National Meal Prep Companies, that allows us a very aggressive shipping cost with FedEx. So, it's not too good to be true, it just may feel like it.
How long does it take to get meals?
We ship meals on Tuesdays! If we have the ability, we can try to get meals out sooner at your request - but we are limited on our ability to control ship days by the Dry Ice, Packaging, and FedEx supply chains. It would be best to consider than any order placed from Wednesday - Monday will be received on the following Wednesday.
How are meals delivered?
We ship our meals using FedEx, in a refrigerated box with Dry Ice. We ship next day (1 day transit) to KC & KC Metro area. Other Midwest areas may have a 2 to 3 day transit time. We will pack each shipment with the appropriate amount of dry ice to maintain a refrigeration temperature inside the box from our facility; to your door.
We also pack each box with an additional transit day worth of Dry Ice, so there is no need to rush home to get the meals in a refrigerator when you receive your notification that the meals have been delivered.
Do you only ship to KC?
No. We offer shipping throughout the midwest; anyone that falls within FedEx "zone 3" is allowed to process an order. So we wont stop someone from ordering outside of the KC Metro area, but we do prefer to keep this company more of a "Kansas City Secret." We will not be advertising to anyone outside of the local markets. You may notice that some of our shipments show that they're coming from Wichita, that is where our main shipping account is based out of, but we aren't able to update that on the shipping software that we're currently using.
Fresh or Frozen
In compliance with the KS Department of Health, we flash freeze all of our meals prior to shipping. Fresh meals have a shelf life of 5 to 7 days (less with in house made sauces that we use on several of our menu items.) That includes the day of preparation, and the day of transit; so by the time you would receive your meals "Fresh" you would have already used almost half of your shelf life.
We do prepare the meals fresh every week - as the orders are placed, we adjust our prep counts to fulfil any orders. We also use Reduced Oxygen Packaging, which when paired with flash freezing works to give you the highest nutrient content available in each meal.
The term "Fresh Never Frozen" is used more as a marketing tool, and generally equates to a lower quality meal - especially when purchased in bulk, in our opinion.
https://www.eatright.org/food/planning/smart-shopping/frozen-foods-convenient-and-nutritious#:~:text=Generally%2C%20frozen%20foods%20retain%20their,time%20while%20freezing%20preserves%20nutrients.