Hello, long time no see! I've been MIA with my last few weeks spent overseas in Vietnam doing a bit of travelling and visiting the family and all their friends. However it feels real good to take some time out to focus on my blog again and I need to acknowledge that today's post is something I should've posted a lot earlier than now. And I am really sorry about this. However it's all exciting stuff coming this way!
Last month with the help of my friends, I had the amazing opportunity of being able to review an app called MealPal which had just launched in Sydney. At the time of trialling the service, orders were only available from select CBD restaurants. And now at the time of writing, Surry Hills has been welcomed into the range of choices!
MealPal is a service started by Mary Biggins (cofounder of ClassPass) and Katie Ghelli (previously of ZocDoc). Through MealPal, consumers can pre-order their lunch every weekday from a restaurant in the MealPal network for less than $8 per meal. Each restaurant offers one meal per day and the consumer chooses which meal they'd like to have.
In Sydney, MealPal has over 100 participating restaurants such as Sumo Salad, Belle's Hot Chicken, Down N' Out, Fratelli Famous, Chicken Confidential and Zeus Street Greek.
My first step to using this service was to download the app. Easily done! ✔️
From there, a whole list of restaurants with their meal of the day is displayed for you to scroll through and choose to pre-order for the next day. Orders are to be made from 5pm to 9am. You select your meal of choice as well as the time that is most convenient for you to pick it up.
As mentioned before I gathered the help of my friends to review MealPal on my behalf as the week I had to do these reviews I was quite busy and unable to travel to the CBD. So first up is Vanessa's two reviews on both the food as well as her experience with the app:
"The process was so easy in how you choose a meal and your pick up time in advance. The staff were very friendly and had everything fresh, packaged and ready to go. They even offered a slice of complementary bread to accompany the salad which was a nice touch.
Unfortunately the salad itself was a bit bland and there wasn't a lot of chicken in it. I don't know if you would call this a Thai chicken salad and even with the bread it wasn't very satisfying. But overall the ease of ordering off MealPal was a great start to this experience!"
"True to its name, this is super spicy. Almost an unpleasant and inedible spicy. But once again today the use of MealPal was very easy especially in the busy and crowded Westfield Sydney food courts. There was a special area for those collecting their MealPal orders which made cutting the actual lines to order an absolute breeze!"
And my last review on this app was courtesy of my girl, Terry:
"The process with the MealPal app was so quick and easy. I was running behind time and showed up late, yet the staff were friendly and still had my order ready for me to pick up. The poke was pretty good however there wasn't much choice for what type of salad greens or dressing to go into the bowl. The dressing was particularly on the spicy and heavy side so it would've been nice to be able to customise this meal."
So there you have it! Besides being very quick and easy as Vanessa and Terry have advocated, I think MealPal is such a great advantage to have when you're choosing a lunch around the CBD/Surry Hills area because you only make a one time payment online for a package and you don't have to worry about any extra cash payments. At such low prices as well, this is great when you're trying to save money.
One thing I noticed about MealPal which I didn't particularly like is that the packages you pay for only last a certain amount of days. This means that if you forget to put in your order for lunch the next day, that's one lunch lost that you won't get back. Also you can only order one lunch a day so those lunches you missed? All lost. Of course this is all about the business strategy and self organisation but it was an inconvenience to me when trialling this app as I didn't have the freedom to travel out to the CBD every day.
Thank you so much to the team at MealPal for giving me the wonderful opportunity to review the app and for always answering my emails and queries in such a quick and friendly manner. All the best! xx
So what is MealPal?
In Sydney, MealPal has over 100 participating restaurants such as Sumo Salad, Belle's Hot Chicken, Down N' Out, Fratelli Famous, Chicken Confidential and Zeus Street Greek.
My first step to using this service was to download the app. Easily done! ✔️
From there, a whole list of restaurants with their meal of the day is displayed for you to scroll through and choose to pre-order for the next day. Orders are to be made from 5pm to 9am. You select your meal of choice as well as the time that is most convenient for you to pick it up.
As mentioned before I gathered the help of my friends to review MealPal on my behalf as the week I had to do these reviews I was quite busy and unable to travel to the CBD. So first up is Vanessa's two reviews on both the food as well as her experience with the app:
1. Thai Chicken Salad from Saladworks
"The process was so easy in how you choose a meal and your pick up time in advance. The staff were very friendly and had everything fresh, packaged and ready to go. They even offered a slice of complementary bread to accompany the salad which was a nice touch.
Unfortunately the salad itself was a bit bland and there wasn't a lot of chicken in it. I don't know if you would call this a Thai chicken salad and even with the bread it wasn't very satisfying. But overall the ease of ordering off MealPal was a great start to this experience!"
2. Spicy Beef Kefta from Zeus Street Greek
"True to its name, this is super spicy. Almost an unpleasant and inedible spicy. But once again today the use of MealPal was very easy especially in the busy and crowded Westfield Sydney food courts. There was a special area for those collecting their MealPal orders which made cutting the actual lines to order an absolute breeze!"
And my last review on this app was courtesy of my girl, Terry:
3. Tuna Poke Bowl from Saké Jr
"The process with the MealPal app was so quick and easy. I was running behind time and showed up late, yet the staff were friendly and still had my order ready for me to pick up. The poke was pretty good however there wasn't much choice for what type of salad greens or dressing to go into the bowl. The dressing was particularly on the spicy and heavy side so it would've been nice to be able to customise this meal."
So there you have it! Besides being very quick and easy as Vanessa and Terry have advocated, I think MealPal is such a great advantage to have when you're choosing a lunch around the CBD/Surry Hills area because you only make a one time payment online for a package and you don't have to worry about any extra cash payments. At such low prices as well, this is great when you're trying to save money.
One thing I noticed about MealPal which I didn't particularly like is that the packages you pay for only last a certain amount of days. This means that if you forget to put in your order for lunch the next day, that's one lunch lost that you won't get back. Also you can only order one lunch a day so those lunches you missed? All lost. Of course this is all about the business strategy and self organisation but it was an inconvenience to me when trialling this app as I didn't have the freedom to travel out to the CBD every day.
Thank you so much to the team at MealPal for giving me the wonderful opportunity to review the app and for always answering my emails and queries in such a quick and friendly manner. All the best! xx
