Now that I’m a startup company, I need to generate “revenue” by writing sponsored posts. Fortunately, my friends at 80Fresh reached out about sponsorship when they found out I was starting a media empire. They’re offering ITB readers 30% off their first order when using this link and the code “ITB”. This is not a revenge review where I promote 80Fresh to get back at Capital Creations for not sponsoring me. I legitimately enjoyed the 80Fresh meals that I tried. As a bonus, this review allows me to add “food critic” to my bio.
80Fresh is a pre-prepared meal delivery service located right here in Raleigh. If Uber, Blue Apron (a weekly delivery cooking service), and Nutrisystem (a health focused meal service) had a food baby it would be 80Fresh. When I found out I could eat healthy, fresh food delivered to my door by a local company I jumped at the chance to review their product.
The Concept
80Fresh provides healthy meals that require very little preparation time. Select and order your meals online and they’re delivered to your door. I repeat, delivered to your door. Imagine never having to deal with the rage inducing Harris Teeter parking lot again. Everyone knows Cameron Village purposely designed the HT parking lot to cause as much stress as possible so people would purchase more wine than normal just to unwind after shopping there. It’s actually pretty genius.
The Menu
Simply go to the 80Fresh website and view their menu options. They rotate the menu weekly with six different options and offer something for everyone, literally. Gluten free, high fiber, high protein, low calorie, low carb, low fat, and even paleo friendly, for all the crossfitters or recently dethawed cavemen who have figured out how to use the internet.
Select your meals before Wednesday and they’ll be delivered by Monday. You can also set up a subscription service. All the meals are dietitian-approved, which means you can sound super ITB when you tell people you have a dietitian that approves your dinners.
I ordered the following three meals, all ranging from $10-$15:
Coffee-Crusted Pork Chops
The Meals
Each meal takes less than 20 minutes to make, with very little cooking skills required. The secret is that the meals are pre-prepped so you barely have to cook anything. Foodies that use Blue Apron spend hours preparing and cooking Late-Summer Fregola Sarda Pasta with Romano Beans so that they can Instagram Story the entire process. We get it. You can cook. I can’t. I want my meals practically made for me. If I could hire someone to feed me so I could free up both hands for Tweeting or writing blog posts for my media empire, I would. The point is that 80Fresh is much more efficient.
The meals arrived in this lovely box, packaged to keep the food cold and fresh.
The meals come with items individually packaged with easy to follow instructions.
The cooking could not have been easier. I followed the instructions and was able to produce the following, without help from anyone.
Sirloin steak with chimichurri sauce, mashed cauliflower, and roasted broccoli.
Whole wheat Chicken Bacon Mac and Cheese. I ordered this for three reasons. A.) I love Mac and Cheese 2.) So I could make a Home Alone reference and D.) it’s highly nutritious
Coffee-Crusted Pork Chops with corn and quinoa salad. Here’s an actual text I sent the co-founder of 80Fresh: “Those pork chops were unreal. I tried them Tuesday night and it was like I was an actual chef. I’m such a bad cook that I followed the instructions and put the coffee stuff on each side, then right before I put them in the pan I realized there were two of them. Thankfully I caught this potential catastrophe and was able to spread the coffee stuff on each side of each pork chop. Just shows what an idiot I am when it comes to cooking.”
Conclusion
All of the meals were fresh and tasted great. I especially liked the pork chops because I sound sophisticated saying, “I just made coffee-crusted pork chops for dinner.” This whole experience reminds me of a great passage, “Give a man a meal and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to order a home cooked meal from 80Fresh and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” It’s not a passage from the Bible, it’s just a good passage.
So give 80Fresh a shot if you’d like to support a local company that’s offering an actual product instead of some app that leverages the cloud to rearrange your Netflix queue based on what you’ve Tweeted that day.
Remember to use this link and the code “ITB” to save 30% off your first order. We’ll check in with one of the co-founders in a few weeks to see how much the ITB media empire helps his company. This sentence is a disclaimer about how this post was sponsored, because that’s like the law or something.
Testimonials:
80Fresh changed my life. You’ve probably seen me in that Facebook video about the 700 pound guy that got stuck on Pirates of the Caribbean at Disney World three summers in a row. It was that third summer that made me realize I needed to make a change. I learned about 80Fresh from ITB Insider and assumed it would be another waste of time, like the TCBY Home Delivery, and the Little Caesar’s Bigfoot Bacon Crust pizza. I’d try anything at this point. I went online and ordered a few different meals and by the next week 80Fresh arrived at my door. I was able to prepare the meals in less than 20 minutes and all of the ingredients were fresh and tasted great. In less than 72 hours I lost 525 pounds. It totally changed my life. I went out that weekend and met the hottest girl at Churchill’s and asked her to marry me right on the spot using a Jell-O shot as an engagement ring. She said yes! We got married a week later and are expecting twins! And of course, we’ll be naming them “80” and “Fresh”. So thanks 80Fresh, you really do make dreams come true.
