Whisk Meals — Local services in Mercer Island

I am really disappointed by the customer support given by Whisk Meals. I asked several questions and got friendly prompt responses when I was planning to sign up, but when something went wrong, the helpfulness disappeared.

My order containing the second half of the 7 day cleanse I ordered (3 days of meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks) was delivered Thursday afternoon (that’s meals for Friday-Sunday). When I went to open my lunch Saturday morning, I discovered the cucumbers in the salad were completely moldy. So I initiated a chat on the site along with the photo:

Me: My salad from Thursdays delivery is moldy :(

Them: Here's a shorter response incorporating your request: Thank you for your message. We prepare our salads fresh, and it’s important to consume them within a few days. Please note that our organic produce doesn't contain chemicals to prevent mold, which can occur naturally. If you have any further questions, feel free to reach out.

So including the AI response to your prompt is an oops, but overall it’s a reasonable response. I included the delivery date and the type of order which would hopefully clarify that these meals were being consumed within a couple of days as they were intended. I got another seemingly automated response saying the same thing with slightly different wording including storing meals in a refrigerator at a food safe temperature. I confirmed my refrigerator is running at a safe temperature, then I asked to be comped for the inedible meal or maybe a slight discount on a future meal or whatever would work. To my knowledge, I got no response (their chat link from the email pulls up nothing - a blank chat). Then several hours later, my $300 order for the next week was cancelled. When I emailed them to follow up on my original message and asked why my order was cancelled, they responded saying their delivery company will no longer service my area… and “While we ensure our salads are fresh at the time of delivery, it's important to consume them within a few days.” 😤 How patronizing to say the same thing over and over when it doesn’t even apply to the situation. On top of that, it seems very suspicious that this service availability coincides with an issue that can occur with any business that serves or sells food (my complaint was only disappointment in my spoiled lunch, and I even mentioned that I enjoyed everything else so far). Why not make any effort at all to make things right?

The two stars are for the food, because the meals I ate were tasty, seemingly packed and delivered with care, and I liked the menu options. I was eager to continue to patronize a local business, but they either don’t want it, or at least they don’t care about earning customer trust. So disappointed. I hope they can see the miss and improve...

Update : I got an email from Whisk addressing my concerns few weeks back, so I ordered few more meals last week and I'm happy to report they've taken my concerns seriously. Two Asian meals I ordered was pretty decent, we shall see if this trajectory stays.

Now I don't have to put an asterisk when I recommend this business to my friends.

OLD : I've been wanting to get a meal delivery service for sometime, but the lack of good dairy-free choices by countless other services have a big barrier. So I was very excited to try Whisk Meals.

Meals itself are pretty good. I can see they've taken a lot of care into getting good ingredients in, but I've noticed that with Asian inspired dishes they are taste like nothing. I found myself needing to add a lot of sauces to get it closer to where I expect the flavor to be. What's more confusing is that rest of the dishes are great. So I'm not sure where the disconnect is. I think it would be in their best interest to try to survey their customers for more direct feedback I'd hate for their efforts to be wasted when the service clearly puts so much thought and effort into 20-24 different meals every week.

The last nitpick is the pricing structure. Minimum order of $60 dollars is fine, but having to pay $5 delivery fee isn't fun, especially as a person living alone I'm only ordering 4 meals which often ends up few bucks short. So I'm adding in cookies that I didn't want, and end up forgetting and throw away. Either add in more choices for small items or small increase in price across the board to bake in the price of the delivery fee.

Otherwise it's a good service. Happy to support a small local business. I think they'd have a very compelling service if they can refine...

Good food very bad point of sale/ order experience and customer service.

Several orders cancelled after checkout with no explanation. Orders that weren’t delivered; with no explanation even when I emailed for help / more information. Repeated website checkout issues / errors “we no longer service your address” with no immediate assistance from team which resulted in me missing order cutoff deadlines.

No offer for an apologetic discount on future orders or a credit of items toward future purchases or even just a genuine apology.

Their responses (when they did respond) were often very delayed (no urgency) and came across as annoyed / put out instead of eager to keep my business and work out order kinks.

Their tone came across as condescending, lacking curiosity or a desire to fix my issues.

Was excited to support a local woman owned business. I kept trying long past a normal customer would - emailing them “I want to give you my money- help me!”

When I shared I’d need to go to Google review as a last resort to simply share my honest experience because of their lack of responsiveness or justification for my issues- instead of heading the feedback as an opportunity to learn from my experience and provide a better customer experience - they accused me of threatening them.

They’ve lost a once enthusiastic...