Playful Rooted

(Um guys, please ignore the photo quality. I was planning on just IG-Storying this and then later decided to write a post when it was too late to take new photos. Plus crappy cell phone photos are just where I am in life right now. But my kid is kinda cute.)

Unless you live under a rock, or you don’t get the same targeted advertisements I do, you’ve definitely heard of Daily Harvest! I saw it advertised everywhere for MONTHS. All over Facebook, Instagram, tons of blogs….I pretty much couldn’t get away from it. So finally, when I got a 50% off promo from a podcast I listen to, I decided to give it a go. And honestly, I was very surprised by what I actually thought of it.

If you haven’t heard of it yet, Daily Harvest is a subscription service that sends smoothie ingredients to your door. (Actually, they now also do soups, sundaes, and more. But we only tried smoothies, so that’s all I can speak to.) Everything comes frozen in pre-portioned containers, so when the box arrives, you just chuck everything into the freezer. When you’re ready for a smoothie, you grab a cup, fill it with your favorite creamy beverage (we use almond milk or Ripple milk), and toss everything into the blender. Then you can pour it back into the same cup it came in if you’re headed out the door; there’s a plastic lid and a spot for a straw (although they don’t provide a straw), so it’s super convenient if that’s your life. Otherwise, you can be sophisticated like me and pour it into a plastic toddler cup from IKEA. Either way.

When you place your order on the website, you can choose from a TON of options. I filtered for vegan smoothies that didn’t include things I hate, like celery and cucumber and other vile vittles. I was really impressed with the number and variety of choices, even with those filters applied. Here’s what we got:

Our box arrived the day after Luca got hit by norovirus and the day before Ben and I got it, so our smoothies hung out in the freezer untouched for several days while we were all puking our guts out. When we were all finally fully recovered (hallelujah! — that virus was intense), we decided to try our goodies!

Obviously we chose the one that had chocolate in it first.

My overall thoughts actually surprised me a bit. I am a smoothie loverrr, so I expected to be fully wowed by this service. Not to mention, the convenience seemed incredible, especially as a mom who’s sometimes running out the door with the toddler in tow and sometimes staying home all day and not wanting to make a giant smoothie mess in the kitchen.

I made sure to give it a good college try and sample several different varieties before giving my opinions. Annnd, in short, I wasn’t wowed. (Cue all the social media mavens and bloggers gasping.) I just….wasn’t wowed. I’ll break it down.

The good

Amazing ingredients. Really top quality superfood stuff. The pricing is pretty expensive, but I actually do think it’s worth it. Almost everything is organic and they include a ton of stuff like açai, cacao, goji berries, etc., which are all quite expensive by themselves at any grocery store. So yes, big fan of the ingredients.

Convenience. It’s really nice to just pop something in the blender and not have to be stripping kale leaves and pitting cherries all day to make a single smoothie.

Customization and variety. I really appreciate the filter functionality on the Daily Harvest website. It makes it so easy to find exactly what you’re looking for; you can filter on dietary needs, key benefits, and likes/dislikes. Even with a ton of filters in place, there are still plenty of options to choose from. And they’ve really expanded from just smoothies, so if cold fruit and veg isn’t your thing, you can mix it up with several other item choices.

The bad

Subpar smoothie consistency. Perhaps a personal preference, but I like my smoothies to be smooth. And I never really achieved that with Daily Harvest. I have a Vitamix, so it’s not a blender issue (and I do really wonder what the result would be in a regular blender!). I think it comes down to a couple things – not enough liquid and not always the right ingredients. Obviously since you’re adding your own liquid, that part is adjustable, but based on the Daily Harvest recipe itself, I usually did not get a good blend. Also, I find that smoothies do best with something that blends up really creamy, like banana or avocado. Several of my smoothies did contain one or the other, but I think it just wasn’t enough. The consistency I got with the majority of these smoothies was more like one of those frozen lemonades you get at a street festival. Not bad, just not very smooth.

Unrealistic serving size. I took a peek at the nutrition facts and noticed that there are TWO servings in each cup. This bothers me a lot. It’s definitely a single serve item; it comes in a single cup, and the recipe specifically says to blend and pour back into this one cup. So who’s going to drink half of that and call it a day? Or share it with someone else from this single cup? And if you did only drink half of it and saved the rest for later in the fridge, it would of course be totally melted by the time you came back for round two. Yeah, very bothered by this.

No reminder before box ships. With some other subscription services I’ve tried, there’s a reminder either the morning of or the day before your shipment. This allows you to go into your account and make changes to your order or even to pause or cancel before you’re charged again. This wasn’t the case with Daily Harvest. I had totally forgotten about it, and I received a new box (and a new charge to my credit card) with zero warning. My fault for forgetting, obviously, and it wasn’t a huge issue to receive another box, but I would have liked to try some different varieties the second time around. Instead, the same items I selected in my first order were automatically shipped again. Maybe this is nit-picky? But it’s a nice-to-have option that I really missed out on with this service.

So overall, would I try Daily Harvest again? Maybe. I do think the ingredients are excellent, and the convenience is hard to beat, so I might give it another go, especially if I had another 50% off opportunity. But I don’t think I’d do the smoothies. I’d be interested in trying the harvest bowls, the soups, and maybe the chia parfaits — all items that are less dependent on consistency. And I’d definitely create a calendar alert for myself before the next shipment. 🙂

What about you? Have you tried Daily Harvest or other subscription services? What are your thoughts?