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MealPal, a monthly lunch subscription service, just expanded to London — its first city outside the US.
MealPal lets users select and pick up a daily lunch from a variety of participating restaurants. The monthly price of $119 (without tax), covers lunch Monday through Friday — which means each meal costs less than $6.
Founded in Miami in January 2016, the service has expanded to Boston, New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. In London, where over 150 restaurants have signed on, each meal costs either £4.80 ($6) or £4.39 ($5.50), depending on the plan you choose.
The service was started by the cofounder of ClassPass, a startup that gives customers access to a selection of fitness classes in a particular city for a flat fee (MealPal was called MealPass until it rebranded in September 2016.).
On February 15, the company announced that it raised $15 million (£12 million) in VC funding.
Now that MealPal has added so many restaurants for users to choose from — over 600 New York City restaurants participate — the options can get overwhelming. So the team launched what it calls a "Tinder for food" function in September 2016. Users can now swipe right or left on 100 ingredients they like or dislike, and the app's bot will recommend meals based on those preferences.
I tried the service for a week when it launched last year (before the new update). Here's what happened.
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I was instructed to log on between 7 p.m. and 9:30 a.m. before each lunchtime to select my lunch and set a pick-up time. (The update now lets users choose lunch starting at 5 p.m.)
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To find my first meal, I filtered by location, which narrowed my options to 10 restaurants within a three-block radius of the Business Insider office (MealPal has since added dozens more). I chose pulled pork sliders from The Hog Pit.
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On Monday, I ventured outside to pick up my food, which felt strange since I often bring my lunch.
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