Home Bistro

Company Address

Home Bistro, Inc.

190 Banker Road

Plattsburgh, NY  12901  (1-800-628-5588) Corporate: 518-825-2000

Website: www.homebistro.com

Summary

This upstate New York company claims to be in the diet/healthy meals delivery business for more than 10 years. Meals are delivered nationwide. The food is vacuum sealed and flash frozen. However, one should note that this is not a plan that provides ALL your meals for the day. The focus is on dinner entrees--not breakfasts or lunches.

How The Service Works

Home Bistro prepares chef-prepared meals for home delivery, including:

• dinner entrees

• appetizers

• soups

• desserts

Special diet plans are offered for: low-carb, low-fat, low sodium, and diabetes friendly. Dinners include choices from: beef, pork, lamb, poultry, seafood, and pasta. Lighter Side dinners are lower in calories and fat.

Home Bistro also sells "samplers and monthly gift plans as well. There is an introductory Lighter Side package of 4 meals for $19.95 plus $6.95 shipping, but regular plans will cost more than this.

To prepare the meals, you simply place the special package in simmering water.

Shipments are made on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday--not Thursday through Sunday. The meals are shipped UPS so it will take 2-3 days to get to you. If you order on a Thursday, for example, your order won't ship until the following Monday.

The Cost

It can be difficult to determine the daily, weekly or monthly cost of this plan, since you are not buying a full day's food, just dinner. The a la carte price of Lighter Side dinner entrees is $11.99. The appetizers range from $7 to $13.50. Desserts range from $19.99 to $26.99 for a box of 4 or 6.

There are 3, 6 or 12 month sampler plans. You are billed monthly, when the meals are shipped.

If one wanted to purchase 30 dinners, one for every day of the month, the best you could do is a 30% discount that brings the price down to $8.39 per meal, plus $29.95 shipping. So, if you ordered 30 meals up front (and you could fit them all in your freezer), you'd pay $296.95. If you order 7-13 meals, there is a 10% discount. If you order 14-29 meals, you get 20% off. Of course, if you want appetizers or desserts, that costs extra. Adding a dessert with each meal will add about $5/day.

Consequently, ordering just 30 dinners (with desserts) will run about $450 per month. To that, add the cost of your breakfasts and lunches and snacks that you have to buy and prepare yourself.

You can choose to have shipped any amount of meals at one time that you desire. But, it you want daily delivery, for example, you'll pay a heft amount in shipping charges.

Unlike Nutrisystem or other plans, this is more of an a la carte plan than an all-inclusive plan covering all your meals and snacks in a day.

Monthly gift samplers range from $75.95 to $119.99, plus $19.95 s/h.