Food delivery boxes: insight into where to splurge and where to hold back (part 1)

Although online shopping has long been a part of my life, whether my regular Sainsburys' shop, deliveries from Amazon or other ad hoc shopping, until lockdown hit I'd never really explored any of the more regular food delivery services. However, at the end of March 2020, I decided that if I didn't indulge in a few food and drink delivery boxes, I'd have nothing to look forward to every week, and so I began to explore. I've been so brilliantly impressed by some of these that I thought I'd share this experience with some of you, and hopefully open you up to this world if you haven't already got involved.

I'm going to explore these by theme. Obviously I'm only one person and haven't tried every single product out there, so don't be enraged if I don't mention a fabulous service you might already use. I've also done this in two parts, because it turns out I have a lot to say and don't want to leave anything out!

The first lockdown box I ordered was a drinks box - naturally, pubs were closed! I had already historically considered joining the Craft Gin Club historically, but had put it off for the same reason I had put this sort of thing off before.....because I wouldn't be at home to accept the delivery and didn't want to annoy the neighbours. Lockdown changed all that!

I have found the Craft Gin Club incredible. Every month I pay £40 and in return they send me an exquisite gin I've never heard of before, as well as a variety of snacks and mixers. You also get a magazine full of cocktail recipes, the history of the gin itself and a multitude of other interesting articles. The following is a picture of the very first box I received, way back in April, which contained probably my favourite gin of all time - perfume tree from Lai Chi Kok distillery in Hong Kong. It was incredible, particularly in a lemongrass martini, as featured within the Ginned magazine. For context, a bottle of this direct from the distillery retails at around £32 - however, that's only in HK itself. Given the other contents of this box, the effort of shipping the gin from around the world and the knowledge I received from trying it, I think this was exceptional value for the £40/month. Incidentally, you can get it £16 cheaper for your first box if you want me to refer you as a friend - message if interested 😏.

A selection of all my gin club goodies

Since this initial box, I've received gins from the Amazon (Amazzoni gin), South Africa (Pienaar & Son - my second favourite) and all sorts of other places. My sister also just sent me a bottle of Glendalough gin from a local distillery in Ireland, which I cannot wait to try this weekend. Also, the bar of Chocolonely salted caramel chocolate that accompanied the box in September was such a treat and got me totally hooked to that, whilst helping to fight equality simultaneously! So friends, absolutely do give this box a go if you like a treat, a cocktail and a little bit of luxury.

Next theme: fish food. Well actually, locally sourced and delivered fish. This is something I've come to fairly recently. We've all heard that you need to eat fish around 3-4 times a week to maintain a healthily balanced diet, blah blah blah. To be honest, I love fish but have had it up to here with the selection at my local supemarket. It's expensive, it's under-portioned, poorly sourced and I really wanted to expand beyond the options of salmon, sea bass and cod.

So I did a bit of research and found fishbox. This is a food subscription service that delivers fresh fish on a regular basis (I go for fortnightly). They claim that they get the fish from the boat to your door within 24 hours, you can choose the box size that suits you, plus put information on which fish you'd like to try and which you dislike. So every time my box turns up I get the surprise of around 6-10 portions of different fish (from a selection of around 70), the fun of figuring out how to cook them and the joy of knowing I'm shopping (relatively) local - i.e. Scotland. I opt for the £35 medium box and have found it to be fantastic value. This isn't just from the perspective of portion size, which is far more decent that portions found in those chain supermarkets, but because I've really enjoyed cooking some things for the first time: tscallops, red gurnard, hake, tusk. And I've just received this week's box, which contains torbay sole, smoked haddock, a whacking load of fresh scallops, sea bass and cod. I think I'll make the seabass with a korean stirfry tonight 😃

Today's delights

P.S. Once again I can refer a friend and get you a tenner off your first box, so do let me know if you'd like to give it a try

A selection of cheeses
from our first delivery

Up next (and final for this post), we have the cheese box. Now there are loads of options for cheese delivery boxes out there and I spent a lot of time researching the optimal box for me. I wanted quality but also variety, so was looking for a decent selection of small cheeses from all over the place. So in the end, I settled for the Pong Cheese Club and have thoroughly good reviews to share. They send a nice selection of soft and hard cheeses, blues and goats. There are a few good puns in there too, with the cheese booklet carrying the label 'Open Caerphilly'. And, as with most food delivery services, they have complete flexibility on additional items to include in the order, delivery holidays, etc. And it's been really nice to see that they've been focussing on sourcing cheeses from smaller companies who have been struggling due to Covid-19, and are doing their bit to support those businesses. So all-in-all I am pretty content with Pong, and I'm contemplating putting in my Christmas order now.

So that's it for this post. I've largely focussed on delivery boxes with specific themes (gin, fish, cheese). In tomorrow's post I'm going to talk about some other deliveries I've received and also some that I've contemplated going for, that have a bit of a wider range. Stay tuned!