While Food Box HQ is a passion project that allows Emily and I to have fun while trying new meal kits, snacks, and more, it has begun to gain traction over time. It’s now become a resource for people all over the world to learn more about meal kits, snack of the month clubs, etc. And because of that, I want to be as thorough and transparent with our reviews.

This site mainly has three different types of review articles — individual reviews, best-of articles, and comparison articles. To give you an in-depth look at how we go about writing these types of articles, I’ve outlined our review process below.

Individual Service & Product Reviews

Food Box HQ started out as a simple blog that mainly focused on writing about our personal experiences with different meal kits. Since then it’s blossomed into so much more. The individual reviews are still a massive part of the site but we now cover much more than just meal delivery services.

Here is our review process for these types of articles…

• Identify a food service or product such as a meal kit, snack of the month club, grocery delivery service, or meal planning app.
• Conduct preliminary research to get a better idea of what others are saying, the benefits/features, how it works, and more.
• Work with researcher/writer to put together an overview of all the key components (e.g. shipping, delivery, pricing, different types/varieties)
• Conduct the initial review (film if possible) and take notes on all elements of the product/service.
• Research the experience of others to see if there is anything we may have missed in our review that needs to be added in the final review.
• Compile our hands-on test with research to form the final review plus edit and upload the filmed review to our YouTube channel.

“Best Of” Reviews

Often times people scour the internet looking for the best products or services within a specific niche, not necessarily just one. Therefore, we compile a compilation of “best” products and services based on our expertise in the food business. Within these “best of” articles we will usually crown one product or service our favorite. This is not necessarily an indication that it is hands-down the right option for the reader. Rather, it is based on our own personal opinion due to the research we’ve conducted as well as what we look for in terms of value.

Here is our review process for these types of articles…

• Identify a specific set of products or services people are looking to learn more about (e.g. “vegan meal delivery”).
• Research which are the most popular, widely used, and/or most discussed.
• Narrow down the most popular, highest rated overall, and most widely discussed/reviewed.
• Review past products and services we’ve written about and researched to begin the preliminary outline of the “best of” article. This includes reviewing archived materials such as archive video footage we’ve shot (we keep past footage stored on a Dropbox account) on the products and services as well as archived notes.
• Compile all of our research into a comprehensive “best of" list article.

Comparison Articles

Making a final decision between two similar products/services is usually pretty tough. There are a lot of factors to consider before pulling the trigger and actually making a purchase — most of which are subjective. We’ve created these comparison or “versus” articles as a way to help people make a final decision. As with the “best of” articles, we usually declare a winner among the two products/services we’re comparing. The winner we choose is not necessarily right for everyone. We look at a variety of objective factors (e.g. price, shipping, packaging) to make this determination but there are a lot of subjective factors we consider too, such as taste. since we are talking about food.

Here is our review process for these types of articles…

• Conduct preliminary research to decide which two products/services people are having a hard time choosing between.
• Review our past research on these products/services (including archived video we filmed and archived notes).
• Compare the products/services side-by-side based on key elements such as variety, portion size, ingredients, ease of cooking, taste, delivery, shipping, customer service, and more — individual comparison items will vary based on the products/services being compared.
• Compile our notes and research into a final comparison article and declare a winner.

Wrapping Up

As you can see, we try to be as thorough and transparent as possible in our reviews. If you’ve noticed we missed something or you’d like us to consider another factor when reviewing, please let us know. We welcome all feedback, including constructive criticism.

Food Box HQ is ever-changing. Since starting as a simple blog to snowballing into the resource it’s become, we are constantly trying to make our reviews and articles better for readers. Older articles did not adhere to the strict standards we currently have. However, we are constantly going back and updating to ensure they are as thorough as possible.

In our reviews, as well as the "best of" and comparison articles, we sometimes include referral or affiliate links. Since Food Box HQ does not allow for sponsored posts or advertisements, these links help the site generate income so we can pay for things like buying the meal kits, working with a researcher and editor to ensure high-quality articles, and more. It might surprise you how much time, energy, and money goes into this site. If you click on one of these referral/affiliate links and purchase, we receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. When we setup these types of affiliate relationships with the companies, we usually ask if we can offer our readers special coupons too.

If you made it this far, thank you! We appreciate all of our readers and we’ll continue to keep publishing the highest-quality content in the meal delivery service and food industry as possible :).