Leah McCann Smith | Writer & Editor

There probably isn’t a soul who cares or has kept up with my past 10 posts, but I’m not sure I really care, because I really wrote them for myself, anyway.

On November 16, I signed up for MealPal, a service in New York City (and a few other large metropolis areas) that offers discounted lunch meals if purchased via a monthly plan. I guess you can say it’s like ClassPass for lunch. Here was my intro post about it, ICYMI.

So far, it’s been a good experience. I’ve got just one more week with it, so I’ll use these last few days to reflect and decide if I want to renew my 12-meal monthly plan. Remember, you’ve got to cancel MealPal seven days before you cycle ends to avoid automatic renewal.

So far, here’s what I like:

• Planning = avoiding hanger. Despite what I initially thought (it would be so much work; I really don’t want to plan my lunch A WHOLE DAY ahead of time), MealPal has actually taken the headache out of figuring out what to do for lunch every day, before my stomach becomes all grumbly. Even though I only had 12 meals allotted for the month, I was away for almost a week because the Thanksgiving holiday, so it felt like my plan really spanned the whole month.
• Savings in cost. Paying around $7/meal instead of $9-$12/meal was nice, but it ended up being more of a cherry on top rather than the actual icing on the cake.
• Less wait time, sometimes. Most times, I’d say I waited, on average, 2-5 minutes for my MealPal order, as opposed to the 6-8 minutes in downtown Manhattan.
• New options and discovering new places. It seems as though the MealPal options keep growing every day. Just this week, in the Financial District, MealPal added Niko Niko, Amba (need to try), and GRK to its roster. I also have tried tons of new restaurants that I wouldn’t have known about or tried before thanks to MealPal.

So far, here’s what I don’t like:

• Not being able to order after 9:30a day-of. Totally get why this is MealPal’s policy (the restaurants wouldn’t be able to handle the order load without this notice), but sometimes, I forget to order lunch starting at 5 p.m. the day prior to the next day’s meal. And I don’t get to work until 10 a.m., so I miss the window to order (before 9:30a) for that day. Eventually I got better at this by ordering at 5 p.m. on the dot. But it was still burdensome at times. MealPal helps with this by sending you reminder emails at both 5 p.m. (“It’s time to order lunch tomorrow!”) and at 9:15 a.m. (“Don’t forget to order lunch today!”)
• Cancellation process. A seven-day cancellation notice is much too long. It needs to be more like three days. Let’s be honest: most people using MealPal are millennials, and therefore do not plan things seven days ahead of time.
• Longer on-foot commutes to grab the lunch I want. On quite a few occasions, my commute to pick up the lunch I actually want is actually much further than I wish to commute by foot. Especially in November/December. This isn’t really MealPal’s fault, but it will be part of the reason I decide to stay or go.
• Options not on MealPal. Chop’t, Dig Inn and Roti—sometimes I feel like I’ve lost a part of me without you in my life.

So stay tuned. Just a couple more days until a final verdict is reached.