Revive Superfoods: I Tried This Frozen Meal Delivery Service for One Week, and Here's What I Thought

Even though a vast majority of my time is spent in the kitchen developing recipes, like most folks, I often don’t have time to make three meals a day from scratch. A lot of recipes I work on for my blog or clients are either desserts or aren’t suitable for a meal. So, I was excited to test out Revive Superfoods as an easy option for a variety of smoothies and quick ready-to-eat meals.

Revive Superfoods is known for its farm-frozen, preportioned smoothies that feature superfoods like maca, açai, moringa, and matcha. The company also offers plant-based açai bowls, oats, soups, and meals. All of Revive's smoothies and food can be prepared in minutes, and it often costs less than competitors, with smoothies starting at just $7.99. Here are my thoughts after trying out Revive Superfoods for one week.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Wide range of smoothie options
• Preportioned whole frozen ingredients 
• All smoothies have superfood ingredients added in
• Completely plant-based

Cons

• Limited non-smoothie options
• Meal and soup portions on the smaller side
• Not all ingredients are organic

What Is Revive Superfoods?

Founded in 2017, Revive Superfoods is a family business that delivers plant-based smoothies and frozen meals. The company offers 23 different smoothie flavors, as well as two açai bowls, four oat bowls, four "meals," and three soups. Smoothies and other dishes are delivered frozen, with minimal preparation needed.

How Does It Work?

Ordering from Revive Superfoods is fairly simple, with all the menu items and prices immediately shown on its easy-to-navigate website. You can either build your own box of nine, 12, or 24 items, or you can click the "curated box" option in which Revive Superfoods will automatically select items for you. You can even start with one of the curated boxes and then customize it by removing and replacing the items you don't like. This is what I did, selecting Revive's "Best Seller Box" and customizing it to my preferences.

Once you've selected the items for your box, you'll create an account and place the order. After ordering, you can set the frequency of how often you want deliveries, ranging from once a week to once every eight weeks. You can also pick the day that you want your box to arrive, as well as what comes in the next box order, mixing it up per delivery. Canceling is slightly more annoying, as you have to "pause" your plan, which requires you to click through several pages, constantly confirming that you actually do want to pause the account.

Pricing

Pricing for Revive Superfoods is on a per-item basis. All smoothies, which are the company's most popular items, are $7.99 each. Açai bowls, oat bowls, and soups are $6.99, and "meals" are $8.99. All items come in individual servings, with smoothies resulting in a generous 16-ounce glass, which was enough for a breakfast or snack. Meals and soups were on the smaller side though, and probably would work best as an appetizer or an accompanying side dish to a main course.

Meal Choices

Revive Superfoods offers 23 different smoothies, which is the company's main focus. On the menu, you'll find plenty of flavor options, ranging from cherry and açai, mango and papaya, apple and black tea, and coffee and cacao. All smoothies are plant-based and most have some sort of superfoods like maca or baobab added to them. Smoothies are packaged in cups, with precut frozen fruit and vegetables inside—just add the milk of your choice and throw it all in a blender. Revive also offers a limited number of other items, like açai bowls, oats, soups, and "meals," which consist of veggies and grains or legumes. Everything on the menu is plant-based.

What We Tasted:

• Cherry & Açai smoothie
• Blueberry & Cacao smoothie
• Mango & Papaya smoothie
• Strawberry & Banana smoothie
• Pink Dragon smoothie
• Coffee & Cacao smoothie
• Mint & Chocolate smoothie
• Chipotle and Black Bean meal
• Guajillo Pepper and Tortilla soup

Packaging

The Revive Superfoods package arrived in a sturdy cardboard box. Once opened, there is a large, sealed plastic bag inside. Opening the plastic bag, you'll find two large cardboard flat pieces that snugly fit in the bag, sandwiching bags of dry ice. The cardboard protects the dry ice and keeps the food, which is tucked under the cardboard, from moving around too much. Wrapped around all of it is a large piece of foam that is used to both insulate and protect the content.

All of the food was still frozen solid when it arrived, with little to no damage to the cups and packaging. Each individual smoothie and soup comes in its own cup, while the prepared meals come in a paper tray that has film over it and a paper sleeve that tells you what the meal is and provides heating instructions. 

The Cooking Process

All meals come frozen with minimal prep work involved. Smoothies are easy to make, arriving in a cup filled with preportioned frozen fruit and vegetables inside. Just remove the plastic top, peel off the plastic film, and then add the milk of your choice (dairy or non-dairy) to the rim of the cup. Then, empty the whole thing into a blender to process. Soups involved a similar process of removing the lid, peeling off the plastic, and adding one cup of vegetable or chicken broth to the cup before heating it in a microwave or on the stovetop.

To enjoy the meals, you'll start by removing the paper sleeve and the plastic film over the tray. Then, you can reheat it in the microwave or on the stovetop (with the addition of a couple of tablespoons of water). Oats can be eaten two ways: cold, by soaking the oats overnight with liquid, or hot, by heating them with liquid in the microwave or stovetop right before enjoying. The açai bowls simply need to be taken out of the freezer and thawed for 10 to 15 minutes before eating.

Taste

Revive Superfood smoothies were a nice balance of textures, flavors, and sweetness. Almost all of the smoothies had some sort of vegetable added into the mix, like zucchini, avocado, or carrots. The addition of the vegetables was a nice touch, sneakily adding in nutrients but also creating a creamy texture in the smoothie and dulling the sweetness a bit, which I have often found to be an issue with all-fruit-based smoothies.

Most smoothies came out with a nice consistency—not too thick, not too runny—although a few were a bit thicker than others. (To me, this is always better, as it's easier to add more milk to the smoothie to thin it out.) Standout flavors included the cherry and açai, which had a robust berry flavor without being overly sweet; the mint and chocolate, which tasted earthy with just a touch of herbaceousness; and the mango and papaya, which felt tropical but approachable with a slight zing of turmeric and ginger. The guajillo pepper and tortilla soup and the chipotle and black bean meal were also nicely seasoned and packed with flavor, with a hint of spicy heat. 

Who Should Use Revive Superfoods?

If you're a smoothie fan, Revive Superfoods is a great option as it offers a wide range of smoothie flavors, which means you don't have to stock your freezer full of various bags of frozen fruit and a pantry full of supplement powder to make them yourself. The smoothies also resulted in a generous 16-ounce cup, which is great for breakfast or an afternoon pick-me-up snack. 

However, skip Revive Superfoods if you want a service that has more than just smoothies. The company currently only offers limited meal options with relatively small portions, and with only four different meals and three different soups, a person would quickly become tired of the same offerings all the time.

Final Thoughts

I'd recommend Revive Superfoods for folks who love smoothies, as I enjoyed each one that I tried. In truth, I had a hard time picking just a small selection of the smoothie flavors, and I'd love to try more of them in the future. However, if you're looking for a hearty plant-based meal delivery service, Revive may not be the best choice. There are only a handful of non-smoothie options on the menu, and while I enjoyed the ones that I tried, they came in small portions that didn't fill me up. If you’re considering signing up for Revive, keep this in mind.