Graze Subscription Box Review

I confess, I love mail order food, so when I heard about the graze box, I knew I had to try it. The concept is straightforward: scheduled boxes of snacks are delivered to your mailbox. The snacks are relatively healthy, portioned treats that are neatly packaged in a small cardboard box that fits through your mail slot. That's right, it's delivered along with your regular mail - nothing sitting at your front door outside in the hot sun. If you work in an office, you can have it delivered to you there. At the time I subscribed, the cost was $6 a box, which included shipping. I do not work for graze nor was I paid by them to write this review.

Since I write from home, I hit the frig whenever I get a food craving, and find myself grabbing a handful of M&Ms or a couple of cookies every other hour or so. The graze snacks seem healthier. You can get nuts, dried fruit, mini bread sticks or pretzels with a dipping sauce, or something called "flapjacks," which are mildly addictive bars of sweet happiness and joy.

For the most part, the graze folks select the four snacks that go into each box, but you can set your preferences so that you don't receive snacks that you don't care for.

When you sign up for the graze subscription box service, you create an account that keeps track of what you've tried. You can rate each item so that the graze folks know what you've loved in the past and what you would like to try in future boxes. You can remove certain categories of snacks altogether by customizing your "Dietary Preferences" page on your graze account. For example, if you don't like spicy foods, you can set your preferences so that you never receive spicy snacks in a subscription box.

The folks at graze print this disclaimer on the Dietary Preferences page:

"graze is not suitable for those with allergies as all of our food is packed in the same place, and so cross-contamination is possible. However, you can use these buttons to help you get your perfect box."

It is something to definitely keep in mind when ordering.

What I noticed in the boxes I received is that I typically received one snack of some type of mixed nuts, one of mixed dried fruit, a sweet or savory biscuit type snack, and one flapjack. I don't know if it is possible to get, say, all flapjacks, as I did not keep up my subscription long-term (more on that later.) I did receive a box that did not contain nuts at all, but had dippers, a savory cracker snack, dried fruit, and a flapjack.

Each snack is well-proportioned and made of ingredients deemed to be "healthy." They use lots of whole grains, nuts and fruit. The nut snack is a nice handful as is the dried fruit. Some of the biscuit type snacks consist of about 4 or 5 sweet shortbread cookies, savory or salty pretzels or bread sticks accompanied by about a tablespoon of dipping sauce. I tried the "wholegrain banana caramel dippers," sweet little banana shortbread cookies with a side of caramel dipping sauce. While I loved the sauce, I am not too fond of banana, and immediately rated the snack on my account page to "never send" again.

Similarly, I received a dried fruit snack called "tropical daquiri" containing dried mango, pineapple, and lime flavored raisins. I loved the mango and pineapple, but I'm not a raisin person. When I updated my account to remove snacks that contain raisins, I realized that many, about half, of the dried fruit snacks contain raisins, and a few contained banana. Not so good for someone like me.

You can now get flapjack only boxes! I think I have died and gone to heaven. Good job, Graze!

For me, the standout of the box is the flapjack. When you receive a graze box, open it up and, if it contains a flapjack, you must immediately sit down and eat it. Your mouth with explode with joy.

You're welcome.

A flapjack isn't exactly a granola bar, not exactly a power bar, and not exactly a cookie. It's made of lovely rolled oats that you can see, nuts and seeds and maybe some fruit or chocolate. It's soft and sweet and absolutely heavenly delicious. In my opinion, graze could just sell boxes of flapjacks and we would all be quite happy to receive them.

I stopped my subscription after just a few boxes simply because I felt I did not need a regular box of snacks delivered to my house. I am within walking distance to restaurants and a grocery store, so I don't really need the convenience of home delivery. I'm also trying to not be a writing hermit, so getting to the store to buy food is probably good for me.

But wait!

A friend's child just went off to college this week, and so I logged onto the graze site to see if I could send her a gift box. Sure enough, there is a way to send a gift box or give a gift voucher. Nothing says "I'm thinking of you" more than a box of way-healthy snacks sent in the mail.

To find out more about graze, check them out at their website: www.graze.com

As I said, I love mail order food, and I found graze to be a healthy snack alternative. It's fun to find a graze box waiting for you in the mail box and it's reasonably priced. If I were still working in an office, I would love to have graze boxes sent to me there. I will definitely order graze boxes as gifts and will occasionally order a box for myself, whenever I have a craving for one of those flapjacks.