Homemade meals delivered directly to students’ doors

Having recently written about the gourmet dining available from Air France’s roving New York truck, we now turn our attention to the other end of the food quality scale: student dining. Not known for being high on nutritional value, University student meals often pale in comparison to those once cooked at home. Hoping to bring a little of that home comfort and healthy eating back onto campus, we’ve now discovered US-based GW Bites. The brainchild of George Washington University student Cristina Roman, GW Bites currently offers two different services. The first is the delivery of meals which have been handmade by a fellow GW student. Every Monday an email is sent out to GW Bites’ subscribers with details of that week’s menu. If the subscriber chooses to “opt in” on the meal, they will then see it delivered between 5 and 7 pm that Wednesday. The meal itself consists of an an entrée, a main and a dessert, costing a total of USD 11, according to a report on D.C Diners. The second service offered comes in the form of “Meals in a Jar”. Often students will look to make a one-off meal, but will be dissuaded by the cost of the ingredients — the majority of which they won’t use in their recipe. The “Meals in a Jar” service hopes to overcome this by selling just the right amount of ingredients for one meal — resulting in reduced costs. The jars retail for USD 5 for German chocolate cupcakes, to USD 10 for rainbow vegetable chilli. GW Bites claim that these meals would have cost USD 15 and USD 30 respectively if bought from a retailer before being portioned. Hoping to build with the participation of fellow students, GW Bites is currently welcoming help from others willing to be involved as chefs, marketers or as part of the delivery service. Indeed, GW Bites seems to hold a sense of community spirit at its core, with recipe suggestions readily welcomed from other students (in exchange for a 50% discount off a meal), and 20% reductions available when a student refers a friend. The primary aim of GW Bites may be to provide home cooked meals, but the fact that all these meals are cooked by fellow students helps create a sense of community. We wouldn’t bet against this being the magic ingredient! (Related: Dining insperiences, Parisian style.) Spotted by: Sara Rose Roman