PWRMeals Prepared Meals Review

PWRMeals Review (2024) | Sydney Prepared Fitness Meals

Sydneysiders! We have an abundance of prepared meals and meal kits available to us. PWRMeals has been around for a few years specialising in fitness meals designed to support your work in the gym.

Finding the time to get to the gym every day is hard enough considering all the other annoying things life demands out of us. Being able to have lunches and dinners ready to go in the fridge at any point gives that little bit of extra flexibility that can make it easier to hit your fitness goals.

That’s why I love prepared meals service – the convenience and simplicity creates a world where you can focus on hitting your targets. Let’s see whether PWRMeals can actually deliver healthy, tasty meals that hit the mark.

PWRMeals Prepared Meals Review

PWRMeals Review Summary

Perfect for clean, healthy eating on a budget. PWRMeals won’t blow you away but it will help you meet your fitness goals. Only for Sydneysiders (currently).

Overall
7/10
7/10
  • Ordering - Website - 6/10
    6/10
  • Food - Quality - 6.5/10
    6.5/10
  • Ordering - Meal Choice - 7.5/10
    7.5/10
  • Food - Taste - 7/10
    7/10
  • Ordering - Delivery - 6/10
    6/10
  • Value For Money - 9/10
    9/10

Pros

  • Great value for 300g – 500g meals.
  • Easy and free delivery (above  $80)
  • Simple ingredients.

Cons

  • Portion size can feel small.
  • Ingredients not always as advised.
  • Labels on meals not very helpful.

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I’m a big fan of when these meal delivery services have a “face” and a story around what drives the company forward. Whilst the food is always the most important factor, I also want to feel like it’s been made by someone who cares. With PWRMeals, I have no idea who’s behind their meals. What I do have is the following irritating marketing copy:

The most important aspect of what we are is a community of people always pushing each other to the next level with love and support. So whether it’s your fitness goals or busy career, let us take away the grunt work so you can focus on you, with the support of our team right behind you.

About PWRMeals

All feels a little hollow, especially as there’s no actual “community” (it seems) to be a part of.

Getting started with PWRMeals

PWRMeals gives you two options when ordering meals – set menu or build your own.

Within the set menus, you can choose from:

  • SuperSlim Program
  • High Performance Program
  • Bulk Muscle Program
  • Vegetarian Program
  • Fan Favourites
  • Value Range

These come in a variety of different sizes (from just 7 up to 24) and have meals that are pre-selected for that specific goal. With these programs, you don’t have any ability to switch out meals or avoid dishes you don’t like, so if you’re picky then I would always recommend building your own menu.

One massive advantage of the PWRMeals set menus is that you get up to 24 different meals. Other providers tend to give you 2-3 of the same meal to save them money since they can guarantee more bulk orders of certain ingredients.

When you build your own menu, each meal allows you to select between a 300g, 400g or 500g version at different price points. I love this flexibility to be able to choose your meal weight based on the portion size/calories you’re aiming for.

Irritatingly, the only way to know how much each meal costs is to add it to your cart and review the price there. I can see why they’ve taken this approach based on the design of their site but it is frustrating.

PWRmeals website showing the menu options
The PWRMeals menu

On a side note, is it just me or does the website design make it look like you’re buying from an Indian restaurant? Maybe that’s just me.

Clocking on any meal opens a pop-up with all the required ingredient and nutritional information. This includes a neat tool to see nutritional information at all the different weights available.

Unfortunately, most of their meals are missing nutritional values! For any meal service to neglect to provide nutritional values on their website is exceptionally poor. Whilst this may have been updated by the time you read this review, PWRMeals shouldn’t ever have any meals live on their website without nutritional information.

Screenshot of PWRmeals menu for Red Wine Garlic Steak with Mash & Veggies
Red Wine/Garlic Steak WITH nutritional information

When you’re looking at meals, it’s possible to filter down to beef, chicken, vegetarian, seafood, keto friendly, side dishes or drinks. There’s also a special category for one of the PWRMeals unique selling points – Chicken Wings! This was an intriguing proposition so, of course, I ordered some.

Meal variety and options

Overall, there are 70 different options to choose from on the PWRMeals menu. This is a range comparable to services like My Muscle Chef, YouFoodz and others. It’s big enough that you can get strong variety each week, with some favourites that you’ll want to order again and again.

CategoryNo. of Meals
Beef22
Chicken19 (+3 Chicken Wings)
Seafood6
Vegetarian13
Extra Sides6

There are also a few options for cold-pressed juice or coconut water to be delivered with your order.

Special diets and food intolerance

13 vegetarian meals are probably enough to satisfy you for a couple of orders but not much longer. It might be worth checking out some alternatives like Soulara for a more extensive plant-based range. Whilst most of these would be suitable for vegans, I’d suggest this isn’t the right service for those on a plant-based diet.

There are no references to other diets/intolerances such as gluten-free / dairy-free on their menu. There is also no statement considering how their meals are produced, so I would advise anyone with known serious allergies to avoid PWRMeals.

Delivery options

At the time of writing, PWRMeals operated two different cut-off dates on Friday (for Sunday delivery) and Monday (for Wednesday delivery).

PWRMeals delivery policy

This is possible because they only deliver to the Sydney metro area. This includes the CBD, Eastern Suburbs, Inner West, Western Suburbs, Parramatta, South Western Suburbs and Macarthur Region.

Delivery is FREE on any orders over $80. This is reasonably generous and you’re unlikely to put in any orders for less than $80.

All orders should be delivered before 17:30 on their delivery day. There’s currently no option for overnight deliveries.

How much does PWRMeals cost?

This is a tricky one.

Every meal at PWRMeals costs a different amount, so you can build a box at whatever price you want. Most meals have 3 different pricing levels at 300g, 400g and 500g. The range of pricing is between $9.95 – $12.95 which is very reasonably priced, especially for a 500g meal. Some 500g meals are even available at just $10.95 which is a bargain price.

Their meal plans are a little easier to share with you:

ProgramMealsPriceMeal Cost
Superslim12$114.95$9.58
Superslim 18$159.95$8.89
Superslim 24$204.95$8.54
Bulk Muscle12$129.95$10.83
Bulk Muscle 18$189.95$10.55
Bulk Muscle 24$249.95$10.41

Opting in for one of the pre-selected meal plans gets you access to a bulk meal discount that’s very enticing. Whilst you can’t choose your specific meals, being able to get prepared meals for just $8.54 is incredible value. Even the 500g meals for $10.41 represents a fantastic deal.

Featured Service

My PWRMeals box

I ordered on a Friday and had my box delivered on Sunday morning, which is a pretty impressive turnaround. Only having two delivery days does need a bit of extra planning, but this is quite easy to manage.

They had managed to pack all of my meals into quite a small box, branded nicely in the Purple of PWRMeals. As is standard for prepared meals services, the box was lined with an insulating material and had a few ice packs inside to keep the meal cool during delivery.

Recycling the contents

Despite most services now asking you to recycle the contents at local recycling points these days, PWRMeals still offer a pickup service.

This means they will pick up your box, insulating material and ice packs each week for recycling back at their headquarters. All you need to do is leave the box out for the delivery driver to pick up.

Detail. Check out my blog on on the environmental impact of food boxes for more information.

Use By Dates

Notably, PWRmeals do not provide any ‘best before’ or ‘use by’ dates on their individual meals. This can be a little confusing at first.

All meals are safe for a shelf life of up to 9 days unless the meal contains fish, which only lasts up to 7 days. PWRMeals food can be frozen and defrosted the day you want to eat them.

PWRMeals Box Contents

How’s the food?

Overall, I was reasonably impressed by the taste and experience of eating PWRMeals dishes. The meals themselves are very basic, using minimal ingredients to create a flavourful dish.

There’s a very heavy reliance on boiled rice to bulk up meals. This can be a little disappointing as it adds little flavour to the experience.

Fortunately, the different sauces and dishes you get are tasty and packed full of nutritious vegetables. Only natural ingredients are used and they’re cooked in a way that makes them very enjoyable.

None of the meals blew me away with their taste, but they didn’t need to. I was very content eating nutritious, clean and simple meals.

It wasn’t all good though. The butter chicken was exceptionally mild, with the saddest excuse for a naan bread I’ve ever seen. The butter garlic meatballs were delicious but the zoodles (zucchini noodles) left a very watery mess at the bottom of the tray which was fairly unappetising.

What about those Chicken Wings? I hear everyone say.

Sadly, disappointing. They will set you back $10.95 for two wings and a bit of mash. The wings were fairly small and lacking in meat, leaving me very hungry. In fact, I ate the tacos & chicken wings in one sitting and still didn’t feel very full. The 400g – 500g portions of other meals provide far better value.

There was one more odd thing, with the “Peri Peri Chicken with Spicy Rice”. The rice was definitely not spicy, it was just plain boiled rice. That’s not a big deal but it does raise a question on trusting that the meals are being cooked as per the listed recipe/ingredients.

Cooking the prepared meals

I always think that it’s odd that every meal needs the same amount of time in the microwave, when portion size and contents should influence the time needed for reheating. Regardless, all PWRMeals dishes have the same instructions – 3 minutes in the microwave on high. The instructions don’t advise you to remove the plastic film at all, which I did not feel comfortable with. So, I always peeled back a corner to allow any steam to escape.

I lost confidence when I recognised the instructions refer to removing a “sleeve”. What sleeve?

PWRMeals have some incorrect heating instructions

You can also stir fry your meals, although it’s best to use your common sense with this as some meals aren’t going to stir fry very well.

Dishes I loved

  • Beef Burrito Bowl
  • Red Wine Garlic Steak
  • Massaman Stir Fry

Dishes I wouldn’t recommend

  • Tacos
  • Chicken Wings

My Final Thoughts

PWRMeals isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, there’s a lot of elements they really need to improve on.

However, they get it right when it matters. The meals are genuinely nutritious, simple, clean and well balanced. I wouldn’t describe them as delicious, but they do meet the criteria for maintaining a good diet focussed on fitness. You’ll get large servings of protein without the normal unhealthy added extras.

If you’re looking for a decent, protein-filled prepared meals service in Sydney at a good price, I would happily recommend PWRMeals. Just ignore their weird obsession with chicken wings.

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