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Rating:7/10

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WIRED

Nutritious, balanced, convenient, and often delicious ready-to-heat delivery meal subscription. GLP-1 and protein-packed options. The chicken breast is actually moist and tender.

TIRED

Lots and lots of chicken, and meals are a bit staid. Veggies can sometimes be soggy. Reheated meals can’t rival freshly cooked.

Perhaps I am easily impressed. But I tend to think of the modern prepared delivery meal service as a marvel of technology.

Tempo, the spin-off prepared-meal subscription service from Home Chef meal kits, specializes in meals that look like TV dinners but have never been frozen. The boxed beef barbacoa and salmon au poivre and chicken pesto meals that arrived in my refrigerator this March had instead been cooked in a commissary kitchen days before, then boxed up and mailed in a package kept cool with (mostly) recyclable cold packs.

Even after arriving, each meal remained not just safe to eat but actually flavorful for a week or more. That beef barbacoa, when I heated it in a Ninja Crispi air fryer (my current preferred option for leftovers cooking), was not just still moist but actually tender, served alongside jasmine rice dotted with corn and sauced with a light poblano cream sauce. It was probably even better than the barbacoa I could get from the (mediocre, I'll grant) food cart down the street.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Not every meal was as good as that one, and Tempo could do with a bit more variety each week. But the fact remains: A mix of regional kitchens, multiparty shipping logistics, and modified atmosphere packaging had colluded to create a situation I still find a little bit marvelous. A week's worth of still-fresh meals arrived at my door from far away, ready to heat at my leisure as long as 10 days later—without resorting to a bunch of chemical preservatives. Wild! We should all be more amazed, more often.

Tempo stands among the best ready-to-heat, prepared meal subscriptions I've tried—and I've tried a lot of them. This can admittedly be a low bar. These remain reheated meals designed for maximum convenience. And at $11 to $13 a serving, they cost more than both frozen Stouffer's and cheap takeout.

But unlike cheap takeout, Tempo meals are composed in consultation with dietitians, and offer balanced macros that can be tailored to protein-forward and GLP-1 diets. Each is a simple and mostly wholesome meal portioned for a typical lunch. Most have a clearly delineated protein, starch, and veg. I and a colleague taking GLP-1 medication spent a week apiece tasting and testing a total of 14 Tempo meals. Here's how it went.

How Tempo Works

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

First things first: Yes, Home Chef is the Kroger meal kit. Tempo's parent company, Home Chef, was among the early entrants to meal kit subscriptions, founded more than a decade ago in Chicago. The brand was snapped up by supermarket giant Kroger in 2018. But the production facilities remain independent, and lately I've noticed fewer Kroger stores stocking Home Chef in their deli departments.

Tempo is a spin-off brand and service from Home Chef, geared toward offering tailored mail-order diet plans. When you go to the Tempo website, after offering up your zip code and email address, you'll be asked a short series of questions about what you want out of life: whether diet plans or ingredients you hope to avoid.

Meal cost is between $11 and $13 a serving, depending on how many meals you want delivered each week, plus $11 a week in shipping. Usually, the introductory week costs significantly less, with additional military and student discounts also available. Generally, the first package arrives about a week after you sign up. You can choose which day of the week your first order will arrive, and this will remain consistent on subsequent weeks.

Once refrigerated, the meals remain good for seven to 10 days, with expiration dates stamped on each box. This longevity is mostly due to the modified atmosphere packaging technology that flushes out oxygen and replaces it with other gases carefully calibrated to help prevent spoilage. This tech has improved significantly in recent decades, leading to longer shelf lives in supermarket items and in prepared meals like these.

Pro-Protein Meals

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Like a lot of meal kits these days, Tempo caters especially to those looking to make sure they get their protein on—and who don't want to overdo it on carbs. Among the 25 or so meals available each week, as many as two-thirds of the Tempo meals might be marked “protein-packed,” with more than 30 grams of protein. Vegetarians might only find a single meal or two: This is a meat-eater's kit.

Mostly, Tempo's meals take traditional middle-American form: a big prot

Tempo Prepared Meal Subscription Review (2026): Surprisingly Tasty | WIRED