Food With Care

Food With Care is a Florida meal delivery company based in Orlando that sends frozen, fully cooked meals you heat in the microwave. It is not a meal kit and there's nothing to cook: the company says that "Since 1998, Food With Care, Inc. has provided home-delivered meals to Florida communities statewide," and that its meals are "made by our chefs and created in coordination with a registered dietitian." If you live outside Florida, this one isn't for you. If you're in the state and need meals flagged for a specific diet, it's worth a call.

The company calls itself "The Company With A Heart," and its stated mission is "To provide a choice in meals for populations that often have no choices, and then to develop the best quality and nutritious meals we can." A longer mission statement on the homepage promises "chef-inspired, restaurant-quality meals tailored to customer-selected preferences, delivered with exceptional care." Those are the company's own words, and they set the tone for a small regional operator rather than a national subscription brand.

How ordering works

The website is short and works more like a brochure than a shop. There is no online cart, no plan picker and no weekly menu to click through. Instead, the site offers downloadable menus in English and Spanish, a downloadable nutritional information sheet, and an ordering page where existing customers can submit changes to their menu selection. Everything else runs through contact: the phone line at 407.657.3880, the toll-free number 1.877.578.9938, a fax number and an email link.

That means the practical questions a subscription service would answer on screen (how many meals you can order at once, how often deliveries come, whether you can pause) are not answered on the website. The site's own advice, repeated on almost every page, is simply to contact the company for more information. For someone who prefers to talk an order through on the phone, that may be a plus. For someone comparing services late at night, it's a real gap.

The one ordering rule the site does spell out is about substitutions. The company says that "Because our nutritional analysis is done for each meal based on the specific components of that meal, we cannot change the vegetable or starch for a specific item." In other words, you choose from the menu as written.

What it costs

Food With Care does not publish prices on its website. There's no per-meal price, no weekly total, no delivery fee and no minimum order shown anywhere on the site. The only way to learn what the meals cost is to call or email, so treat any comparison with national services as incomplete until you've done that.

The food itself

The menu covers breakfast, lunch, dinner and soups. Each meal comes in one tray holding "the main entree or protein, a starch, and a vegetable," while beverages, desserts and bread or margarine are packed separately. The company says the vegetable and starch for each dish are "chosen for the purpose of maximizing the nutritional benefit," and each tray carries a nutritional label on top.

The diet flags are the heart of the service. The menu page says the company "can accommodate the need for a Diabetic, No-Added Salt, Low Fat/Cholesterol, Renal, or Puree diet." Items on the menu are marked with abbreviations: DB for Diabetic, NAS for No-Added Salt, LF/LC for Low Fat/Cholesterol, RS for Reduced Sodium and R for Renal. The about page describes each meal as being "assigned a dietary category based on the specifications of a registered dietitian."

Puree items sit in their own section of the menu, and the company adds a caveat worth reading closely: "Puree items are only suitable for a regular diet." So a pureed meal is not also flagged as diabetic, renal or low sodium.

The company also puts responsibility for the final choice with the customer. Its menu page says that although its items are "approved by our dietitian to fulfill the state requirements for these special diets, each individual may have needs that vary based on their specific medical conditions. It is up to each individual to review our nutritional information and determine which menu items are appropriate for their specific dietary needs." In the company's framing, the diet flag is a starting point, and the downloadable nutrition sheet is where the numbers live.

All meals are delivered frozen and are microwaveable. The site does not give heating times or portion weights on its website; those would be on the downloadable menu and nutrition sheet, if anywhere.

Where it delivers

Delivery is Florida only, described by the company as "Florida communities statewide." The distinctive part is how it gets there. The company says its "entire refrigerated and marked fleet is company owned and operated," and that it never uses "third party delivery services or subcontractors to deliver our meals." Its drivers "have successfully passed Level II Background and Drug Screenings," and they will "assist in putting your meals away into your freezer if needed."

That last detail matters for the people this kind of service tends to reach. A box left by a parcel carrier on a porch is one thing; a driver who carries frozen meals inside and helps stock the freezer is another, and it's a real advantage for an older customer or anyone with limited mobility. The site does not say which days of the week the fleet runs, how delivery is scheduled, or whether some parts of Florida are served less often than others.

What the site leaves open, and who it suits

A lot is left for the phone call. The website doesn't state prices, delivery fees, minimum orders, how often deliveries come, how to pause or stop, or how many meals you can order at a time. It doesn't explain whether you can mix items from different diet categories in one order. It also doesn't say whether the company works with insurance plans, Medicaid waivers or agencies that pay for meals on a client's behalf, even though its mission statement talks about "populations that often have no choices."

What it does offer is clear and a little old-fashioned in a good way: a Florida company with its own drivers, a menu flagged by diet, pureed options, Spanish-language menus, and a nutrition label on every tray. It suits a Florida household, particularly one caring for an older relative, that wants frozen, ready-to-heat meals with diet flags and would rather deal with a person than an app. It suits less well anyone who wants to see prices before calling, anyone outside Florida, and anyone who needs a pureed meal that also meets a sodium or renal limit, since the company says its puree items are for a regular diet only.