Is Thrive Market Worth It? My In-Depth Thrive Market Review

If you’ve seen ads for Thrive Market and are curious about what it is and if it’s worth the membership, check out our in-depth and honest review! I cover things like shopping, shipping, product quality, pricing, and whether I think it’s worth the annual membership or not.

If you’ve heard people talking about Thrive Market or have seen ads pop up online and wonder what it’s all about, this post is an in-depth and honest Thrive Market review to help you decide if it’s a good option or not.

I have been curious about Thrive Market for a while and wondered if it was something that would help me with meal planning and saving money on groceries, especially allergy-friendly food (which can get pricey).

So I decided to try it out for myself and do my own Thrive Market review to see if it was worth it or not!

This post is NOT sponsored by Thrive Market in any way, I paid for everything I purchased. However, this post does contain affiliate links for Thrive Market and other companies and products.

This review was born out of my own curiosity and deciding that I wanted to create an unsponsored review of Thrive Market with my personal experience on Thrive Market as a shopper.

This is a pretty in-depth review with all of my completely honest thoughts, so it is a rather long post. But I did try to cut out any fluff and info that I didn’t think would be important.

At the end of this post, I have a long section with my thoughts on specific Thrive Market-branded items I ordered. If you’re curious about what I bought and what I thought, make sure to scroll down to that section!

To make this easier to navigate, I offer takeaways for most of the sections and a summary of the pros and cons at the end. Here’s a table of contents to help as well!

What is Thrive Market?

Thrive Market is an online membership-based health food/grocery store with an emphasis on non-GMO, natural, healthy, ethically sourced, organic foods, and/or sustainable products.

Their goal is to make healthy and sustainable food accessible to everyone, so they offer savings incentives (more on that below) and they allow people to apply for a free membership if they are a family in need/low-income family, are a first responder, veteran, nurse, teacher, or student.

This kind of reminds me of those paid membership health food co-ops I went to a few times as a kid. Except this is online rather than in-person, and the funds aren’t kept locally, although they do give back to charities.

How does Thrive Market work?

Thrive Market is membership-based, so you need to have a membership in order to shop and order products. So far, you can’t really see the membership pricing options without adding an email address, which is slightly annoying.

The website states that the membership fee is to help cut the retail middleman (along with the retail markup). As well as to help support their charitable endeavors, such as free memberships to families in need and food donations.

How much is the membership?

As of the writing of this post, they have several membership options available:

• Free 30-day membership trial (I chose this option since I just wanted to test things out and not commit to a full year)
• Annual: $60 per year (free gift + cancel for refund within 30 days)
• Monthly: $12 per month (cancel any time)

Does Thrive Market offer sales and discounts?

Even though Thrive Market charges membership fees, they do try to offset that by regularly having sales, free gifts with annual memberships (only for annual memberships), occasional coupon codes, price matching, and cash-back offers on certain items similar to other grocery store loyalty programs.

They also offer additional savings with auto-ship similar to other stores offering small discounts when you opt-in to auto-ship (like Amazon). And occasionally they will offer Thrive Cash for reviewing newly released items.

Thrive Market also offers a savings guarantee for annual memberships: If you don’t make your annual membership fee back in savings by the end of your membership year, we’ll automatically give you the difference in Thrive Market credit after you renew.

The savings is calculated based on the difference in Thrive Market’s selling price vs the MSRP of the item. It is not calculated based on Thrive Market prices vs other store prices. So that’s something to keep in mind as well if your local stores offer products at a lower price.

They also send out sale alerts on products on your favorites list. For example, I have some Atlantic salmon on my favorites list and I just got an email today that it’s on sale. Which is a nice feature!

They also do offer one-time discounts and incentives, like 30% off your first order + a free gift when you join. But keep in mind it’s just the first order you place and not every order.

All of those things sound amazing, but there are limitations to certain programs they offer, such as price matching that can cut into some of the money you might save. I explain more on that a bit further down.

Does Thrive Market accept EBT?

March 2024 update: Thrive Market is now an approved vendor for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) EBT payments! Check out the Thrive Market announcement page for limitations and how to set up an EBT card for payment.

In 2019, the USDA created a SNAP online purchasing program, and Thrive Market is now listed as an approved vendor for SNAP/EBT purchases.

My experience with Thrive Market

Early expectations

I decided to jump into a 30-day free trial membership with Thrive Market to try it out and see if it was worth an annual membership. I had no experience with it other than seeing some ads online and asking people in my Facebook group what their experiences were.

Going into my ordering experience I was really hoping they had certain food items I was looking for that I couldn’t find in my local stores. Specifically: Daiya grilling cheese or feta cheese, Enjoy Life rice milk chocolate chips or white chocolate chips, Ritual Zero Proof, San-J soy-free pea sauce, packages of tteokbokki, etc.

I didn’t realize at the time that Thrive Market doesn’t sell refrigerated items, just shelf-stable and frozen items. So they didn’t have the Daiya cheeses I was looking for. But they also didn’t have any of the other specific shelf-stable items I was looking for.

They do seem to have more options than Vitacost because Thrive Market ships frozen items, and Vitacost only ships shelf-stable foods.

Overall, they still had a good selection of allergy-friendly items, just not the ones I had my heart set on, which was disappointing.

Getting started with a membership

The membership sign-up was pretty easy, although it was a little annoying that they didn’t show the membership prices up front without adding an email first and they took you through a survey about your shopping habits (you can skip this early on).

I liked the option for a 30-day free trial, I did this since I don’t want to commit to a year membership if I don’t end up liking the selection or prices.

The new member shopping quiz was slightly annoying since I wanted to get straight to picking out what we could have. We have so many food allergies, intolerances, and restrictions that I didn’t want to fiddle with the survey, but I went with it anyway.

But the new member survey does help them identify and label products for easier selection, so it can be a good thing.

After the survey, they automatically add things to your cart they think you’ll like. Which I didn’t like since I preferred to pick my own stuff and didn’t want or need them to add stuff I didn’t pick myself. But I understand why they do that to get people started. I ended up removing pretty much everything out of the cart to start over.

Browsing through, I was a little disappointed they didn’t have a lot of the things I was looking for or hoping for. But I was pleasantly surprised that they still had a good selection of products and even had non-alcoholic wines available, including some individual ones for testing out before buying a full-sized bottle.

Takeaways: getting set up for a membership is easy and they have a 30-day free trial, which I loved. The new member questionnaire and adding suggested items to my cart wasn’t something I was interested in but might be helpful for people looking for help with ideas.

Product pricing

The prices aren’t too bad, but I wasn’t blown away by them. I can get most of the same stuff at our local Walmart for about the same prices or even less. The difference in prices are a lot more drastic when it comes to the meat, like the poultry, for similar cuts and types (like organic or free range).

Here is an example of the price comparisons below to the same products on Thrive Market to the exact items in my local Walmart (please note the prices on the right or for my local Walmart, the prices may differ at your Walmart depending on where you are located).

Thrive Market does offer a price match program however to help with this, but there are limitations to their price matching program (I have more on that farther down in the post). The price matching works for brand names but I’m not sure if price matching works for the Thrive Market branded items since I’m not sure they are sold anywhere else.

I decided to order the Blake’s granola bars specifically to try out their price matching since I knew that my local Walmart had them for a little over $1 cheaper.

Takeaways: the pricing seems comparable to my local Walmart, except for the meat and seafood. I think I still prefer shopping in-person locally vs trying to price match for Thrive Credit.

I added a full price breakdown and comparison below for anyone who wants to get into the nitty gritty of the product pricing in my order!

My thoughts on the shopping and ordering process

Overall the shopping experience on Thrive Market was good. I do love that when browsing, you can see the allergy labels on each item without having to click through. That makes it a lot easier to see what’s dairy free, peanut free, etc.

I was surprised to see that the frozen orders and regular grocery orders have completely different shipping costs and limits, but it makes sense since they have to ship them separately.

Frozen orders must exceed $65 in order to place a frozen box order, and you have to pay for frozen shipping ($19.95) unless you spend $120 on frozen items, then it’s free.

Once you place your order, they automatically add your order to the autoship section. I didn’t like this, so I had to go into the auto-ship section of my account and remove everything from it since I didn’t plan on autoshipping everything I had just ordered.

This might be a great convenience for some people, but I prefer shopping when I need things, I rarely do auto-ship on anything, so I don’t like that it automatically added things from my first order to auto-ship for me. On my second order, it didn’t automatically add things to auto-ship, so I think that was just something it did on my first order.

I think there was a place in the cart to remove everything from being added to auto-ship automatically, but I didn’t see it in time and once I placed my order I had to go into the auto-ship section and remove the 20+ items I had just ordered.

Takeaways: the website is easy to navigate and shop on. A few annoyances (like the new member questionnaire and my first order being added to auto-ship), but overall their website is fast, well organized, and the shopping is easy. I was disappointed that they didn’t have some of the specific things I was looking for and they don’t sell chilled items, just shelf-stable and frozen.

My thoughts on Thrive Market shipping

I placed my first Thrive Market order on Sunday 12/31/23, New Year’s Eve. I just happened to decide to order that day and decided to see how the shipping would work for orders placed on a weekend with a holiday.

I got both my grocery box and frozen box on January 5th, so the shipping for both only took a few days since they both shipped on January 2nd, the first business day after the New Year holiday.

The stuff in the grocery box was packed very well, I ordered quite a bit of stuff and they packed it all in, maximizing space, and wrapping fragile items and glass bottles thoroughly so they didn’t break.

I had a few issues with the frozen box though. They included quite a bit of dry ice and the dry ice made some of the plastic around my bacon and salmon brittle, and made the bacon brittle as well. My bacon was broken into pieces, I think from the box being dropped by the shippers, since the bacon was near the bottom of the box, and the packaging was torn open as well.

A couple of pieces of my salmon were ripped open and broken as well, but not as much as the bacon.

Other than the frozen box getting too cold and breaking some of the food, it was packaged well with sustainable insulation. There was a lot of dry ice in the box, so there was no danger of anything melting, especially since it was cold in our area.

The beef hamburger patties we ordered looked old-ish and freezer-burned and tasted old as well when I cooked them. I don’t think that had anything to do with the shipping (except for the freezer burn maybe). The rest of the frozen items weren’t freezer-burned.

But we went ahead and got a refund on both the broken bacon and the old-tasting burger patties. Which leads us to the next topic: my experience with customer service, refunds, and price matching.

Takeaways: the Thrive Market boxes are packed very well and the shipping is pretty quick. My second order was delayed slightly, but only by a few days. My only complaint is the problem I had with my frozen box and my bacon being super cold from the dry ice and shattering. The grocery box was packed very well.

Customer service, refunds, and price matching

Refunds for damaged or bad items

Since I had a couple of messed up items (broken bacon and old-tasting burgers) and a price match, I went to try out the Thrive Market customer service.

Getting the refund on my bacon and beef was also super quick and easy with their chatbot (Olive). It didn’t ask for me to send photos or anything of the damage (I had taken photos in case it was needed), and they immediately refunded me for the bacon in the form of Thrive Market gift card codes and also added $5 Thrive Cash to my account.

I would prefer to have a debit card refund on the damaged and poor-quality items since the refund has to be spent at Thrive Market as a gift card. I wasn’t too fussed about it since it was just a couple of items, not all of them, and about $30. But if it had been a lot more damage or more money, I definitely wouldn’t have been happy with a gift card refund vs a debit card refund.

Takeaways: getting refunds for damaged or bad items is easy through their customer service chatbot Olive. However, the refunds are given out as gift card codes, not actual cash refunds, so that’s something to keep in mind.

Price matching (Price Guarantee Program)

For the price matching on my Blake’s granola bars, it asked for the link to the website page where the product is listed for less and my order number (I sent a link to Walmart.com where it’s listed at my local price). And the chatbot said it would take 24 hours for a customer service rep to look everything over.

Within 24 hours, I got an email from a customer service rep asking me for the link for the lower-priced item, and I was given a price match fairly quickly (within 2 hours) in the form of Thrive Cash to use later.

The Thrive Cash price match did have an expiration of 30 days, so just keep that in mind when planning on doing price matching. The Thrive Cash automatically applies to the cart whenever I check out again, so I won’t have to add a gift card code like I do with the refund gift card codes.

When I put in my second order, I applied my Thrive Cash plus 2 gift card codes from my refund, so it doesn’t look like they limit how many refund/gift card codes you can use/stack in an order.

Takeaways on the customer service: The customer service was fast and painless, and the chatbot on their site works great for refunds on damaged products. Communicating with customer service and getting what I needed taken care of went very smoothly. They have great customer service!

Limitations to price matching

Just be aware that price matching isn’t going to work for Thrive Market brand items since the price matching must be the exact same brand, size, etc. Since Thrive Market brands are exclusive to their own store and are rarely sold anywhere else (you can sometimes find one-off Thrive Market items on Amazon for high prices), you wouldn’t be able to price match their brand with any other brand.

For example: I ordered a 10-ounce bottle of Thrive Market organic coconut aminos for $6.99. A 10-ounce bottle of Big Tree Farms coconut aminos is listed on the Vitacost website for $6.18. I can’t do a price match for that item on the difference since it must be the exact same brand, and the Thrive Market coconut aminos aren’t sold anywhere else.

The price difference isn’t huge in this example, so it’s not likely going to be a big deal anyway, especially if they have a sale. For what it’s worth, Vitacost’s had a 12% sitewide sale on the coconut aminos when I looked plus their autoship savings are even more, and they also offer free shipping on orders over $49.

For items with much larger price differences (such as the Thrive Market branded frozen meats), you won’t be able to do any price matching with comparable products or brands and the difference can be quite a bit. For some people, this won’t be a big deal, but for others who might be on a tight grocery budget looking to save money where they can, this might be something to keep in mind.

I’m sharing this not to dissuade people from using Thrive Market, but I want people to be aware of the restrictions and limitations of the price guarantee program if you plan to rely on Thrive Market’s price matching to save money. You likely won’t be able to use it at all on Thrive Market brand items. They also only price match off of the auto-ship prices (when available) on their website vs the retail price.

Takeaways: the price matching was pretty easy for me with customer service. There are limitations to the price matching program, however, that customers need to be aware of if they plan on price matching a lot of items in their order.

Is Thrive Market good for people with food allergies?

Thrive Market does offer quite a few brands that are great for people with multiple food allergies, such as Daiya, Enjoy Life, Sunbutter, Free2B, Bob’s Red Mill, etc. so there are plenty of good options available for allergy-friendly foods.

I loved that you could easily see foods marked with my specified allergy/dietary need labels for each product, and it’s easy to sort products by dietary and food allergy need when searching for things.

I don’t think these labels include cross-contamination, so always check the label on the product itself before ordering.

But I also noticed that there aren’t tons of options for certain food brands, like some of the Enjoy Life products. Or refrigerated items like Violife or Daiya cheeses. They only have shelf-stable products or frozen, but no refrigerated items.

So in that way, it is limited for selection. I was looking for Daiya feta cheese for my feta pasta recipe and I had to order it from PlantX since I couldn’t find it on Thrive Market.

Also, some of the Thrive Market branded food items are allergy-friendly and some aren’t since they are made in a lot of different facilities. So if you have multiple food allergies, you’ll need to read the labels on each Thrive Market item before purchasing since some of them are made in facilities with peanuts, dairy, wheat, etc. and some aren’t.

Overall, aside from my disappointment that their selection of certain items wasn’t better, they do seem to have a good selection of allergy-friendly items in their store. And it looks like they regularly add new items as well.

Takeaways: they have a good selection for allergy-friendly items, and I like the labeling. But the Thrive Market brands often have cross-contamination so pay attention to labels on those items.

In-depth price breakdown and price comparisons for my orders

Since I’m a detail-oriented numbers person, I decided to do an in-depth breakdown of the price comparisons of my orders. If you like to get nerdy with numbers, you’ll love this section! If you’re not into this, feel free to skip this part and head straight to my final thoughts below.

I’m editing our post to add a price breakdown of my order, I wanted to add this when I initially published this review, but I knew it would take me a little while to get all the numbers crunched along with my other work, so I’m adding it afterward.

If you click through this link you can see the full PDF on our site for a price comparison of the items I ordered from Thrive Market with comparable (or the same) items elsewhere. Since the majority of the items I ordered were Thrive Market brand, it took some digging to find comparable brand name products.

I decided to also include the prices of my second order in this as well. My second order from Thrive Market was all name-brand items that I wanted to try and couldn’t find at my local stores, like the Free2B caramel cups, Elmhurst sour cream, and Caliwater.

Most of these number comparisons don’t take into account the shipping costs, sales, coupons, Thrive Cash (cash back), refunds, auto-ship, or price matching. They are just the regular prices on the items to give you a good idea of what price comparisons look like for a fair representation of products, except for the liquid multivitamin where I noted the sale price (the price I paid).

Because some of the Thrive Market brand items aren’t the exact size as their comparable name-brand counterparts, I broke down the price comparison to price per ounce or price per pound.

Surprisingly, out of the 33 items I got from my 2 orders, 18 items were priced less on Thrive Market and 15 items were priced more on Thrive Market. I also got refunds on 2 items and price matched 2 items as well.

Best deals from my Thrive Market orders based on my price comparisons:

• Mary Ruth Organics liquid multivitamins
• Matcha latte powder
• Powdered coconut creamer
• Organic chocolate truffles (excellent truffles, by the way!)

Worst deals on my orders (based on my price comparisons):

• Wild caught sockeye salmon
• Grass fed beef sticks
• Gluten free brownie mix

How do I cancel my Thrive Market membership?

For this review, I just got the 30-day free trial membership with Thrive Market. I went to cancel my membership before it charged me for an annual one, and I couldn’t cancel from auto-renewing on my account page.

I had to look it up on their help area to see how to cancel my membership or auto-renewal and it looks like you have to start an online chat with them to even do that.

It’s frustrating that they don’t have an easy way to cancel your membership on your account page and you have to contact their chat in order to cancel.

I contacted the chatbot to cancel my membership and it asked me some questions about why I wanted to cancel then it connected me with an agent. They again asked why I wanted to cancel and they offered me some coupons and a discount on my annual membership, so I decided to get the discounted membership.

Takeaway: if you want to cancel your Thrive Market membership or the 30-day free trial, you’ll have to contact chat and member support to actually cancel your membership. You can’t do it from your account page.

Is a Thrive Market membership worth it?

The million-dollar question: do I think a Thrive Market annual membership is worth the price? I think it heavily depends on where you live and the cost of food in your area, and your personal grocery needs.

Personally I don’t think this is worth it for us to pay an annual membership when I can save money in-store for the same or similar items, even with the cashback, sales, and membership savings guarantee that Thrive Market offers. My local stores are pretty good about stocking certain allergy-friendly items we use and at lower prices, and the ones I wanted specifically (Enjoy Life white chocolate chips or Daiya feta cheese blocks) aren’t available on Thrive Market anyway.

And since the price matching program has limitations and is only paid out in store credit (Thrive Cash), I prefer to buy locally at the lower prices without having to order first and then try to price match afterward for store credit.

I can get nearly everything I need at our local stores at lower prices immediately, with no waiting a few days for shipping or asking for price matching for Thrive Cash.

However, I do think a Thrive Market membership is worth it if you live in an area where the cost of food is high, or you live in an area where you don’t have access to healthier or allergy-friendly food options. Or you need to have staples on auto-ship to help save time for meal planning, etc. if you have a very busy schedule.

Ultimately I think whether it’s worth it depends on the different needs of each person or family and I recommend doing a 30-day free trial on the Thrive Market membership to scope out their product offerings, sales, and product prices, and see if it’s a good fit for your family’s grocery needs.

I’m really glad they offer this 30-day trial option for people to try! I was able to determine that this probably isn’t a fit for my family, but there are a lot of people who love Thrive Market and it works well for them, so it is definitely worth looking into and giving it a test run.

Takeaways: I don’t think it’s worth it for my family to have an annual membership to Thrive Market, but this may be a great option for your family to save money on healthy food and products. I recommend doing a 30-day free trial to test it out.

Edit after adding price breakdown: I was surprised to see that when I did the price breakdown and comparisons, Thrive Market did end up beating a lot of prices from other retailers like Amazon, Vitacost, and even some of my local stores. BUT I don’t buy many of those products very often and the products I regularly need (Authentic Foods sorghum flour, Enjoy Life white chocolate chips, Daiya feta cheese, etc.) aren’t available on Thrive Market. So I still don’t think it’s worth it for me to pay for an annual membership. But it might be a great idea for others depending on your needs!

My thoughts on the Thrive Market brand items I purchased

If you’re curious about what we ordered and what I think of our haul, read on!

When I put in my first Thrive Market order, I ordered mostly Thrive Market branded items since I wanted to get a feel for their brand of products and see how they compare to name brands for similar food items.

Here are my thoughts on the Thrive Market branded items I ordered (the good, the okay, and the gross).

The foods we liked or loved

Organic chocolate truffles: these are excellent! The chocolate is not overly sweet, it is more of a darker chocolate. But the chocolate is incredibly smooth, silky, and delicious. There is no dairy in these, but there is a may-contain statement for dairy and multiple allergens so my kids couldn’t share these.

Original beef sticks: these are great quality! I liked the taste of these and they aren’t overly greasy or oily like some other brands.

Zesty lime grain-free tortilla chips: these ones are good, I’d buy them again! They have a good flavor and crunch, similar to the Siete grain-free tortilla chips.

Gluten free brownie mix (new product): I tried this mix and made it dairy-free and replaced the eggs it called for with flax eggs and they still turned out nice and fudgy. I prefer my brownies to be more sweet, so I like my homemade brownies a bit better than these (I’m biased). But these were fudgy and not very sweet so a good option if you’re looking for a healthier brownie. And they still turned out well made with flax eggs, though I did have to bake it quite a bit longer than the instructions said. My kids couldn’t eat these since they had allergens and cross-contamination warnings on the label.

Organic instant coffee: the Thrive Market instant coffee is pretty good, it’s freeze-dried granules and is smooth without a lot of bitterness. It dissolves well in cold water and tastes good hot or cold. I liked this one, it’s very similar to the Mt. Hagen organic instant coffee.

Kettle-cooked potato chips (salt and vinegar): these are delicious! We all loved these ones, they are similar to the Kettle brand chips but sliced thinner, which I like.

Mushroom and herb chicken sausage: These pre-cooked sausages are delicious and perfect for quick and easy meals when I’m short on time. I can’t always find great-tasting, pre-cooked chicken sausage that fits our allergies in my town, so these were nice to get. I’d definitely order them again.

Dairy-free ranch dressing: this one tastes good, although I like my recipe for ranch better. This one reminds me of Sir Kensington’s dairy-free ranch, but the Thrive Market ranch isn’t as thick. The Thrive Market ranch does have eggs in it but no soybean oil or dairy, it’s Whole30 certified.

Pederson Natural Farms uncured bacon: even though this one wasn’t a Thrive Market branded item, I wanted to share it since it was delicious. Even though the bacon was broken, we baked it up like we normally cook bacon and it was incredible. I loved this bacon!

Coconut milk matcha latte powder: when made according to the package directions, I didn’t like this matcha latte mix at all. But I played around with it and it is yummy when I make it my way. This doesn’t dissolve well in cool water, so you’ll need hot water for this drink even if you want it iced. Their package says to mix 3 Tablespoons of powder with 8 ounces of water, which was too strong and bitter to me. So I adjusted the recipe by mixing 2 Tablespoons of matcha latte powder with about 4 ounces of hot oat milk then adding ice to make 8 ounces and a splash of maple syrup. Much better! This mix has both matcha powder and hojicha powder so this drink ends up being a little more brownish green than bright green.

Canned Atlantic salmon: the Thrive Market canned salmon is moist and tender and it tastes good. I’d buy this again. I don’t cook fish a ton, so this is a good way to get fish on a regular basis in an easy way (I think this tastes better than canned tuna).

Canned chunk albacore tuna: this tastes good, however it is unsalted. Great for low sodium diets, I like a little more salt in my tuna, but that’s easy to add myself. It seems like good quality tuna and doesn’t have veggie broth added like some other brands (which usually includes soy).

Frozen wild-caught sockeye salmon: the frozen salmon was pretty good. It’s not the absolute best I’ve ever had, but it is better than some of the frozen stuff we get here locally. And even though the salmon filets got very frozen by the dry ice and I was worried about freezer burn, they still turned out well. I cooked them with a sweet chili chickpea miso glaze. I think I personally prefer Atlantic salmon to sockeye salmon for the milder taste and texture, but this frozen sockeye salmon was good as far as frozen salmon goes.

Coconut aminos no-soy teriyaki sauce: both the Thrive Market coconut aminos and the coconut amino teriyaki sauce were good! They are saltier and more savory than the Coconut Secret coconut aminos that we usually use. I think the coconut amino teriyaki sauce from Thrive Market tastes closer to real teriyaki sauce than the Coconut Secret brand.

Ground pork: this was good, it tasted like other brands of ground pork we have used. I usually make our Asian pork meatballs whenever we buy ground pork!

Organic smoky Cajun spice: this Cajun spice blend tastes good and I love that it’s smoky. It’s a different blend than the Tony’s we usually use, but it’s delicious. I recommend this for anyone who likes Cajun spice blends.

Thrive Market brand items we weren’t fans of

First Light Farms Wagyu beef burgers: ok so technically this also wasn’t a Thrive Market branded item, but I wanted to share this one. I mentioned earlier that I had some issues with the frozen box. These burger patties looked freezer-burned when we got them. I still cooked these and they tasted like they were old, and were brown on the outside before I even cooked them (they weren’t expired). Not sure if it was the storage at Thrive Market before they even shipped, or the fault of the original supplier. This was the biggest bummer out of my Thrive Market order since I was pretty excited to try these. I went ahead and got a refund for these.

Original organic oat milk (aka oat beverage): this is super simple oat milk, so it isn’t very creamy, there is quite a bit of sediment, and has an oaty bitterness. This is probably a great option if you’re looking for very natural and plain oat milk, but I prefer my oat milk more creamy and smooth.

Powdered coconut creamer: this didn’t seem to add much creaminess to my coffee. I needed to add extra creamer above the 1 Tablespoon recommended on the package for 8 ounces of liquid. It has a nice taste with vanilla and coconut sugar but doesn’t seem to dissolve very well even in hot liquids. It would probably be good 3 Tablespoons per cup, or added with some oat milk. Again, probably a good option for people wanting something very natural, but this isn’t a product that I’d purchase again. My coffee is creamier with just my favorite oat milk added.

Banana munchies (nacho flavored): these were just ok, not my favorite flavor. It didn’t taste much like nacho compared to other dairy free nacho-flavored snacks I’ve had, and I thought the banana slices were a bit too thick since I like plantain and banana chips to be thinner sliced and crispier.

Packaged cooked quinoa mix: this smelled odd right out of the package but was better once it was warmed up with some dairy free butter and salt. I think I prefer hot homemade quinoa, but I do like the convenience of this if it didn’t have some grit. I bit into some grit and dirt in this quinoa, which was a turn-off.

Coconut wraps: these are ok, they are just like the NuCo brand of coconut wraps. Great for people with allergies to multiple things or people going grain-free, but I’m not a huge fan of the texture (it’s closer to fruit leather texture than tortillas). The Thrive Market coconut wraps are pretty similar to the NuCo coconut wraps so if you like those you’ll probably like the ones from Thrive Market.

Canned coconut milk: if you’re looking for a very natural option that doesn’t have stabilizers in it, this is probably a great product for you. Because it’s natural, it needs blended up if you don’t want it separating. I personally prefer the cartons of Thai Kitchen canned coconut milk because it’s more homogenous and isn’t as separated, plus it’s thicker.