Great Outdoors Food: Fuel for Your Next Adventure

We usually straddle our meals for before and after our adventures on the trail and just stick to snacking for a little energy boost.  However, seeing some of my fellow hikers’ delicious looking fare and enjoying that downtime in nature, I was curious to see how a full serving of food would impact our hiking experience.

Great Outdoors Food gave us a chance to ease into the idea of packing a trail lunch.

About Great Outdoors Food

Great Outdoors Food is an online site that allows users to build custom meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) suitable for an outdoor adventure.  After each meal selection is chosen, the food is individually packaged and labeled, and then shipped providing instant organization for trips as short as an afternoon to a multiple-week backpacking journey.

In addition to the custom meal builder, users can also simply order their favorite trail foods (Kind, Clif, Luna, and Backpackers Pantry are a few of the brands) to stock up.

How the Great Outdoors Food Meal Builder Works

1. Choose/name the meal you’d like to build (breakfast, lunch or dinner).

2. Choose your protein (vegetarian and meat options are available).

3. Choose your vegetable side (choices also include starches like potatoes and grains).

4. Choose condiments (sauces and spices).

5. Choose a beverage (packets that can be mixed with water).

6. Choose a dessert.

7. Choose a snack.

8. Add in hand wipes!

Notes: 

• As you make your choices, the items begin listing at the top of the screen allowing you to keep track of price and nutritional information.
• Users can choose to skip any portion of the meal.  No need to add a snack or dessert if you are not interested.
• Users can add more than one item (up to 10) from each category for a meal.
• Prices are shown under each item.
• Click on the item to learn about weight, size, and nutritional information.
• If you are not interested in building a meal, but want food for an outdoor adventure, simple visit the store section of the site, and you can stock up!
• All choices are non-perishable backpacking-type food, so there isn’t a worry about items spoiling. Some items require you to add water (and wait a designated amount of time to eat).

What’s to Love?

• I had a whole lot of fun deciding on what would go into our trail lunch! There is a huge variety of foods to choose from (in all categories), and I loved the opportunity to try something new.
• The navigation of the “meal builder” is clean and simple to use.  It’s easy to add or take away items as you figure out the meal that will work best for your adventure.
• Our food arrived quickly and was so nicely wrapped up and organized.  A packaging slip was included that outlined all of our food choices including the weight and nutritional information.
• I love that I had a full meal ready to go for our next hiking adventure.  All the work was done for us! I can imagine how easy it would be for a big multi-day excursion!
• Great Outdoors Food has so many quality items to choose from in many different categories.

What’s to be desired?

Bergen (2.5 years old) and I had a delicious trail lunch full of healthy food (and a few indulgences) thanks to Great Outdoors Food! We are very happy with the service and overall quality of our items.  The only thing I’d change would be some minor tweaking to the “meal builder” tool.  I wish it was possible to navigate back (with the back navigation arrow in my browser) to a food category.  For example, if I initially skip the “protein” section, but then change my mind and want to add an item, I found it tricky to go back without starting all over again.

How do you pack and organize food for outdoor adventures?

Disclosure: Thanks to Great Outdoors Food for providing us with a coupon code to try out their service.  As always, all opinions expressed here are my own. 

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