General FAQs
What is Real Plans?
Unlike meal delivery kits, Real Plans is a highly customizable meal planning tool for people who want to cook.
Real Plans tailors to your family’s specific size, diets, tastes, and preferences—giving you a schedule of recipes and an interactive shopping list so you can streamline the process to getting wholesome, home-cooked food on your table.
Unlike common, static PDF meal planners, Real Plans remains flexible to changing tastes and schedules—no matter who you’re feeding, how often you plan to cook, and what you feel like eating this week.
We also provide you with over 1600 kitchen-tested recipes to get started (and many more to add from your favorite food bloggers), so you don’t have to scour the internet for inspiration.
How long does it take to cook the meals?
Real Planning tip number one: be realistic about how often you’ll cook. Time in the kitchen depends on how many recipes you’re game to prep.
In Real Plans settings, you can specify how many breakfasts, lunches, and dinners you’d like included each week.
You can always filter for “simple recipes.”
Batch cooking, yummy leftovers and the occasional cooking holiday (ahem, takeout + wine) encouraged.
What is the average food budget for Real Plans?
Real Plans is used globally and costs of food vary greatly country to country, state to state. That said, we love happy bellies and happy wallets.
We’ve built a pricing filter that allows you to choose recipes based on cost and have a recipe tag for “budget meals.”
Savvy Real Planners find they save money by selecting a realistic number of meals they’ll cook in a week and because ingredients map to a specific recipe, food actually gets cooked (and gobbled).
Less food waste equals less money wasted.
Our Facebook group has some pretty clutch budget-tips and a boatload of ideas for swapping out pricey ingredients.
Can I gift Real Plans to someone else?
Yes. At checkout, you will be asked to provide a recipient email address and gift message.
You can choose the date you’d like the gift sent and you’ll only pay for the first subscription period. After that, it’s up to your pal to keep up the planning and add her own payment method.
You’ll be sent a confirmation email once your order is complete.
I don’t live in the US, will the recipes still work for me?
We have customers from all over the world!
Your plan will be generated using seasonal recipes for your hemisphere.
And, you can choose metric measurements if you’d like.
How can I contact your Customer Success team?
You are welcome to send us an email on support at realplans dot com and one of our agents will be available to help you as soon as possible.
Diet FAQs
I am gluten free but the rest of my family isn’t. Can I see all options within my plan type?
THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST PARTS OF REAL PLANS. Sorry for the all caps, but this is our superpower. Your preferences will be marked as a filter called ‘My Diet’. That said, you can always add recipes that fall outside of your diet. ie. if you’re dying for spaghetti Wednesdays but doing paleo the rest of the week, you can search and add the best gluteny recipes we’ve got. We’ll even add it weekly if you’d like (seriously, no judgements). This is mega helpful for dealing with families with a variety of food preferences and restrictions.
Can I adjust the number of servings?
You decide how many people you want each meal to serve when you sign up. All meals will default to that serving size, but if you’re having guests over or the kiddos are at a friend’s house for dinner you can increase or decrease the number of servings as needed. The recipe, ingredients and shopping list will automatically update.
Can I change my plan to a different diet type after I subscribe?
Yes, and as often as you like. We hope the recipes in your planner inspire you to love new types of food, meet personal goals or improve health challenges. Whenever you update your food groups and ingredient exceptions in the settings tab, Real Plans will put together new meal plans for the following four weeks.
I have a food allergy. Can I customize my meal plan to exclude this item?
Yes. Allergies were one of the reasons we created Real Plans—they can throw a real wrench in everyday cooking. You can remove any food group you’re allergic to (or just don’t like) in the settings tab.
Do you have a meal plan to cater to my needs?
We love food tribes! When you first login you’ll pick a starting point: We have real food options including Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Paleo, Primal, Paleo (AIP), GAPS, Pescatarian, Keto or Vegetarian. From there, you can mix and match to meet your crazy little family’s needs: You can be Paleo but not eat beef. Traditional, but avoiding nightshades. Pescatarian, without the shellfish. Hate mushrooms? No biggie. MIL in town, taking tofu off the table? Done. You get the idea. We don’t want to bore you with the technical details, but we’re pretty darn proud of what our developers have accomplished—a planning machine that is quite literally tailored to just the way you like to eat.
Does Real Plans include breakfast menus?
It does! But, if your days start out like the tornadoes that ours do, you might not be up for cooking in the morning. In that case you can just add ingredients—milk, eggs, oats, etc—to your plan and they’ll automatically be added to your shopping list. That said, lots of Real Planners find cooking batch breakfasts and freezing them in single servings is a ridiculously easy time-saver.
Shopping FAQs
Does the shopping list only include items in the recipes or can I add my own? What about items I need to restock regularly?
Yes! Food and other household items can be added directly to the list.
And, you can schedule ingredients to appear on your shopping list at regular intervals—milk weekly, bacon twice a month. You get it.
Can I change the day my week starts on?
You can choose the day you would like to start your week in your settings. So, if your CSA box arrives on a Wednesday or you do most of your grocery shopping on Sundays, you can plan accordingly.
Recipes FAQs
What about meatless Mondays or a slow cooker meal every Wednesday?
Ready to be a meal planning pro, are you? Love it. You can customize your schedule by meal size, main ingredient, prep time, tags, cuisine and origin.
Can I tell the planner which days to plan meals for?
Yes, you can plan your ideal week on the My Schedule page. You can choose exactly which days and meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner, extras) you’d like recipes scheduled for.
Do you have seasonal menus for the southern hemisphere?
All recipes are catalogued by season. Real Plans only picks recipes based on the season where you live—if you’re soaking up sun in Melbourne while someone else is shoveling snow in Boston, we’ve got your back.
How do I get the nutritional information?
Each recipe has nutritional information on the recipe card. You can read it just like any other nutritional label— calories, carbohydrates, fats, etc. in each serving.
Are the recipes new each week?
Yes, successful meal planning means keeping you from food boredom. So let’s say you eat chicken. We’ll mix up variations on roast chicken—one month it’ll be our Roast Garlic Chicken, and the next our Rosemary Roast Chicken. However, the more restrictive you make your diet, the more repetition you will find.
Billing FAQs
How do I get a refund?
If you are within the first 10 days and wish to be refunded, contact us via the leave a message button on the bottom right or email us support(at)realplans.com. The 10 day period begins on the initial date of purchase and after 10 days we cannot issue refunds. Renewal payments are non-refundable and you will have access to your account through the paid time frame.
If you purchased on iTunes, the payment was processed by Apple and we cannot refund you directly. To directly ask for a refund from Apple, please open your iTunes receipt. Apple usually sends the receipt within one or two days. On the receipt, click on the “Report a Problem” link in the “Item” column, right next to “Write a Review.” A new window will open where you can ask for a refund directly from Apple.
How much does Real Plans cost?
We are a subscription service so we automatically charge at every billing interval.
For regular plans, we have 3 options: monthly – $19, quarterly – $42 (translates to $14/mo) and annual – $84 (translates to $7/mo).
For Whole30, we have 3 options: monthly – $20, quarterly – $60 and annual – $99.
I’d like to try the menus for one month, then upgrade to the annual subscription if I like it. Is that possible?
Yes. You can manage your billing period by visiting your “My Account” page. Contact customer service if you need any additional help.
Can I cancel my subscription at any time?
YES. To cancel, simply follow this link and log in to your account if not already. You will have access to your plan for the remainder of the subscription cycle. Since renewals are not refundable, we suggest you cancel your subscription 2 working days before the renewal is due in order to make sure the cancellation is processed in time.
If you purchased from iTunes, you will need to manage your subscription through your iTunes account. See here for the latest updates from Apple on the process.
How secure is your website for sending my credit card number?
We are an authorize.net verified merchant and process thousands of transactions per year. We use 128-bit bank level security for all communications involving financial transactions. Also, realplans.com uses HTTPS for all communication. All your data is encrypted.
