Gretchen’s Shoebox Express

Gretchens isn’t the best food but I always ordered with them because they were reliable and always fulfilled orders quickly. I had an event with 35 attendees and we ordered boxed lunches on a Friday for Monday delivery. They let me know on Sunday via email that they couldn’t fulfill the order because of a mechanical failure. No personal phone call. No backup plan for another caterer to help fulfill the order. No incentive for continuing to use them in the future. No class at all.
I’d hesitate before committing to use them again based on poor customer relations.

GRETCHEN’S SHOEBOX CATERING HAS GONE OUT OF BUSINESS. We have used them extensively for years at work, and were aghast to see when we last went to their website a few months ago to place an order that after much consideration they have decided to devote their energies in other directions and are no longer in business.

Just finished my chopped salad. After a week of takeout lunches, this was by far the best. I would definitely recommend them to others.

Unfortunately the salmon in my «Pacific Salmon Salad» box tasted like fishy soggy cardboard and the roasted potato tasted old as well. I ended up only eating the cucumber and greens. The fruit cup and bag of pita chips were standard, and the only highlight to this lunch box was the Schwartz Brothers brownie. Good thing I got this lunch box for free at work.

EXCELLENT, delightful delivery and the meals were just perfect for a mid day lunch surprise. I had the grinder box that had pop lit popcorn, apple slices, grapes, a chocolate chip cookie and a water. The grinder actually was pretty good as well.

I have ordered lunch, breakfast and snack orders from Gretchen’s over a dozen times for corporate events, meetings and happy hours. They rock in service, price and food quality.
Gretchen’s offers box lunches which include sandwiches, salads and wraps for lunch and a croissant breakfast sandwich, yogurt box and sunrise salad box for breakfast. They also have platters for events and snacks and desserts. They have a monthly special sandwich and salad box which is usually pretty tasty like a steak sandwich or a salmon salad. They have gluten free choices too.
The food isn’t gourmet, it’s on par with diner food or what a typical person would make at home in American cuisine for lunch or a snack. It works just fine for the market they are reaching, which is mainly corporate America.
For an event today, I ordered a couple of their meat and cheese trays which come with a selection of wheat and white buns, mayo and mustard (yellow and dijon), and a veggie tray with pickles, tomatoes, peppers and lettuce. I also ordered two crudite trays which come with a blue cheese dressing and cold hummus. The vegetables were all fresh and in great condition. Everything tasted fantastic.
When I order box lunches, they always arrive with silverware and a napkin along with a sticker on the box with the name of the lunch so it’s easy to tell which lunch is what.
When i order the sandwich platters, everyone raves over them. I add in bags of chips at $ 1 each, can’t beat that price.
The food is always gone in a matters of minutes, whether for a small meeting or for a crowd.
A couple times when I’ve called regarding an online order that I had to make a change to, their customer service reps made it happen for me even if it was on short notice.
Gretchen’s is always on time by being up to 1 hour early! They’ve never been late.
I’ve never had an order be incorrect or had anything arrive in poor condition.
You can order online up to the night before. Delivery is free.
Gretchen’s is owned by the same folks that own Daniel’s Broiler.

Gretchen’s delivers boxed lunches and breakfasts with a pretty large amount of choices of sandwiches and salads. You can easily accommodate most dietary needs or preferences, including gluten-​free.
The salmon salad is my favorite, though I’d like to know if it’s farmed salmon before I eat it again. The (regular, I haven’t tried the gluten-​free) bread that comes with the salads is perfect, and they bring butter! (You’ll start to see a theme in my reviews… I want butter or olive oil with my bread!)
The muffins are very much store-​bought types, nothing fancy. The cookies or brownies in the box lunches are always good.

Once or twice a month we have what is known as a «Lunch and learn» at work. Various vendor or contractors come in and give us the lowdown on what they do and provide so we can better service our customers. Because our vendor relationships specialist is a genius she also makes them bring us lunch.
We have had many pizzas and deli sandwiches in my time there… Aside from the company who brought in a catered lunch from the restaurant they also own in Enumclaw, our lunch from Gretchen is truly a standout.
They brought in a variety so we could choose from salads, wraps or sandwiches.
I went for the roast beef n cheddar and found the pickled onions or whatever it was that was on there to be a true delight that went well with the roast beef. Bottled water, gourmet popcorn, and a chocolate chunk cookies rounded out the meal.
Fun concept that caters to multiple tastes and provides a fun little complete meal for us to enjoy while we listen to the sales pitch and technical details of the vendor of the week.
I would use this service again and I certainly hope that a future vendor will consider it as well.
P. s. The little bag of mixed gourmet popcorn that came in the meal was impossible to open!

Like John L. before me, Gretchen’s was ordered in during a meeting I had near Seattle. It was filling but overall unimpressive; but perhaps that’s due to my specific lunch choice.
I had the Thai Chicken Wrap… it was OK, filling, but heavy on the cilantro, which I was not a huge fan of. Overall the Box Lunch was nice though. It came with a water, a bag of popcorn, some apple slices and a cookie! So I wasn’t hungry after not finishing my wrap.
I’d give them another try by probably order up a sandwich next time like the Brazilian Grilled Steak or the Cuban Pork sandwich. Both sound better in retrospect than what I had.

I’ve been a customer of Gretchen’s for about 5 years and they have never once been late for a delivery. The food is always high quality, well presented, and tasty. They have seasonal items that keep it interesting and after all these years, I’m still not sick of their regular menu.

Attended a meeting at work earlier this week with catered lunch from Gretchen’s. Basically, Gretchen’s is a box lunch service with plenty of salad and sandwich offerings to choose from.
Their box lunches are a bit pricey running about $ 12 – 14, but that is to be expected given that each box includes an entrée, water, fruit, dessert and utensils and that they are delivered.
I chose the chop chop salad ($ 13). The box was heavy when I got it. The bottle of water adds a lot of heft. The salad was tasty as it was full of grilled chicken breast, salami and cheese. The vinaigrette is the right dressing for this combination. Ranch would have been too heavy.
The extras are okay. The apple slices adds a little additional nutrition to the meal. The oatmeal cookie from Schwartz Brothers was tasty, though it seemed particularly floury. As for the roll (also from Schwartz), it was dry just like the ones in airline meals. I had to put plenty of butter to make it appetizing.
Given that catered lunches are mass produced meals, I have to rate them somewhat on a curve. The quality just is not quite as good as a made to order meal. But Gretchen’s rates pretty favorably as far as catered lunches goes in the area. The boxes include just about everything you expect aside from a towelette for messier fare.

Wow. I had their boxed lunch today and it was very well put together. Price is a bit high 10 – 12 bucks, but the delivered on time and the food was delicious!!!
I decided to go with Veggie spring rolls with peanut sauce… Yum! Freshly made and great combo of ingredients.

I just love this boxed lunch delivery company. We have had an account with them for YEARS and they are always on time with our order, the menu selections are perfect for a business lunch meeting, the fruit cups have a great variety. Try some of the vegan options like the Focaccia Margherita, It’s filling and has such a great flavor.
The Caesar salads have crisp croutons, plenty of dressing. Our business associates always compliment our choice when we use Gretchens for working meetings. Thank you for years of service Gretchens!

THIS IS AS GOOD AS IT GETS if you’re looking for a business lunch for vastly different preferences.
This is a personalized & filling meal that doesn’t leave me feeling weighed down or overly guilty after consuming their boxes. I had the maple glazed chicken box (very VERY recommended!) and the chicken fresca salad. Mmmm. Seriously a great company catering meal!

We had a company breakfast with the bagel platter. The scallion cream cheese is delicious and they should include more of it. The pesto cream cheese is pretty good, but a little heavy. The bagels are huge and I didn’t try the cranberry or regular cream cheese, jam or butter!

People seem to like these box lunches, so maybe I just got a bad one. It looked pretty, though. I had the BBQ chicken wrap, and while the flavor was all right, there was a weird taste of wet paper. I checked (over and over), but I hadn’t accidentally bitten off some of the wrap around the tortilla. So I ate half the wrap, then figured I’d try the brownie. It was was the worst brownie I’ve ever tasted in my entire life! It was a little dry, but the flavor was what I found memorable. At first, I just tasted cocoa, but then there was the flavor of Purina Dog Chow. It wasn’t strong, but it was detectable. And yes, I know what Purina Dog Chow tastes like because when I was a kid, I wanted to know what my parents were feeding the cats and dogs. And that’s a flavor that tends to stay with you.
I didn’t pay for this box out of my own pocket, but it’s too bad that it cost $ 13. If it had tasted good, then maybe, but this was pretty terrible, even for a free lunch. It’s pretty sad when the best part of a lunch is a little bag of Tim’s Cascade Potato Chips, and a pink bottle of water.

I’ve had the great pleasure to sample several of their box lunches… FABULOUS! I love, love, love the salads espeically the Asian Chkn and new veggie sandwich!
Also included in the meals, great quality cut fruit, delicious cookie and bottled water!
Don’t worry, no limpy veggies or old products used in your box lunches… ALLLLL fresh!

My office recently moved to a slightly more middle-​of-​nowhere location than we were in previously, so the CEO decided to start doing catered lunches when we’ve been «good.»
The second such lunch was Gretchen’s!
Our office manager did the ordering, so I can’t speak to that. When the delivery man arrived, however, he was quiet and made sure his appearance did not interrupt our company meeting.
We got the boxed lunches — sandwiches and a couple salad options. Sadly we didn’t get many vegetarian friendly options. The options I can remember were an Asian salad and Cuban-​style pork tenderloin, Brazilian grilled steak, tuna, havarti and turkey, and ham sandwiches.
I ended up with the pork, and decided the pork itself wasn’t so fantastic. So, I took it out and enjoyed the bread, sauce, veggies, on the sandwich. Quite tasty! I especially enjoyed the pickle. I love pickles…
I was also happy to find that my box contained a fresh fruit cup (pineapple, grapes, etc — YUM!!!), a delicious soft Scwartz Brothers Bakery chocolate chip cookie, a bottle of water (Athena brand), and a small bag of Tim’s Potato Chips. I plan to give my chips away, but I was plenty happy with everything else!!!
Would I be happy if we ordered from them again? Yes. I just hope the office manager remembers that we’ve got at least 3 people trying to eat a mostly vegetarian diet!

Gretchen’s is ordered for bid reviews that will take all day at my place of work. I love it, there’s no fighting for resources, like Panera’s catering (ie for the salads, cookies, and chips). Each lunch comes with its own soda, chips, and cookie. It’s neatly packaged together in your own cute little box. I’ve had the bbq chicken wrap and a crabcake sandwich, both excellent. Too bad their website doesn’t have the crabcake one anymore.

I order from this place for work all the time.
I’d love to see the salads step up a notch and some newer faces on the sandwich menu, but overall this is my favorite place to get box lunches from.
Here’s why:
–Easy online ordering, and you can order the night before and get your food the next afternoon!
–You can use the website to facilitate a group order (though I’ve never actually done this) — meaning people can enter their food preferences independently
–For sandwich platters, you can indicate different kinds of sandwiches — so this accommodates all the different dietary/​preference conflicts in your group
–They will cater those neat coffee carafes too!
–Great box lunch combo (salad or sandwich, roll, water, butter, fruit cup, utensils)
My favs:
–The Steak sandwich
–The monthly special sandwich
–Cobb salad
Watch out for:
–Deliveries ordered for 7am show up 15 mins late often
–Sometimes the Foccacia sandwiches are soggy (though the Margherita is pretty good)
–The Vegan wrap is vinegary