Co-op Food: Vegan GRO Range Review – Good or Bad?

A review of Co-op’s food picnic selection

Spring is well and truly here, and with that comes picnics! We love picnics. Especially as we don’t have a garden that we can eat in at home. So we always take the opportunity to eat outside in the nice weather as much as possible! A lot of the time, we love to make loads of fresh salads for our picnics. However, sometimes you just want to go to a supermarket and grab a bunch of vegan things that are ready to go. Co-op food has been adding to their vegan range GRO steadily over the years. They now have a pretty vast selection, from ready meals to takeaway salads. We’ve done an honest review of some of their picnic-friendly vegan GRO range items, to save you the hassle of having to try them out first!

GRO 4 Dark Choc Chunk Cookies

Rating: 5/5
Price: £1.60
These cookies are absolutely delicious! It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to walk into a supermarket and buy a bag of cookies, but it was worth the wait. They’re crunchy around the edges and slightly soft and gooey in the middle. Just what you want from a cookie! I have a big sweet tooth, so these are right up my street as they are pretty sugary! There’s plenty of chocolate chunks dispersed throughout too. These are now our go-to supermarket cookies, and they’re perfect for when you don’t fancy baking.

GRO Vegan Onion & Garlic Dip

Rating: 3/5
Price: £1.17
This vegan onion and garlic dip was ok. We wouldn’t rush out to the supermarket to buy it again, but it wasn’t awful. I’d much prefer to cook a dip from scratch at home, but it’s great to have some more supermarket dip options that aren’t just hummus! It was very creamy, and the onion and garlic flavour came through. It’s just not our personal favourite flavour dip.

GRO Spiced Squash & Cauliflower Pie

Rating: 4/5
Price: £1.53
We thought this pie was super tasty! It does not heating up before you eat it, so you can’t take it straight out to a picnic from the shops. However, if you’ve planned ahead, we think it’s worth getting and taking it home to heat up before heading out. The pastry was really lovely! It wasn’t soggy at all, which can sometimes happen with supermarket pies. The filling was also really flavoursome, and nicely spiced. The only reason we didn’t give it a 5/5 is that we both felt the filling was slightly too sweet and not as well balanced as it could’ve been. However, we’d definitely get it again.

GRO Falafel & Tabbouleh Salad

Rating: 1/5
Price: £2.30
Unfortunately, we’re sorry to say that this was not good at all. All of the different elements were not very nice at all, and we would not buy this again. The falafel was super dry and bland, as was the hummus and tabbouleh. There are just so many other better ready to go salad boxes available from other supermarkets.

Co-op food has a great selection of vegan products. However, we’ll often go into a Co-op and find they only have a very small selection of their range stocked. It would be great if more of their stores could stock a larger selection of GRO range products, as there are still some we’ve yet to get our hands on!

Have you tried any Co-op food before? Let us know what you think of the GRO range in the comments below, or on any of our socials.

If you liked this post, why not check out some of our others:

• Range Review – M&S Plant Kitchen 2
• The Best Vegan Chicken Alternatives
• Easy Orange, Beetroot & Chicory BBQ Side Salad (Vegan)