I’ve finally started pre-ordering. FA told me the other day that indeed, regardless of status, if you don’t pre-order you’ll get whatever’s left (in the usual status order, of course)

Yes, will likely [reluctantly] start to pre-order too. Just not very happy about it.
Usually prefer to make such decisions ad hoc, not days in advance.

So as a 1K I obviously prefer being offered my choice of meal before others, but I was advising my parents and other travelers who travel infrequently on United but paying for business class to book away from United due to this policy. My parents were most upset on their last United Polaris flight where the meal choices were pasta only. I got them to move to SQ for Book the Cook, however, I do think Polaris is a better hard product so will now encourage them to choose United.

My one concern is if the pre-booked meal choices are oversubscribed that they will go back to getting only one choice they may not like - I do think United should do a better job of catering for all of the pre-booked meals and ensuring everyone gets their pre-booked choice.

I am still not sure how they did it exactly, but United managed to somehow take what they had, add the pre-ordering, and make it much worse, IMO.

Here's a Flyertalk post from over 12 years ago by [I believe] a United FA, and it made it seem so simple:

"In a perfect world the F/C PAX could select their meal choice when they select their seat online then catering could board the request amount. For the last min upgrades the easy check in could let you select your 1st and 2nd choice.
All could be printed on our manifest like special meal requests."

From:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/16742554-post104.html

What is the evidence that official policy is that GS are prioritized over 1K? I was under the impression that GS & 1K are treated together as a single group for purposes of meal choice priority?

I received an email from GS circa 2016 that stated the order.after a complaint about an FA taking orders front to back and telling me in row 4 that all she had left was offal or a box of sodium from the back .

Thank you for contacting United Airlines.

In the premium cabins, flight attendants will take meal orders front to back, without skipping around the cabin. Using the Inflight Final Report to identify customer status, flight attendants will manage main course entrée preferences, out of customer view, in the following order, ensuring Global Services customers receive their first choice:

• Global Services (GS): our invitation-only membership program exclusively for our top members.
• Premier 1K customers (1K): 100,000 Premier qualifying miles or 120 Premier qualifying segments.
• All other revenue customers

Thanks!

Simple: some FAs still hop around the cabin, and will seek out GS first, then 1Ks.
The priority GS then 1K is well established.

When did you receive that email?
That sounds ancient.
If recent, someone used an old form-mail they had stored on their Windows 98 computer.
"(1K): 100,000 Premier qualifying miles or 120 Premier qualifying segments." 🤔

Pre-orders are first and above all others.

More reading:
https://liveandletsfly.com/united-airlines-meal-preferences/

2016

Ah, I misread. I thought the "box of sodium from the back" was from 2016. 😎

In my experience PP meal service is much closer to economy in execution, e.g. no orders are taken just a cart comes by from front to back with an "Option 1" or "Option 2" offering. That said in my (quite limited by comparison to both J/F and Y) experience I've not observed them running out of either option.