Angular JS: Async factory call issue

Have your functions return promises via $q, instead of raw data. Then you'll be able to chain them with .then() to achieve the wait you need:

get: function() {
    // Create a deferred object
    var deferred = $q.defer();

    // Do stuff in here
    // ...
    // and depending on the results,
    // call deferred.resolve(data) or deferred.reject(error)

    // Return the promise object
    return deferred.promise;
}

Then, in the code that calls this function, you can:

MyFactory.get().then(function (data) {
    $scope.var = data;
}

This pattern is pretty common in Angular, and works well.

Updated plunkr: here. I switched around the way you were simulating the server request lag so that I could easily resolve my deferred object in the .success() callback of $http.