Easy Meal Prep Matters

Dream Dinners Opens Inside Grocery Store

2007-06-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

How about this for an idea (and a convenient one)? The State reports that Dream Dinners is moving from your local strip mall to your local grocery store:

People living in or near Forest Acres now have a supper-assembly business to turn to, and this franchise is conveniently located in a grocery store, where you can pick up your salad fixings or dinner rolls all at the same time.

Dream Dinners, the latest preassembled meal business to open shop locally, is in the Piggly Wiggly on Forest Drive. The first to be located in a grocery store, the business also was first on the scene as the meal-assembly business took off a little more than five years ago.

Last week, co-founder Stephanie Allen flew into town for the opening of the Piggly Wiggly franchise, where about 250 customers flocked to check out the addition to their neighborhood Pig.

Easy Meal Prep Changes Dinner for Families

2007-06-07T20:52:00.000-07:00

Jodie Tillman of the St. Petersburg Times wrote a fun article about the easy meal prep stores in her neighborhood:

TRINITY - Nearly a year ago, mysterious things began emerging from Tracie Hand's oven.

Maple mustard-glazed steak with blue cheese and pecans. White cheese vegetable lasagna. Pork with pesto and roasted red pepper.

Tracie Hand? The social studies teacher, mother and wife, but most definitely not a chef? She who, for years, relied on Publix deli and frozen dinners?

Hand, it turned out, had found a solution to her time-crunched, non-Emeril ways: Main Dish, a business where customers assemble meals to take home and either cook that night or freeze for later.

"It does take the guesswork out of 'What are we going to do for dinner?' " said Hand, who lives in the Seven Springs area. "I have friends who think I'm an amazing cook."

Nationwide, the growth of these "make-and-take" businesses is on the move, to 1, 120 last year from 175 in 2004, according to Easy Meal Prep, a Colorado-based industry group.

Just in the past year, Trinity has become Pasco County's meal-prep hot spot, with the only three places in the county within a few miles of each other. In addition to the 1-year-old Main Dish, there is WeekDay Gourmet, which opened in March, and Let's Eat!, opening later this month.

These businesses tout their cost savings, healthy ingredients and their role in, as Let's Eat! co-owner Donna Navatta puts it, "bringing families back to the dinner table."

Trinity, a fast-growing collection of planned communities, has just the kind of market these businesses like: Two-income families as well as retirees. Plus its proximity to the Suncoast Parkway makes it convenient for commuters from other areas of west Pasco to stop by on their way home.

"You've got a lot of professional working families, " said Maria Lord, managing partner for WeekDay Gourmet. "Trinity really is growing."

Here's how the general meal-prep concept works: Every month, the businesses have a dozen or more menu items. Don't think Hamburger Helper, of course; think Caribbean-jerked sirloin and veal scaloppine with Madeira sauce. Each of those entrees is typically designed to serve four to six people.

You pick the entrees and how many you want - packages include four entrees for roughly $85 or a dozen for about $200 - and schedule a session. Then you come in and rotate among stations set up with pre-measured ingredients and the directions for putting together each particular entree.

In less than two hours, customers can whip up nearly a month's worth of dinners. No chopping, dicing, marinating or washing dishes required.

At an extra cost, the businesses will put the meals together and have them ready for customers to pick up.

Though the meals can require a hefty investment, all three businesses and their regular customers emphasize the per-serving cost, which is typically between $3 and $5 - cheaper than take-out.

Fans of the concept say they also save on groceries. No need to buy ginger or roasted red peppers you'll use only for one meal.

"There are so many things I'd never buy, " at the grocery store, said Hand.

The other big savings is time, said Kelly Santos, a River Ridge resident who has been to WeekDay Gourmet a half dozen times in the past two months.

As mother of two boys and a co-owner of a mortgage brokerage in Tampa, Santos says time can seem like a luxury. Knowing that she's got a few healthy meals a week already in the freezer is a big deal.

"For me, " she said, "time is the most valuable thing."

Even if Trinity does turn out to be a profitable place for meal-prep businesses, is the market strong enough to sustain all three?

Weekday and Let's Eat!, both franchises, are just across Duck Slough Boulevard from each other, and the independent Main Dish is 5 miles away.

All of the business owners say: Of course.

"Home Depot and Lowe's are right across the street from each other, " said Let's Eat! co-owner Diane Burr.

Main Dish owner Lisa Florio said the meal-prep concept is new enough in Pasco that the more publicity generated for all the businesses, the better off they'll be.

"I think it can only promote the concept, " said Florio. "Because we all offer different menus, it's not a problem."

Robin Miller's Quick Fix Meals

2007-05-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

There's no doubt I am a fan of quick and easy cooking, hence my Rachael Ray blog and this blog, but I ran across another Food Network Chef who seems to fit the bill - Robin Miller. Her new cookbook, Quick Fix Meals: 200 Simple, Delicious Recipes to Make Mealtime Easy, has a very easy-meal-prep-friendly vibe. In general, the book aims at providing "recipes, time-saving tips, and strategies for serving up fresh, healthful meals every day with the least possible effort."

The cookbook is organized by cooking technique, so there is a sections on creating Meal Kits, where you pre-prep the ingredients to place in the fridge and cook later in 10 minutes or less. There's also a section called Greased Lightning, which includes 20-minute recipes. Morph-It Recipes create one dish one night and another dish with the leftovers (Rachael Ray calls these Double Duty meals). These recipes are supplemented by Simple Sides and In-a-Snap Sweets.

Reviewers on Amazon found that the cookbook contained recipes that are very similar to Rachael Ray's but that Miller places more emphasis on pre-planning, prepping, and stocking your kitchen. They loved the unique flavors used in the recipes and the creative tips for making meals quickly.

Am I going to buy a cookbook that isn't by Rachael Ray? Gasp!

Meal Assembly Heats Up in Rochester

2007-05-16T08:27:00.000-07:00

Rochester's Democrat and Chronicle announced the arrival of meal assembly kitchens arrive in its town. The article profiled Christina Connors, who "wants to put good, home-cooked meals on the table every night for her husband and two young children. But as a full-time scientist at Johnson & Johnson Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, finding the time and energy is a chronic problem."

Conners gave Once a Month Cooking a try, but was not a fan. Conners learned about easy meal prep on a site for working moms. She went to Super Suppers with a co-worker and when she brought the meals home: "Everything was a smashing hit with (me and) my husband," says the 31-year-old Henrietta resident. "The ease of making them was incredible. ... It definitely reduced the amount of stress I felt around meal preparation."

Her kids can be picky, but Conners plans on going back to Super Suppers, which joins Easy Enough Meal Solutions in Henrietta and Make & Take Gourmet in East Rochester.

These easy meal prep places work like the others do:

Customers make an appointment by phone or online. Then they come to the kitchen to put together their pre-selected entrees following the company's simple instructions.

A couple hours later, customers go home with freezer-ready entrees that in most cases require nothing more than time to defrost and bake. There is no shopping, chopping, simmering or cleanup necessary.

Depending on how many entrees you make in a session and how you portion them, the cost runs anywhere from $3 to $5 a serving. Side dishes are also available. Entree menus change monthly.

Conners picks up on one of my favorite things about easy meal prep: "What I like is that you know what you are putting in there. And you can pick and choose more or less of certain ingredients," says Connors.

Make A Week's Worth of Meals

2007-05-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

Many have heard of Once a Month Cooking, but LA's ABC7 recommends taking advantage of your kitchen already being dirty on a Sunday night. The advice comes from Food Coach Lori Corbin, whose tips also focus on making the meals healthy ones.

Corbin recommends stocking up "on dried grains, beans, soups, and sauces, along with fresh vegetables and some zip plastic bags." Instead of making full meals on Sunday night, just get all the prep work done for the week:

Start with vegetables. Partially cook vegetables like broccoli, string beans or asparagus by blanching them. That means dunk them in a pot of boiling water for two minutes, drain, and then rinse in cold water. Drain again and put them in
zip bags.

Not only will it take up less space in the fridge, they'll last up to five days with half the work already done. Come dinner time Monday, they are near ready to eat.

You can also make a huge batch of grains at the same time. Cooked barley, brown rice or quinoa, for example, can last up to a week in tightly-sealed containers.

Corbin also offers the following general tips:

Stock up on tasty staples, easy prep foods, storage containers
Partially boiling vegetables for the week makes produce easy to eat
Stock up on a variety of beans as a cheap, filling protein source
Low-fat, cholesterol-free frozen soy products make a fast meal

Make It An Easy Meal Prep Party

2007-05-14T22:52:00.000-07:00

Anna Ferguson of the Gwinnett Daily Post recently features the easy meal prep store craze. When she was at My Girlfriend's Kitchen in Brookwood Hills, a bunko group was there chattering away, with their laundry baskets and luggage for carting their meals home. They also had coffee, beer and wine to make the event a bit more fun.

Ferguson noted what all of us figure out after the first trip to an easy meal prep store - it's simple to make the meals. This group was very well-organized (much more organized than my friends and I):

After choosing their recipes, the eight members of the group divided and conquered, finding their designated meal-prep stations. Some women were making Zowie Pow Pot Roast, while others whipped up Shrimp Alfredo on the Bayou and Newfangled No-Fuss Chicken Cordon Bleu.

The participants also understand the allure of easy meal prep: "I came home the other night, and my husband and I looked at each other and thought, frozen pizza again?” said Kathy Gentry, a member of the Bunko group. “But with this idea, we can have ready-to-go meals in the freezer, just waiting to be heated and eaten."

Ferguson explained the concept: "patrons come in and assemble meals from a select menu of dishes that can be frozen and reheated, without any of the hassles of cooking at home. Essentially, these stores are where June Cleaver’s laborious, home-cooked meals collide with the rushed schedule of today’s busy cook."

The founder of Super Suppers, Judy Byrd made a comment that hadn't occured to me before: “Twenty years ago, this idea wouldn’t have worked because moms weren’t tired of drive-throughs and take-out,” said Judy Byrd, founder of Super Suppers. “But now they are tired, and they want good dinners, but fast. And that’s what they get with meal-assembly solutions.”

The store have become so popular, that there's no average customer anymore. They used to be filled with soccer moms, but now there are singles, empty nesters, moms, and dads taking advantage of the meal assembly stores.

For more information on how easy meal prep affects your budget and what types of meals are available, check out the full article here.

Rachael Ray Does Easy Meal Prep

2007-02-24T11:37:00.000-08:00

On Friday's episode of her talk show, Rachael Ray featured a recipe called "Heat 'N Eat - Five Dinners In One Day." The idea is to spend one day cooking enough for five meals. Then all you have to do is heat them up throughout the week. She provides a step by step recipe that walks you through how to make each one.

The five recipes are:

Day One: Roasted Chicken and Gravy with Roasted Potatoes and Veggies
Day Two: Roasted Chicken Shepherd’s Pie
Day Three: Tomatillo Chicken Corn Enchiladas
Day Four: Chicken & Veggie Pasta
Day Five: Italian Chicken Salad

Check out the recipes, which include helpful pictures, here.

[Photo from Rachael Ray Show]

Forbes Features Easy Meal Prep

2007-02-22T20:39:00.000-08:00

Forbes finally got with the program. It features the founders of Dream Dinners, Stephanie Allen and Tina Kuna in article about the emergence of the easy meal prep business. I was glad to read that easy meal prep is part of reversing a decade long trend - the number of American families who eat together is finally on the rise. The article also staets that families that eat together have less chance of being overweight and have better nutrition.

However, I was surprised to read that stopping America's obestity epidemic was one of the inspirations for Allen and Kuna when they started Dream Dinners. They started the company in 2002. Forbes has this to say about their idea to open the company:

The idea was simple, as most blockbusters are: Women (and occasionally men) pay about $215 and go to their local Dream Dinners, where they find all of the ingredients to prepare up to 72 fresh meals--from honey pecan pork roast to lemon-thyme marinated shrimp and scallop skewers--in just over an hour. The dinners are kept in the home freezer until a harried parent pops them in the oven and then gathers the family for an old-fashioned home-cooked meal.

Their background was in catering, which allowed them to have a direct connection to their target audience. To hear more about how the company has grown and to read the interview with Allen, check out the entire article here.

Trends in Easy Meal Prep Stores

2007-02-19T17:10:00.000-08:00

The Amherst Record recently published an article singing the praises of easy meal prep stores, with one caveat. The article refers to meal assembly kitchens as "a simple — and increasingly popular — concept." It explains:

All the necessary ingredients are provided precut, pre-measured and (if necessary) precooked, along with recipe cards explaining what to do with them. Customers assemble the meals in freezer-ready pans at the shop, then take them home, freeze and reheat as needed.

After this general introduction to the stores, the article profiles a store owner, Michele Bellso, who opened Make and Take Gourmet in a suburb of Syracuse, New York. Despite only opening the store in May, Bellso has already decided to open four more.

I was shocked to read that the first meal assembly store, Dream Dinners, was only opened in 2002! The store opened in a Seattle suburb and now has 1,000 stores in the United States and Canada. There are also 35 more in the works. Super Suppers might be a year behind Dream Dinners, but it's now the largest with 176 stores and 65 more planned.

The article also notes that many stores are offering meals for two to three people instead of just for six. I can tell you as a consumer, that I pick my easy meal prep stores based upon the ability to split the meals in half since there are only two of us. And if a store charges extra for me to do that, I will just choose another store.

Because every party has a pooper, the article also includes a quote from Bob Gravani, "a food science professor at Cornell and a food safety expert." says that there are "three areas of concern for would-be cooks — food-handling, personal hygiene and maintaining proper temperatures." He says: "There is great potential for health problems to spread quickly if things are done wrong," but as of the writing of the article, no problems have occurred.

Interestingly, the article also says that Entrepreneur magazines says easy meal prep stores are "hands down, among the top franchising trends for this year."

Hot Trend

2007-02-16T17:07:00.000-08:00

The Arizona Republic newspaper published an article all about new easy meal prep stores in area and called them a "hot trend." I liked the way the article described easy meal prep: "somewhere between dining out and home-cooked meals."

The number of easy meal prop stores is growing quickly. Two Dream Dinners opened two years ago (the first meal preparation business in Arizona) and now where are 15 stores, with three more in the works.

Customers interviewed for the article repeated a common sentiment - people just don't have time (or energy) to cook, so they end up getting fast food or pizza instead of eating a healthy dinner. Another customer said:

"I don't really have to think about it (making meals) anymore. It is such a time saver. I just think the concept is great for a busy mom," Westlund said as she assembled beef and cheddar stuffed braided bread at the new Super Suppers in Ahwatukee.

Something else I hadn't thought of us that as an easy meal prep store customer, I only pay for what I need. For example, one customer told the newspaper: "If I need only a teaspoon of curry, I don't have to buy the whole thing." Smart thinking!

Currently, the area is home to Dream Dinners, Super Suppers, Chef Danes, Dinners Done Right and Entrees Made Easy. From the owner's side, those who run the businesses find that "[b]ecause these businesses are still new, customers need a lot of educating . . . . Fortunately, they say customers are spreading the word, which is helping fuel the growth."

Columbus Dispatch Article

2007-01-03T09:00:00.001-08:00

The Columbus Dispatch picks up the Easy Meal Prep story in an article entitled "Time-pressed cooks rely on make-now-eat-later meals." Yes, we do.

The article discusses Kirsten Wilson, who has a full-time job as a prosecutor and a two hour commute. Wilson, like many working professionals, takes advantage of easy meal prep to make sure she has home-cooked meals for her three young sons.

Easy meal prep is described in the article as "do-ahead dining" and "a cook-now-eat later approach." Wilson does some of the work on her own, byt making soups, chilis and quesadillas, then storing them in the freezer.

Another person featured was Joe Kopcha, who "cooks twice a week — Sundays and Wednesdays — and makes enough to provide leftovers for his wife and himself on the other days." However, he notes that he and his wife don't mind eating similar things night after night. That wouldn't fly in my house!

The article provides some good resources for those who want to do at-home easy meal prep: Taste of Home magazine, Every Day with Rachael Ray magazine and Fine Cooking magazine all provide meals that can be made ahead and frozen for later.

Many websites are devoted to OAMC (once-a-month cooking), including Cook of the Month.

What Is Easy Meal Prep?

2007-01-02T22:35:00.000-08:00

The Wall Street Journal says that Easy Meal Prep stores are a place "where time-strapped mothers -- plus an occasional dad -- gather to whip up meals they'll freeze and heat up for their families during the next few weeks." My definition is a bit more broad than that.

I think Easy Meal Prep stores are places where a consumer chooses meals from an online menu, then visits the store to assemble them from already-prepped ingredients. The consumer then takes the meals home, sticks 'em in the freezer and pulls them out as need to avoid fast food while still getting dinner on the table fast.

What is Easy Meal Prep to you?