Homemade
Convenience — Entree Assembly Shops
By Sharon Palmer, RD
Today’s Dietitian
Vol. 7 No. 9 P. 36
Dietitians and entrepreneurs have found a niche
helping busy people gather around the dinner table more often for
a family meal.
As I wait behind a pair of soccer moms at the shiny
stainless steel counters at Dream Dinners in Pasadena, Calif., I
take in the hip furnishings and organic splash of color on the walls
that remind me of Starbucks. The shop owner, Stephanie Irey, cheerfully
doles out aprons, instructing customers to lather up at the hand-washing
sink before approaching the efficient food assembly stations that
resemble small salad bars. The pair of women buzz with gossip as
they portion artichokes, tomatoes, garlic, and herbs from the chilled
ingredients bar into Ziploc bags, pausing between words to glance
at a laminated recipe for Italian Chicken with Rustic Tomato Sauce.
Each container of ingredients holds the correct measuring tool and
a quiet worker stands at the ready to whisk away an errant splash
of balsamic vinegar or switch a clean measuring scoop for a soiled
one, should the need arise.
Irey weaves between the food assembly stations,
offering samples of this month’s menu feature, Asian BBQ Pork,
while offering assistance to customers. Still engrossed in conversation,
the soccer moms step over to a wooden file box to pull out preprinted
labels with cooking directions for the chicken recipe, which they
slap onto their Ziploc bags before throwing them into a glass-doored
refrigerator to chill until their departure time. Voila, in 10 minutes
these busy women have assembled all the ingredients needed for a
home-cooked meal without breaking a sweat.
Entree Assembly — A Hot
New Way of Cooking
What I had just observed is the hottest new culinary trend to hit
consumers. Companies such as Dream Dinners, Super Suppers, and Let’s
Dish! have cooked up a whole new way of nourishing families on the
run that still care about gathering around the dinner table most
nights of the week. The message is spreading quickly, as “entree
assembly program” businesses are on track to becoming one
of the fastest-growing franchises in the United States. According
to Stephanie Allen, Dream Dinners CEO and cofounder, “We have
90 stores now and we will have 150 by the end of the year.”
“People are entering a nightly dilemma for
what to cook for dinner. This is a full solution. Customers can
go to the Web site where a menu is available and sign up for eight
to 12 menu choices. They can put it together, put it in the freezer,
and have almost a month of meals. It’s guilt-free convenience,”
says Darcy Olson, co-owner of Let’s Dish! headquartered in
Eden Prairie, Minn. Co-owners Olson and Ruth Lundquist opened the
first Let’s Dish! store in October 2003. Now there are seven
Let’s Dish! locations in Maryland, Washington, Minnesota,
and Virginia.
Customers are pouring into the closest location
and finding many reasons to return. With a monthly array of appetizing
recipes from which to choose and ingredients chopped and ready to
go, customers can steer clear of fast food and frozen convenience
dinners at the grocery store. Families can count on real food, with
quality cuts of lean meats, vegetables, herbs, and seasonings to
prepare the kind of meals they would be making at home, if only
they had the time. Everyone in the family enjoys trying new recipes
at the dining room table, instead of the same old tired tuna casserole
on Wednesday nights.
One of the biggest attractions to customers is that
entree assembly programs mean no shopping or clean up. Although
the price tag may seem high (Dream Dinners costs $200 for 12 family-size
entrees, Let’s Dish charges $195 for 12 family-size entrees,
and Super Suppers charges $199 for 12 family-size entrees), customers
rave that they save money on monthly food expenditures. “You
don’t do impulse buying at the store, and you don’t
need to buy a lot of ingredients, like a little jar of capers for
a recipe. There is an economics of scale and efficiency,”
says Leslie Thomson, RD, CDE, owner of Dream Dinners in West Seattle.
Some shops even market their business as a way to
turn the tedious task of cooking into social hour, allowing customers
to book parties with their friends amid background music and door
prizes. Suddenly, cooking up a month’s worth of dinners has
been transformed into girls’ night out. It’s easy to
see why they’re catching on.
Dream Dinners, headquartered in Snohomish, Wash.,
got its start with Stephanie Allen’s successful catering company.
She found that as her catering business grew, she had less time
to cook wholesome meals for her family. She decided to assemble
ingredients for freezable homemade dinners monthly in her professional
catering kitchen so she could pull them out later when she was too
busy to cook. Soon her friends wanted in on the act and she began
opening up her catering kitchen to a growing number of people. It
wasn’t long before she realized the business opportunities
that existed and in 2002 she opened up her first Dream Dinners store
in Everett, Wash., with her friend, Tina Kuna, who now serves as
chief financial officer for the company.
“A huge part of our original plan was not
wanting to eat fast food or frozen food and wanting to get families
to eat around the dinner table,” says Allen, who is also working
on a book that will share her business’s recipe for success.
Allen points out that Dream Dinners was the first company to dream
up the entree assembly concept.
Super Suppers, founded by Judie Byrd, owner of the Culinary School
of Fort Worth, Texas, is expanding by leaps and bounds, going from
20 franchises to a projected 275 franchises to be sold in 2005.
When creating Super Suppers in 2003, Byrd hoped to meet the demands
of busy parents wanting to create quality family time around the
dinner table. She called on her experience as a food editor to cook
up the concept of delicious, homestyle meals that families would
eagerly gobble up.
Is This Healthy Convenience Food?
“People are getting back to whole foods. The meals are designed
to taste good without high-fat ingredients and there are a lot of
vegetables in the meals, too,” says Thomson, who estimates
that the Dream Dinners meals generally add up to less than 30% of
calories from fat and average between 4.5 and 7 Weight Watchers
points per meal. Dream Dinners customers will notice that the recipes
call for egg substitutes, fat-free dairy products, fat-free dressings,
and very little additional fat and salt. Nutritional information
for all Dream Dinners meals is available on the Web site and in
hard copy at the stores. The shops also help customers deal with
food allergies and are willing to work with substitutes, such as
soy cheese. “I think Dream Dinners works on so many levels.
Portion control is big. Many of my customers have lost 5 to 10 pounds
on Dream Dinners,” says Thomson.
“It’s not just about the calorie count,
but about wellness, variety, and good taste. We are very, very much
health-minded,” says Lundquist of Let’s Dish! At Let’s
Dish! customers will find options such as substituting lettuce wraps
for tortilla wraps, or brown rice for white rice. Customers at most
entree assembly shops are urged to alter the recipes according to
specific dietary needs or allergies. Let’s Dish! provides
nutrition information and Weight Watchers points on its Web site.
Super Suppers provides nutrition information on its Web site and
offers Weight Watchers points on request.
Shop owners concede that not every recipe on the
menu is light. I spied a Dream Dinners Homemade Macaroni and Cheese
dish that packed in 520 calories, 19 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated
fat, and 51 grams of carbohydrate in one serving. A Let’s
Dish! Decadent Molten Chocolate Cake provided a whopping 467 calories,
44 grams of carbohydrate, and 33 grams of fat per serving. Super
Suppers Seafood Divan is anything but light with 530 calories, 35
grams of carbohydrates, and 26 grams of fat per serving. A McDonald’s
Quarter Pounder with Cheese provides less calories, fat, and carbs
than some choices off these menus. The majority of recipes are,
however, surprisingly lean. The menus are generally arranged to
provide choices of seafood entrees, poultry entrees, red meat entrees,
comfort food choices, and desserts. A quick scan of the nutritional
information may point individuals to the lightest fare.
Opportunities for Dietitians
Dietitians are getting in on the home-style convenience food act,
too. Allen reports that two Dream Dinners franchise owners are dietitians.
Let’s Dish! owners employ a dietitian to produce nutritional
information. Margaret McDonald, RD, is Super Suppers’ director
of nutrition.
Thomson left her job as a dietitian at the Diabetes
Care Center of University of Washington to open the doors of her
own Dream Dinners shop in West Seattle. “I was a customer
at Dream Dinners. I noticed that Dream Dinners had an impact on
people’s lives and what they were eating. This is an exciting
place to be,” says Thomson. Her customers come in telling
her stories about how they save money on their grocery bill and
that they are now eating dinner at the table with their families.
“One of the biggest impacts I have is on kids—particularly
with the increased number of kids with type 2 diabetes. We’re
getting kids away from fast foods and convenience foods. This has
a huge impact on their overall health,” says Thomson.
Thomson reports that she has tapped into the Washington
State Dietetic Association to help introduce dietitians to the Dream
Dinners concept, and the response has been overwhelming. “Dietitians
get this. They are passionate about the impact this can have on
people’s lives,” she comments. “Dietitians should
visit a Dream Dinners near them and see if this is a good fit for
them. It is a natural for dietitians.”
Dietitians need to keep focused on America’s
fickle food barometer. What was hot yesterday may be tepid tomorrow,
but it looks like the new trend of entree assembly stores may be
a perfect fit for America’s frazzled families trying to fit
the task of putting dinner on the table between traffic-jammed commutes
and Little League games. Thomson suggests that dietitians should
start getting acquainted with the entree assembly process to be
able to understand the language and discuss healthy food choices
with their clients when they ask about it.
“This is a huge new way of life. It fits with
where America is. People’s cooking skills are deteriorating.
Convenience is a huge driver in the food industry,” says Lundquist.
“This concept really hits the emotional factor, how we nurture
our families. It’s a smart choice on so many levels.”
— Sharon Palmer, RD, is a freelance food
and nutrition journalist in Southern California.
What’s on the Menu
Here’s an offering from the menus of Dream Dinners, Let’s
Dish!, and Super Suppers. Note: Nutritional information for these
selected menu features are based on menus that change each month.
For nutritional information for the current month’s menu,
please visit each company’s Web site.
Dream Dinners
(Nutritional information from www.dreamdinners.com)
• Italian Parmesan Chicken
Crisp parmesan-crusted chicken breasts served with Italian marinara
sauce and melted provolone cheese.
Nutritional Info — Cal: 251; Fat: 13 g; Sat Fat: 9 g; Carb:
16 g; Fiber: 1 g; Protein: 40 g
• Salisbury Steak & Potatoes
Red potatoes topped with tender patties of meat and seasoned with
rich beef gravy.
Nutritional Info — Cal: 296; Fat: 7 g; Sat Fat: 2 g; Carb:
36 g; Fiber: 2 g; Protein: 17 g
• Orange Teriyaki Salmon
Salmon filets marinated in homemade teriyaki sauce.
Nutritional Info — Cal: 181; Fat: 5 g; Sat Fat: 1 g; Carb:
9 g; Fiber: 1 g; Protein: 23 g
• Canadian Bacon & Cheese Calzones
Fresh pizza crust loaded with Canadian-style bacon, olives, and
a blend of Italian cheeses.
Nutritional Info — Cal 826; Fat: 21 g; Sat Fat: 9 g; Carb:
112 g; Fiber: 2 g; Protein: 43 g
Let’s Dish!
(Nutritional information from www.letsdish.net)
• Coconut Curry Rice with Shrimp
This sweet and savory dish uses Indian spices to dress shrimp, veggies,
and rice.
Nutritional Info — Cal: 320; Carb: 46 g; Protein: 18 g; Fat:
9 g; Fiber: 6 g; Weight Watchers: 6 points per serving
• Cowboy Chicken Pizza
Comes with BBQ sauce, chicken, red onions, and cheddar cheese.
Nutritional Info — Cal: 240; Carb: 15 g; Protein: 18 g; Fat:
12 g; Fiber: 1 g; Weight Watchers: 6 points per serving
• Mediterranean Pasta Toss
Fresh grape tomatoes, olives, red peppers, and seasonings are tossed
with pasta and topped with feta cheese.
Nutritional Info — Cal: 330; Carb: 46 g; Protein: 10 g; Fat:
11 g; Fiber: 2 g; Weight Watchers: 7 points per serving
• Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Chile Apricot Glaze
Apricot glaze with hints of jalapeno, lime, garlic, and seasoning
tops pork tenderloin.
Nutritional Info — Cal: 320; Carb: 27 g; Protein: 32 g; Fat:
10 g; Fiber: 0 g; Weight Watchers: 7 points per serving
Super Suppers
(Nutritional information from www.supersuppers.com)
• Lemon Dijon White Fish with Confetti Rice Pilaf
Tilapia with lemon-dijon sauce served with confetti rice.
Nutritional Info — Cal: 430; Protein: 26 g; Fat: 18 g; Fiber:
3 g; Carb: 42 g
• Asian Beef and Vegetable Wraps
Marinated beef with Asian vegetables and hoisin sauce stuffed into
wrappers.
Nutritional Info — Cal: 187; Protein: 11 g; Fat: 10 g; Fiber:
1 g; Carb: 14 g
• Cheesy Ravioli
Big cheese-filled ravioli covered in Italian sauce and topped with
cheese.
Nutritional Info — Cal: 442; Protein: 21 g; Fat: 21 g; Fiber:
2 g; Carb: 37 g
• Orange-Tarragon Glazed Chicken
Orange and tarragon mingled with plump chicken pieces.
Nutritional Info: Cal: 217; Protein: 26 g; Fat: 15 g; Fiber: 3 g;
Carb: 31 g
— SP
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