Dinner by Design has identified more than 20 exclusive franchise territories in Missouri and Southern Illinois including metropolitan St. Louis, St. Charles, Springfield, Columbia, Kansas City, Belleview and Edwardsville.

According to company president and CEO John Matthews, Dinner by Design’s ability to bring families back to the dinner table with healthy, convenient dinners is well matched with the demographics in many Missouri and Southern Illinois communities.

“Dinner by Design has the #1 meal assembly brand name in the Midwest,” said Matthews. “Our business model is different from all others in the industry. It’s all about convenience and a healthy alternative for busy people, all for around $3 to $4 a serving, less than many fast food options,” said Matthews.

At Dinner by Design, customers enjoy the convenience of healthy, personally made dinners without the stress, mess, shopping and cleanup. Entrees, side dishes and desserts are made to order and available for pick-up or group delivery to local companies, schools and daycares. For people who enjoy the experience, in-kitchen meal assembly sessions, fundraising events and private parties are also offered.

Dinner by Design focuses on the company’s quality of food, operational excellence, customer satisfaction and value-added benefits to customers like the corporate and group delivery. In fact, Dinner by Design was named “Best Food” among all meal assembly companies in an independent comparison study.

Dinner by Design offers an attractive package for owners in Missouri and Southern Illinois including exclusive territories, site selection assistance as well as start up, training and marketing support, innovative technology and menu development.

Dinner by Design has nearly 60 locations opened, and agreements for another 40 kitchens in the U.S. and Canada.

The Business Times Daily called Dinner by Design “one of the hottest new retail franchise sensations sweeping the nation” and Entrepreneur Magazine named Dinner by Design and this market segment one of the “Hot 29 Businesses to Start.”

Press Release

We are pleased to announce that Dinners Ready will open its first location in Canada. The new Vancouver location is the first international kitchen of our planned expansion. Now our Canadian friends will be able to enjoy restaurant quality meals at an affordable price just as their neighbors to the south do today! We will announce the Grand Opening soon, so stay tuned!

http://www.dinnersready.com

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article1979965.ece

“Like most people, I shop a great diet. Antioxidant-packed fruit? Check. Rainbow-coloured fresh veg? Check. Organic fish and meat? Check. Trouble is, cooking the food is a different story. How often have you watched it languish in the fridge during a hectic week of unhealthy ready meals, lunch at the desk or restaurant food? I hold up my hands and admit that I belong to one of those typical British households that throws away a third of the food it buys. “

The Meal Blogger

Technorati : assembly, dreamdinners, franchise, meal, prep

Cooking, Henry Ford-style

From Financial Times

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/735541a2-20be-11dc-8d50-000b5df10621.html

Technorati : dreamdinners, franchise

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/08/02/Columns/As_meal_prep_booms__a.shtml

“People are starving each other out,” says an Oldsmar entrepreneur. Nationwide, average store revenues leave little after rent and expenses.

An older article that actually seems to get it right.

The Meal Blogger

www.mealassemblywatch.com

Technorati : assembly, dinners, dream, dreamdinners, franchise, meal, prep, super, supersuppers, suppers, watch
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http://www.pe.com/lifestyles/stories/PE_Fea_Daily_D_webbatchcooking0627.1223546.html

Video: Andrea Petritz gives a tour of her Super Suppers business in Murrieta

At the home of nutritionist and cookbook author Leanne Ely, the night’s dinner entrée – pork tenderloin with vegetables – was made months ago.

For Riverside mom Misty Boehmer, her favorite marinated shish kabobs were tucked into a zippered plastic bag weeks before and stashed in her freezer for a quick weeknight meal.

And when Rich Gregg’s wife is away visiting her sister, he’ll enjoy some of her Creole-style black-eyed peas and corn, in the freezer and waiting to be reheated.

The three families are onto something big: cooking en masse to stock a freezer with a stash of nutritious homemade meals.

“This is not really new. Your mom did it, my mother did it. We called it leftovers,” said Gregg, whose wife Sue authored “Meals in Minutes” for freezer meals.

Though the concept isn’t new, it is enjoying renewed popularity among contemporary cooks. A host of meal-preparation businesses have sprung up and numerous Web sites are devoted to the topic – variously called once-a-month, freezer, batch and bulk cooking.

“People … want to take more control of what they feed their families,” said Linda Larsen, author of “Everything Meals for a Month” and the Busy Cooks expert on About.com. “This kind of cooking really frees you up to turn your freezer into your own fast food place.”

Larsen started “feeding” her freezer about six years ago as a way to save time and money by buying in bulk.

Traditionally, the method involves a one-day cooking blitz. But increasingly, people are doubling or tripling recipes they’re making that night and putting the extras in the freezer.

“It is labor intensive, but the more you do it, the better you get at it,” said Larsen, who recommends breaking up the work into multiple days.

As published in: Franchise Times – February 2007

“The empty store is hospital clean in the mid-afternoon of a December day, as Kate Tennessen, a Supper Thyme franchisee in Minnetonka, Minn., waits for scheduled clients to show. Interrupting the quiet, a man walks in and asks what the store sells. She answers his questions, he responds with a grunt, and walks out.

“I get a lot of that,” she says, adding that men typically don’t understand the concept of a meal-preparation business, where customers prepare meals to take home, freeze and cook at a later date. “They’ll come in and try to order something to go.” “

The MealBlogger

www.mealassemblywatch.com

http://www.retailwire.com/Discussions/Sngl_Discussion.cfm/115497/20/06 <requires registration>
“Meal Assembly – A New Marketing Platform for Brands

New types of retail store formats pop up all the time, but of the concepts of the past few years claiming to be truly unique, meal assembly centers may actually have a point to make. In a sense taking the middle ground between grocers and restaurants, at meal assembly centers, customers follow simple recipes, putting together pre-cut and per-measured ingredients provided by the center; then bringing the fully assembled meals home for final heating and serving, or to be frozen for later use.

There are social and even educational aspects involved with the center environments that are more akin to cooking classes than food shopping or buying take-out. And based on this week’s announced pairing of Kraft Foods with Illinois-based Dinner by Design, the meal assembly business may demonstrate some interesting brand marketing talents as well.”

The MealBlogger

www.mealassemblywatch.com

The MealBlogger
www.mealassemblywatch.com

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/05/18/Business/Publix_joins_meal_pre.shtml

“Publix joins meal prep market preps for create-a-meal
The chain plans to open a test site in the bay area, where several smaller shops have already emerged.
Meal prep exploded out of the Pacific Northwest into a industry with revenues topping $270-million in 2006. The spark was two working mothers in Snohomish, Wash., who went into business sharing recipes for homemade frozen gourmet entrees. Their Dream Dinners now has 234 franchised stores. Super Suppers from Forth Worth, Texas, has 200.
Still, most stores are single units run by would-be entrepreneurs. They have a habit of clustering in the same upper-end neighborhoods, insuring the industry eats its young. A store count from the Easy Meal Prep Association found 301 stores opened in 2007 while 138 closed.”

The MealBlogger
www.mealassemblywatch.com