Meal Prep Franchises: Hot Idea or Flash in the Pan?

by sean on July 24th, 2007

(FranchisePick.com) They go by clever names like Super Suppers, Dream Dinners, Dinner’s Ready, My Girlfriend’s Kitchen, Supper Thyme USA, Lets Dish!, and Pass your Plate. They’re called Meal Prep or Meal Assembly franchises.

Question is: Are they the hot new franchise concept, or will they disappear before I can figure out exactly what they do?

Last September, my friend Julie Bennett posed this question in a Wall Street Journal article that did as good a job as any to explain this somewhat complicated concept:

The meal-preparation business combines old-fashioned cooking with contemporary socializing. Groups of customers gather at workstations where they measure precut meats, fish and vegetables into freezer containers according to the company’s recipes posted nearby… Apron-clad workers answer the questions from cooks like ‘What can I use instead of soy sauce?’ and wipe down counters and wash dishes.

Customers will spend about $220 to assemble 12 family-sized entrees over two hours, sometimes making an evening of it with a bottle or two of wine. People without the time can pay extra and have the meals assembled for them, or buy a single entrée from the store’s “take and bake” case for about $20.

I think I get it. Sort of. Do they cook the food there and then freeze it? No… After checking out a few more websites (including the Buffalo Biz Journal quoted below) I think they just put ingredients together and bring them home in pans to be frozen until meal time:

…their premise is the same: Customers sign up for a session and order their meals online; come in and prepare them; and take the meals home in freezer-friendly containers. Workers clean up when the customers are finished.

OK. I think I get it. It’s the adult version of the Easy Bake Oven, allowing Soccer Moms to pretend they’re cooking (This would have been perfect for Samantha when Darren announces that Larry Tate and his wife are coming over for dinner with the big client!) It’s culinary paint-by-numbers. Right?

Will it work? Hundreds of entrepreneurs and franchisees are betting the blender it will. The WSJ article estimated that there’d be more than 1,100 meal-preparation kitchens in the U.S. by the end of 2006, doing about $270 million in sales.

About 40% of those stores are independent businesses, while the rest are franchised. Meal Prep franchisors generally charge a franchise fee of about $35,000, plus a royalty of 4% to 6% of gross sales and a 1% or 2% ad fee. The total cost of opening a meal preparation franchise ranges from $120,000 to $300,000, depending on size and location.

According to the Easy Meal Prep Association, (Yes, there is an Easy Meal Prep Association)the largest meal assembly franchise chains include:

Super Suppers. Fort Worth, Texas. (212 stores), Dream Dinners. Snohomish, Washington. (210 stores), Dinners Ready. Mountlake Terrace, Washington. (41 stores), My Girlfriends Kitchen Salt Lake City (Fort Union), Utah. (40 stores), Supper Thyme USA Omaha (NW), Nebraska (35 stores), Lets Dish!. Eden Prarie, Minnesota. (31 stores), Meal Makers. Saint Peters, Missouri. (31 stores), Dinner MyWay. Sacramento, California. (25 stores), Entree Vous. Lexington, Kentucky. (23 stores), Supper Solutions. Westminster, Colorado. (22 stores), Entrees Made Easy. Mesa, Arizona. (18 stores), Pass Your Plate. Edmond, Oklahoma. (17 stores), Lets Eat!. Tampa (South), Florida. (15 stores), Dinners Done Right. Federal Way, Washington. (13 stores), Main Dish Kitchen. Grand Rapids, Michigan. (10 stores), Simply Done Dinners. Parma, Ohio. (4 stores), Social Suppers. Kansas City / North, Missouri. (15 stores), Sociale Gourmet. Eagan, Minnesota. (10 stores).