Gone are the days of homemade meals with the entire family. Or are they? Companies around Puget Sound are cooking up solutions for busy people. Dinner is a time for families to gather around the table and share their days. Children learn conversation and listening skills, manners and more. Studies show that parents have the opportunity to keep communication channels open within the family, helping prevent drug and alcohol use in teens. With most families’ hectic lifestyles, however, that time to connect is disappearing into extra hours at work, clubs, sports, lessons and
various other commitments. By the time the entire family is at home, it is 7 or 8 at night. Who has time to shop, chop and cook for dinner? This problem of the “dinner dilemma” is so widespread that various businesses around Puget Sound and the United States have popped up trying to help families with dinner. Some of these companies deliver food to your door while others help you assemble frozen meals to take home. Whatever the format, these companies are providing solutions to eating meals on the run. In addition to national companies that ship food via mail, there are many local companies working to help you put dinner on the table. Following, four different Puget Sound-based companies are profiled.
Delicious Planet WWW.DELICIOUS-PLANET.COM Randi Carter started Delicious Planet in 1998, after building up a clientele through her job as a personal chef. Randi has a nutrition degree from Bastyr University and enjoys creating organic meals for people. With so many clients, Randi decided it would be more convenient for people to have food delivered, rather than Randi traveling to everyone’s home to cook.
Six years later, Delicious Planet is still growing and profitable. “I can’t believe it, actually,” says Randi.
Delicious Planet’s Wild Salmon Entrée. Photo courtesy
of Studio 3 Inc.
Unlike some other companies, customers do not go to an industrial kitchen and assemble meals. Instead, they can choose entrées, salads, lunches, side dishes and more online. Food is then prepared the day before delivery, packed into coolers and delivered to customers’ doors. There are two deliveries available each week, and customers can order whenever they wish. The only requirement is a $40 minimum order. Randi says the company is also conscious about using recyclable materials. They ask that Styrofoam coolers and ice packs are left outside to be picked up during the next delivery. The food containers should also be rinsed and left, as these are not recyclable with curbside pickup. Delicious Planet takes them to a steel
Randi Carter, owner of Delicious Planet, strives to create
100 percent organic meals.
recycler in West Seattle. Coolers and ice packs are sterilized and reused as long as possible. If customers won’t be ordering for a while, they can call or e-mail the company to have someone collect the containers. Delicious Planet’s food utilizes produce that is in season, and Randi says they strive for 100 percent organic meals. The company works with local farmers and distributors of organic produce that also serve some local grocery stores. The menu, besides containing seasonal items, also is a balance of comfort food, ethnic foods and “meat and potatoes” meals. Vegetarian, poultry and fish dishes are also available. The menu changes every Monday, and favorites are often brought back. All items have nutrition information available on the Web site, and if customers want substitutions made, Randi says they can accommodate special requests, within reason.
If customers have dietary restrictions, they can also call Delicious Planet’s
Customer Service department
to have any questions answered. Randi says she gets a lot of positive comments from customers, including stories of weight loss
once they’ve started eating Delicious Planet meals. But “75 percent of the time,” says Randi, “I hear ‘What a lifesaver. Your service is a lifesaver
to our family.’”
Designed Dinners WWW.DESIGNED DINNERS.COM Designed Dinners just opened their latest store in June in Belltown. The company, started in spring 2003, has seven locations, including Renton, Redmond and Madison Park. Bruce Pinkerton is president and executive chef of the company. “My cusine,” he says, “by virtue of my style of food is very light.” Bruce started cooking in Canada when he was 17 years old. After a three-year apprenticeship and experience as a journeyman cook, he completed his chef’s certification, receiving the highest ranking for a chef in Canada. Bruce has owned his own restaurant and served as chef and director of operations for a full-service hotel in Seattle. He eventually wanted to go back into business for himself, and after considering becoming a personal chef, found other companies doing similar things to Designed Dinners and decided he could do
it better himself. The company is franchising now, but all the stores—excluding the Belltown location—run the same way.
A couple creates their ready-to-heat meals at Designed Dinners.
Customers visit the Designed Dinners Web site and choose a location, date and time to spend an hour or two creating eight or 12 entrées that will be frozen. They then choose from 18 entrées available for the month. When it’s time for their session, they come to the store, put on an apron, have a glass of wine and create their food. Each entrée has clear instructions above a refrigerated cart that contains all the necessary ingredients and measuring tools. Meals are put into Ziplock bags, labeled with cooking instructions and suggestions for side dishes and put into a box or cooler, ready to be frozen until needed.
Designed Dinners gives clear instructions for creating the various entrée selections.
For an extra fee, Designed Dinners will assemble your meals for you and have them ready for pickup or delivery. The Belltown location only has this option. “The menu changes every month,” says Bruce. “Not all 18 are brand-new (entrées), but I try to make it so that about half are brand new. The other half are popular, repeated items.” Nutrition information is available for entrées on the Web site, and since customers create their food, customization is possible. Bruce says his customers come back time and again, often with
stories of lower cholesterol, lower blood sugar and lower blood pressure. “It’s a balanced diet,” he says. “Nothing is over-contrived or too much fat or all the rest of the bad stuff you get in any convenience food.”
Dream Dinners WWW.DREAMDINNERS.COM In May, Dream Dinners sold 2.5 million servings of their food. That
is quite an accomplishment for a company that opened the first store in 2002. Stephanie Allan, co-founder of Dream Dinners, says their main customer is the busy mom. The company started out from a busy mom— Stephanie, who was running a catering business while still trying to get dinner on the table for her own family. She started using freezable meals, and after a number of years, had friends that wanted to try her method of serving dinner. Eventually, Dream Dinners opened their first location
in the Seattle area. The company is now based out of Snohomish, Wash.
Women, Stephanie says, want to be able to make dinner for their families, and Dream Dinners gives them an opportunity to do that.
“It’s a shot of self-esteem,” she says. Women can say, “‘I actually made this, and didn’t put mushrooms on half of it because the kids don’t like mushrooms.’ There is so much
more flexibility.” Customers visit the Dream
Dinners Web site and choose 36 or more servings of dinners. They also make a reservation for a location and time to create their dinners. Each store has refrigerated stations with a recipe card, and all the ingredients are ready to be added to the meal, which is designed to be frozen, thawed and cooked. Each meal has a label that includes cooking directions and side dish selections.
Dream Dinners provides all ingredients for their entrées ready to assemble—no chopping is required.
Stephanie says their meals are seasonal, with more grilling opportunities in the summertime and hardier food, some designed for a crock pot, in winter. There are always a few dishes on the menu that cook in 10 to 15 minutes. The dinners are desig-ned to be kid-friendly, and the company has four signature dishes that rotate through the menu frequently. Once in a while, Stephanie says, they will include a dessert or brunch- type item. Because customers create the meals themselves, ingredients can be left out or added in differing amounts, allowing for customization for differing family tastes. The company uses low-fat and non-fat ingredients, and supplies the leanest cuts of all-white meat for their meals. Besides being healthy, Dream Dinners meals help save customers time. “We estimate,” Stephanie says, “it saves around 10 hours a week for a busy mom.” Customers have mentioned that since they started coming to Dream Dinners, children’s test scores have gone up, people have dropped weight and families simply have more time to spend together.
Month of Meals WWW.MONTHOFMEALS.COM A little over seven years ago, Month of Meals started with customers helping cook and package their meals. About two years ago, the customers left the kitchen and instead had the convenience of picking up ready-made meals or having them delivered directly to their door. “People were getting busier and busier and finding it hard to put
time aside to come in and prepare meals,” says Kay Conley, owner of the Redmond-based business. Now, customers order meals by phone or online and get food that has been prepared by chefs. The Month of Meals delivery area includes all of Washington state.
Kay says 40 to 60 percent of their meals fall into a low-fat, light category—possible because less fat is needed in the pan when creating large batches of food. “It’s important to me that food tastes good and is healthy,” she says. The company has nutrition information for their food available on their Web site. Fifty to 75 percent of their meals can simply be reheated and eaten. There are a few that need to go
into an oven or on a grill because Kay and her chefs do not think it will reheat well. The Month of Meals menu changes monthly, typically with two beef, two pork, two to three sea- food, three to five poultry and a few meatless options for entrées. Also available are side dishes for some entrées. Customers order by number of servings, and food is packaged in one-, two- or three-serving portions. If customers order more than three servings, they will receive more than one container of the entrée or side dish. “We try to vary (the menu) so people don’t get bored,” says Kay. That includes having Italian, Indian, Asian and home-style cuisine on the menu. Kay says because their customers range from busy moms to brand-new parents and, increasingly, the elderly, their menu items are not really spicy. Customers of Month of Meals often report that the company has made their lives easier, and their families are now eating healthier.
A lot of their meals also go to customers’ sick friends or relatives who don’t have the time or energy to make food. In all, Kay says, their goal is to help people change their eating habits and create a tradition of eating around the dinner table. She, like all the companies profiled, want to take away the stress of “what’s for dinner?”
Tackle Tonight's Dinner AT LUNA EXPRESS If you are finishing your workout at the Club around dinnertime and are going home to a hungry family, why not pick up dinner at Luna Express on your way out the door? Instead of making an extra stop on the way home, grab some food your family will love right at the Bellevue Club. Luna Express offers sandwiches, entrées, pastas, salads and pre-made dinners to go. Popular items for dinner include pulled chicken, flank steak, salmon, Waldorf salad, penne pomodoro, pesto pasta, asparagus, broccolini and more. All of Luna Express’s menu items are ready to eat or heat and serve. Luna Express is open until 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, until 8 p.m. Saturday and until 6 p.m. Sunday.
