Andi Berkowitz’s goal is to get a hot dinner on 200 tables every night. As a Dinner by Design franchisee, Mrs. Berkowitz, 50 years old, presides over a gleaming commercial kitchen in a Highland Park, Ill., shopping center, 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.
Dinner by Design, based in Grayslake, Ill., is one of 24 franchise companies in the fast-growing meal-preparation field, according to Bert Vermeulen, 47, of Cheyenne, Wyo., a business consultant who founded the Easy Meal Preparation Association in 2003, when the industry consisted of a handful of operators.
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 (Dinner by Design’s September options include Home-style Italian Meatloaf and Turkey Tetrazzini). 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.
By the end of 2006, Mr. Vermeulen said, there will be over 1,100 meal-preparation kitchens in the U.S. doing about $270 million in sales.
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