MEAL PREP

Overview of Meal Prep (Meal Assembly) Kitchen Franchise Segment by Kelly

Unhappy Meal Prep Franchisees:

In the early 2000’s Franchisor’s with the names like “Dream Dinners,” “Super Suppers,” and smaller companies like “Let’s Dish, Supper Thyme USA and My Girlfriends Kitchen,” exploded onto the meal scene by being heralded as the next big “food service trend.” The Meal Assembly Industry had come to town. You may know it by different names like Meal Prep Centers or Meal Assembly Kitchens,…but the concept is the same. Dream Dinners & Super Suppers quickly found themselves in the forefront of the sprint to sell franchises to hungry franchisees, ready to invest in a heavily advertised as a fast-growing business trend.

The Meal Assembly concept was designed to appeal to harried working Moms by solving their dinnertime dilemma. Busy, working Moms also seemed to be the target market of Franchisors in search for owners for their new Meal Assembly concept. Women who desired to own a viable business reasoned that it seemed like the perfect solution to their most pressing workday problem, getting a healthy and fast meal on the table for their families. They saw their need and figured why not fill the need. Families’ gathering around the table for dinnertime became the Meal Assembly industries battle cry.

In 2002, the Meal Assembly industry concept was in its infancy. Meal Assembly industry seemed to validly take up where Personal Chefs’ left off twenty years after bursting onto the culinary scene. For families who couldn’t afford their own Personal Chef the Meal Assembly industry was supposed to be the next evolutionary leap to answer the age-old question of “What’s for Dinner?” Meal Assembly industry experts predicted that they had found the answer and it was affordable, nutritional, home-cooked meals that were assembled by Moms in storefront kitchens while socializing with friends. The interesting twist was Mom and friends didn’t have to shop, chop, slice & dice!

The concept seemed simple enough busy, harried, hurried, hassled Moms needed fast dinners every night for hungry families. The Meal Assembly Kitchens provided all the ingredients and prepping of things was pre-done by store staff. All Moms had to do was choose from a monthly menu, make an appointment for a “session”, show up, put on an apron and assemble 12 meals in 2 hours for her family. Simple and affordable (unlike most Personal Chefs) the dinner problem was finally solved for every mom in America. The conventional Meal Assembly industry reasoning for consumers was, why not make the mess in my friendly neighborhood Meal Assembly kitchen where all the work is done and not make a mess in my kitchen at home? It should have appealed to the masses; it was a nifty idea on paper, it even achieved limited success in some places for a while; but for some reason it never truly caught on to the public at large. Now we find ourselves in 2008 with an industry in meltdown…