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Entrepreneurs cook up meals-to-go businesses
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
Like many young professionals, Angela Gagne found that the demands of a long work day left little time for grocery shopping and preparing a home-cooked meal, but that is exactly what she and her husband Rich longed for at the close of each career-driven day.
“We were eating out too much, and it seemed like one of the hardest parts of the day was driving home and trying to figure out what was for dinner,” Gagne said.
When she found out she was expecting a baby, Gagne decided it was time for a career change as well as a solution to her dinnertime dilemma. She also wanted to own her own business. Recognizing her own time crunch, and that others are dealing with the same issue, Gagne started researching meal preparation businesses and recently opened the first Southeast franchise location of Sociale Make & Take Gourmet, a Minneapolis-based gourmet meal service.
“I sort of stumbled across this concept by doing Internet searches,” Gagne said. “I thought it could help so many other people and so many other families, and my husband and I were both looking to start something new.”
The meal prep business is growing nationwide in spite of competition from fast food restaurants and supermarkets offering hot bars and deli foods.
There are currently 426 meal preparation businesses with 1,304 locations across the country, the Easy Meal Prep Association reported on its Web site. While many are mom-and-pop businesses with one location, some franchise operations include Washington-based Dream Dinners, with 199 locations, and Dinner By Design, an Illinois company with 55 stores.
Sociale has become the fourth meal-preparation business to cater to a busy and hungry Lowcountry.
Andy Miller and his wife Cindy opened The Original Take and Bake in Mount Pleasant in 2005.
“There was no one else in the state of South Carolina when we started doing this,” Miller said. “It’s amazing how many have popped up.”
Divine Dinners has since opened in Summerville as has a Dream Dinners franchise in Mount Pleasant.
“We’ve been here 15 months and it’s just amazing to see how many families we’ve helped,” said Kim Campolattaro, co-owner of Dream Dinners. “One woman said it saved her marriage. They actually sit at the dinner table now and talk, and they didn’t do that before.”
The meal prep trend is just another option for busy consumers, who are spending more on fast food every year. Take-out and drive-through sales rose from $104 million in 2000 to $274 million in 2005, although 77% of meals are still eaten at home, according to QSR magazine, a food industry trade publication.
Consumer trend analyst Britt Beamer, president and CEO of Charleston-based America’s Research Group, said the meal preparation business is a category for perhaps two or three vendors in a market if the concept is done right. Beamer said probably 18% of the population has a demand for such a concept.
“It’s a growing trend because people are busier. They do like the idea of good, prepared food and that has a lot of good things going for it,” Beamer said. “The negative is, if the first reaction or experience isn’t good, you lose them. If you had four people in a market doing it, one of them would probably go under.”
Gagne opened Sociale in December in the West Ashley Shoppes on Orleans Road. The gourmet kitchen-in-a-storefront allows customers the option of buying pre-ordered prepared meals or attending a cooking session where all ingredients are prepped and stocked at stations, allowing guests to leave with up to 12 complete meals in one hour.
Meals can be frozen at home and cooked any time within 45 days. Sociale also offers prepared meals for takeout from its “Express Freezer.” Those who want to attend a cooking session can register online for a specific time or visit during “walk-in days.”
Sociale’s menu changes monthly, with offerings such as Fiesta Pork Chops with Avocado Butter and Tuscan Chicken, and categories such as The Family Table and Succulent Seafood. Recipes are created by Sociale’s gourmet chefs in Minneapolis, including Amparito Versailles-Curtis, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Minneapolis. Gagne has a staff of five in the West Ashley store, including local chefs.
“This is a way to get a healthy dinner on the table and something that you feel good about serving to your family because it has been cooked right there for the first time,” Gagne said. “You can imagine how many hours you save in the kitchen if you don’t have to do all that grocery shopping, the meat-cutting and the vegetable-cutting.”
About half the items are bakeable and come in a pan that can be tossed away, Gagne said. The program is also designed to be cost effective, with entrees ranging from $2.85 to $4.22 per serving, depending on the number and size of entrees purchased.
A minimum purchase of five entrees is required, and the store also has a retail section where kitchen gadgets, condiments and other culinary items can be purchased.
Gagne said her store competes with other prepared food services by offering a gourmet product.
“Number one is the quality of the food,” Gagne said. “It really is going to taste like restaurant-quality food that you put on your table.”
The novelty of cooking in a gourmet, storefront kitchen also opens the business to groups and private cooking parties.
“It’s a great social activity,” Gagne said. “A lot of girlfriends get together, co-workers get together, mothers’ groups and church groups. It’s a little different from going to the movies or having a drink. You’re actually getting something accomplished.”
Tamlyn Willard, owner of Sublime Pies and Cakes, has become one of Gagne’s regular customers.
“Even though I love to cook myself, I don’t have time to cook, because I run a business,” Willard said. “I probably go at least once a month and get seven to 10 meals prepared. It’s nice just to know it’s in the freezer or the fridge, and I don’t have to worry about what am I going to cook for dinner tonight.”
Sociale Make & Take meals come with nutritional information and calorie counts and can be adjusted for special diets or individual preferences.
“I hate olives and my husband is allergic to broccoli,” Willard said. “If there’s a recipe that has that stuff in it, they’ll take it out. They take down foods you’re allergic to or foods you don’t like, so they custom-make it for you.”
Gagne hopes to eventually open Sociale stores in Columbia and Greenville. The company is aiming to grow by 200 stores in the next three years, said president and co-founder Lisa Hake.
Like Gagne, Hake was in a high-powered marketing job when she and her husband started a family and she began looking for a different career. The couple now has three children and seven Sociale stores in Minnesota. The first franchised location opened in Edina, Minn., in 2006. Gagne’s store was the first franchise to locate outside of Minnesota, followed closely by another new franchise in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Hake said the company eventually would like to have 10 to15 locations in South Carolina. Projections call for the opening of 25 new locations across the nation this year. The estimated initial investment for a typical 1,500-square-foot store is between $140,000 and $252,500, with an initial franchise fee of $30,000.
“We’re growing well into the double digits every year,” Hake said. “What brought us into this business was a need. We started looking into getting a personal chef, but we didn’t have those types of funds. We started brainstorming the idea that, instead of a personal chef coming to your home, you’re going to his kitchen. We thought it made so much sense.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@charlestonbusiness.com.
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