A Simple Recipe for Success
On an icy Saturday morning in early December, a small group of women bustle about a storefront kitchen tucked into a quiet stretch of a normally busy thoroughfare. One woman, seated at a desk, flips through a binder full of laminated recipes, making piles for future ingredient gathering and preparation. Another patrols the prep areas, making sure things are running smoothly. The other women, clad in aprons and bandannas to hold back their hair, stand at a pristine stainless steel counter with mixing bowls and spatulas, assembling the day’s menu.
The scene is normal for a Saturday morning. But these women aren’t restaurant workers; they’re employees and customers of Dinner by Design, a home meal assembly company on the north side of Chicago, one franchise among almost 30 in the Chicago area. Founder Julie Duffy started the business as a one-kitchen operation back in 2003, and there are now agreements in place for more than 100 different franchises to open in 12 states as well as Canada.
At the helm of Dinner by Design on Lincoln Avenue is franchise owner Juli O’Flaherty, who chose a location in the heart of an urban neighborhood that’s “loaded with our demographic”: a mix of what she calls the “traditional soccer mom,” about 30 to 35 years old who’s busy with the activities of a small, active family, as well as the young female professional, either single or married, with her hands full even without kids. “People imagine [the business working] more in a suburban or rural context,” O’Flaherty says, but the location made sense to her in an urban setting, so she tried it out. More Dinner by Design franchises have since opened in different Chicago neighborhoods, and other meal assembly companies are now following suit by opening locations in busier city areas but only after seeing that her location had been successful, she says.
It Takes All Kinds
Every business has a target demographic, but part of Dinner by Design’s success may be that it doesn’t aim to lump its customer base into one lifestyle. During the Saturday session, a woman named Kathy was in the store preparing a month’s worth of meals to share with her 27-year-old son, who lives with her. She says that one of her friends, who has a larger family, swears by Dinner by Design but told Kathy it probably wouldn’t make much sense for her to do it would be too much food. Kathy, who has a full-time career and busy days even without a large family, tried it and has been hooked ever since: She loves the food, and it just lasts longer with fewer mouths to feed.
Another customer, an attorney who also happens to be a proud new mother, came in to pick out some preprepared entrées from a freezer at the front of the store. She works from home since her daughter, Evelyn, was born, and she’s busy enough that she’s hired a dog walker to help out while she takes care of the baby during the day. It’s not that she doesn’t know how to cook she says she’s recently finished about 25 tins of homemade fudge for clients but the convenience of the meals is a huge appeal to a woman juggling a career with a new baby.
Following her, a pregnant woman wearing a blinking Bluetooth headset wanders in to explore the same freezer full of preprepared meals.
Piecing Things Together
Customers have two options when they do business with Dinner by Design, in-store preparation or preorder for pickup. In-store prep is what made Dinner by Design such a phenomenon: It’s a way for people to cut out the time and stress of planning, shopping and messy in-home preparation, but they can still avoid the high sodium and calorie count of fast food or frozen dinners and enjoy the satisfaction of making home-cooked meals for their family.
Before going to prepare their meals, customers call the store location near them or visit the company’s website, www.dinnerby designkitchen.com, to make their menu selections for the month and arrange a date to assemble the meals. Store employees hand customers an invoice detailing their prep menu for the day and how much they’ll owe at the end of their session. Employees ensure a personal stamp on each visit by keeping track electronically of which customers are back for a repeat visit.
Upon arrival in the kitchen, all main ingredients such as meat and vegetables are measured according to the meal recipe and set aside in individual plastic bags. Pots of herbs and seasonings sit atop the prep counter with the proper measuring spoons ready to portion out. Each recipe sits near the required ingredients, and all that’s left for customers to do is collect freezer bags and put the ingredients together, seal them up in a bag and place a sticker with cooking instructions on the finished package.
Order Up!
When customers with no time to do their own prep preorder their meals for pickup, Dinner by Design kitchen staff get all the ingredients together, assemble the meals and store them, frozen, until customers come in to pick them up. The Lincoln Avenue location also has a glass-front freezer in the front of the store that houses meals the staff has prepared based on popularity for anyone to walk in and buy. A laminated menu for the month, stuck on the freezer door with a magnet, informs customers which entreés, side dishes and desserts are available for purchase.
Inside the freezer, attached to each wire shelf, are laminated tags with suggestions: “Want us to thaw it for you? Call ahead and have dinner tonight!” or “Ask us about items we may have as specials!” For customers not familiar with all the features of the business, it’s an opportunity to learn about their options, and for the business, it’s an opportunity to increase sales or offer a reminder to customers for next time they’re in the store.
The Take-Home
How does this apply in the context of your garden center? Put simply, there’s a growing number of consumers who want the fulfillment of doing something for themselves whether it’s a professional task, a meal or a garden project but don’t necessarily have the time to put all the pieces together from scratch. One idea that’s already catching on with garden center owners: the container workshop. Customers select a decorative container from your shop’s inventory and several individual plants or flowers, then your employees are on hand with media, starter fertilizers and expertise to perfect the plants’ placement in their containers.
The benefit is twofold: Customers leave knowing they created a beautiful product but will be spared the frustration they face when trying to complete the task on their own while juggling many other things at home. And you’ll make a sale in a transaction that encourages people to come back again and again and improve your reputation among customers just by being there to lend your professional knowledge.
SIDEBAR
Four-Star Menu Selections
Dinner by Design strives to make its monthly menus both diverse and delicious. Part of that effort was the hiring of Mark Morgan, a registered dietitian, who joined the company in 2006 to oversee all menu development and testing. There is an extensive recipe-trial process at test kitchens throughout the company’s operations, including an 1,800-sq.ft. facility built in early 2006. The company’s efforts are obvious: Included on that December Saturday’s menu were apricot- and caper-stuffed pork loin; pepperoni pasta; “confetti” meatloaf dotted with carrot coins and fresh spinach; Spanish paella with shrimp, chicken and Andouille sausage; and bruschetta chicken. Each recipe is prepared with the freshest ingredients and can be tailored to the customer’s food allergies or personal preferences, another perk O’Flaherty mentions over more processed or fast food.
Customer Buzz
Turning an ordinary task into an event is bound to get people talking. On yelp.com, a local city guide written entirely by users, customers of Dinner by Design have written rave reviews on their experiences. Here’s a small taste:
“I love the idea of cooking, but I hate the actual process… I suck at chopping, slicing and/or dicing things, and when I come home at the end of the day I just want to relax. Which means that I think Dinner by Design is pretty much one of the most amazing ideas ever.” Christiana S.
“It seems a bit expensive at first, but if you think about it, the price is very fair. For 12 meals… the cost is about $130. That works out to under $4 per serving. Plus, the food is really good and prepared exactly how you like it because you do it yourself! You don’t even have to clean up the mess they do that for you!” Drew R.
“All of the directions are labeled on the bag, and now I just pop something into the fridge the day before I want to make it, and I can heat it in the oven when I get home. Considering I never normally have the energy to prepare things like chicken risotto or steak sandwiches, it’s been a pleasant break from spaghetti and take-out.” Jenny S.
If you adapted Dinner by Design’s concept to work for your business, imagine the buzz it could generate for your garden center.
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