It’s what’s for supper

MUKILTEO – Teresa Jones has two busy young boys and no time to prepare what she considered a healthy, home-cooked meal.

She was tired of shopping at grocery stores, preparing dinner and cleaning up.

Now, Jones spends about two hours a month at a Mukilteo business called Dinners Ready, creating 12 six-portion meals to be frozen and cooked weeks later.

“A lot of the times we would meet somewhere to go out to dinner,” Jones said. “This way, the food is much better for you and it takes the thinking out of the question ‘What’s for dinner?’”

At Dinners Ready, up to 12 customers spend about two hours rotating through professional prep kitchens and create a meal. Each recipe is created by a professional chef and the ingredients for each are located at separate stations. The 12 meals costs $189, or about $2.60 a portion.

“It doesn’t cost me any more money (than shopping at a grocery store). It just saves me oodles of time,” said Joan Thomasson of Mukilteo. “Last month I made food I didn’t think I’d like, but I did.”

Co-owners Brad Vorhees and Scott Farrar opened Dinners Ready April 1 and say they’ve seen business steadily increase. I

They’re part of a new “home meal replacement” industry has been slowly growing nationwide and is expected to boom in the next few years, according to ACNielsen, a business that monitors product movement.

The industry started in the early 1990s and is expected to grow into a $150 billion to $170 billion business by 2005 because consumers have less time to prepare foods at home and have a need for quick, high quality meal solutions, according to ACNielsen.

Vorhees said he started in the business after Diane, his wife, used a similar service after having elbow surgery.

“We loved the idea and thought we could do it better than others,” Vorhees said. “We saw a major trend and the time allowed for home meal preparation is dwindling.”

Dinners Ready is not the only business with this concept or with hopes of becoming a national chain – or even that started in Snohomish County.

Tina Kuna, co-owner of the Everett-based Dream Dinners, started in 2002. She said she and co-owner Stephanie Firchau quickly realized they were on to something.

“We were busting at the seams – we had people driving all the way from Portland to come to us,” Kuna said. “Now we have brought locations near them.”

Dream Dinners has grown from one Everett location in early 2002 to 28 nationwide, with 10 more planned to open soon.

They fill a niche, Diane Vorhees said.

“Moms who don’t usually cook can now say, ‘I made this dinner from scratch.’ It makes them feel good,” she said. “Kids can even put it in the oven and make dinner.”

Vorhees said their menu changes every month and is created by Carol Reese, a former Betty Crocker employee and cookbook author. June’s recipes include Jamaican flank steak, shrimp carbonara with linguine and chicken cordon blue.

Each prepared meal gets stored in a Ziplock bag or aluminum dish with stickers detailing backing instructions.

“This is an easy way for my husband to throw it in the oven when he gets home from work and when I bring the kids home, dinner’s ready,” Jones said.

Charlene Byde of Stanwood agreed and said although “it’s a lot of work up front,” it saves time shopping, doing prep work and cleaning up.

Vorhees said he has hopes of expanding Dinners Ready into a nationwide franchise.

At Dream Dinners, Kuna said she not worried about others emulating their business.

“Our goal is to get families back together at the dinner table,” Kuna said.

Diane Vorhees agreed. “It’s nice to have the kids back at the dinner table. And it’s better than eating at Taco Bell everyday.”

Evan Caldwell: 425-339-3475 or ecaldwell@heraldnet.com