While most of the meal-prep companies have pricing options to prepare a set number of meals, Deeelish started a Supper Club program last summer. Customers could buy 10 or 15 meal credits up front, allowing them to come in and prepare one or two meals at a time within a certain period of time. “It’s another way to give more flexibility,” Stevens says.

More than 90 percent of the Deeelish meals are prepared by store staff, and the company ships many of the orders by Federal Express throughout the Bay area and into Oregon, Southern California, and even Texas and Hawaii.

The company also added a corporate delivery program. “We go out and strike up relationships with a company, put a refrigerator onsite, and we deliver food to the company and put it in the refrigerators,” he says. Employees simply order the meals online, pick them up from the company refrigerator, and take them home to the freezer.

In a further effort to get the meals to consumers conveniently, the company has programs with some elementary and secondary schools to deliver the preordered meals to parents in a 30-minute window in the afternoon as they swing by the school to pick up their kids.

Standout Food

Each meal-assembly company aims to stand out with consumers by presenting recipes that represent their tastes and values.

Boulder, Colorado–based The Organic Dish began in early 2007 as a place to come prepare recipes using organic ingredients. Now the staff prepares nearly all orders, and customers come in and pick up their meals, says co-owner Beckie Hemmerling.

In addition to organic and natural ingredients (antibiotic- and hormone-free, grass-fed, free-range, and local), Hemmerling’s operation also caters to vegetarians, vegans, and those with food allergies and other dietary needs. She substitutes quinoa for couscous, offers wheat-free soy sauce, and modifies recipes to meet low-fat, low sodium requests. “Most people just want to know the food is not processed. They look at the ingredient list, and they know everything that’s on it,” Hemmerling says.

Since the price is determined by the number of servings assembled and not per item or dish, food costs are the starting point in determining the monthly recipe selections, says Natalie Lasch, corporate executive chef for Atlanta-based The Dinner A’Fare, with 42 locations in upscale lifestyle centers. She looks for diversity in food costs after examining commodity prices.

Her second consideration is the diversity of customers. “Every customer isn’t a mother with 2.2 kids,” she says. Some are singles looking for trendy foods, and there are a growing number of customers looking at phytochemicals, organics, and gluten-free.

Lasch considers it imperative that she keep up with culinary trends. “What are chefs bringing in? I can’t do something as escalated as that, but I try to make a home version of it,” she says. Among her contacts are members of the U.S. Culinary Olympic Team who report back on what they see around the world.

“A big thing over the past year has been gourmet pizza. I’ve done a few of those, including a Thai flatbread pizza,” Lasch says. Noodle bowls also have become trendy, so she’s incorporated some of those into her recipe bank.

Though customers’ tastes vary widely geographically, Lasch notices that there’s greater acceptance of unusual spices, like Chinese Five Spice. “People are starting to be more aware of these culinary trends,” she says. She also has had great success with gastro pub food—taking bar food up to the next level, citing rustic chicken and potato gratin as an example. That particular recipe mixes chicken flavored with chili powder and paprika to give it smokiness with red skin potato wedges, cheddar and Monterey Jack cheese, and green onions. “Bake it all off together and it browns on top. Serve it with a unique sour cream sauce, and it’s a feel-good meal,” Lasch says.

Customers who buy into the meal-assembly concept look to try new options, says Michele Bellso, president and CEO of Syracuse, New York–based Make & Take Gourmet. Some of the more daring and successful Make & Take’s recipes of late include Thai pineapple curry chicken; Thai burgers with creamy cucumber relish; and Bow-Thai pasta.

Creativity also abounds with all-American dinner favorites. Bellso serves a pork tenderloin, for example, flavored with dried fruit. “People are used to the tenderloin, but we use dried apricots and wine sauce. It steams together as it cooks, and the flavor is incredible,” she says. Brown sugar meatloaf (with a brown sugar glaze over the top) is another customer favorite.

To make sure outlets are “hitting the spot” with the recipes they offer, Deeelish sends out a survey at the end of each month to get food feedback, while Dream Dinners uses tasting panels that include kids to determine what dishes make the menu. Of the 17 monthly dishes Deeelish features, about one-third are new recipes. The rest are classics that have sold well in the past; the best of the best; and a few “fast lane” items designed for grab and go.

All the dishes developed for Super Suppers are tested by chefs at the Culinary School of Fort Worth, which was also founded by Judie Byrd.

While other quick meal-prep franchises might require franchisees to offer the same revolving monthly recipes, experience has taught Byrd to allow more flexibility. “We have about 400 entrées in the library. Every month, franchisees choose which they want,” she says. Byrd, however, recommends Super Supper operators include four national best-sellers as well as four to six new recipes. “After that, they can fill in with what sells best in their areas.”