By Bill Zeeble, KERA reporter
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-495548.mp3
Dallas, TX – Bill Zeeble, KERA 90.1 reporter: Super Suppers looks like a commercial kitchen. But there are no ovens or walk-in freezers, just large salad bar stations filled with chopped and sliced onions, tomatoes, peppers, meats, other foods, and spices. At this Dallas storefront in Lakewood Shopping Center, there's also cheese, quiche and wine set out for customers, who are here to work.
Candace Williams, customer: This is my 2nd time and I'm telling you this is a thing of beauty.
Zeeble: 55 year old Candace Williams defies at least one stereotype that this concept, called easy meal prep, is for harried young mothers wanting nutritious and affordable home cooked meals for the family. Williams is just feeding her and her husband.
Williams: I like to do other things with my free time besides cook. I've been-there-done-that for years. Now it's time to enjoy retirement.
Zeeble: For 199 dollars, customers can make a dozen meals at a dozen stations, including, this month, pesto salmon and vegetables and orange-tarragon glazed chicken with herbed noodles. Follow the recipes provided, assemble the prepared, fresh ingredients, put them in a foil container or plastic bag - holding food for up to 6 - and take them home to the freezer. Some men do this, but, like Robin Monigold, most are women
Robin Monigold, customer: He doesn't like to cook unless its over a campfire. If you can put all these meals together in an hour, if I did it all myself, it would take a lot longer
Zeeble: Cutting time to make fresh nutritious meals was an idea Judy and Bill Byrd came up with 3 years ago. Judy had run a cooking school in Fort Worth for decades. She and her husband Bill, a businessman who'd operated several restaurants, opened a Super Suppers test store that worked. So they launched the franchise, now numbering more than 120 nationwide. Bill is the CEO
Bill Byrd, CEO, Super Suppers: The whole mission is to bring families around the dinner table one meal at a time. But you've got to have good food, a catalyst. We give them 12 varieties a month.
Zeeble: The concept had emerged a few years before Super Suppers began, says consultant Bert Vermeulen. who helps small, easy meal prep start-ups. He says the first business he knows about opened in 1999 in Seattle. Two years ago, there were 75 businesses like these.
Bert Vermeulen, business consultant: By end of 2004, there were 176. and by the end of 05 it was up to 566.
Zeeble: Bill Byrd is cautiously optimistic about the trendy concept
Byrd: The food business, a new concept, usually lasts less than 18 months. This is so unique, it could blow and go, or it could kind of be there. We'll watch trends like a hawk. And we'll try to pick up trends.
Zeeble: Byrd and Vermeulen are confident the concept will grow. They say it fills a fundamental need: offering busy people affordable, nutritious food, in a fraction of the time it used to take. For KERA 90.1 I'm Bill Zeeble
bzeeble@kera.org