DINNERTIME: The Joy of (Sorta) Cooking

BEHOLD THE POWER OF EASE: Only a year and a half after her first Super Suppers class in Fort Worth, Judie Byrd had sold 113 franchises.

Ladies, start your freezers.

The Rolex is ticking, and your kids, scattered all over town, are waiting to be picked up. Your mind races. When does Taylor need those shoes for dance class? Dang, you forgot (again!) to order Jamie’s birthday cake. And where is Hannah’s recital?

Dinner?

Can you say McDonald’s? Sure you can, probably more times than you care to admit.

Happy about serving your kids a Happy Meal? I doubt it. Admit it, deep beneath your layers of good intentions lies a cesspool of guilt created by years of avoiding Betty Crocker and your Calphalon.

Sometimes the moon seems easier to get to than the grocery store. And those smiling chefs on the Food Network—who haven’t prepped their own recipes for years—don’t have real jobs or kids or husbands who travel.

My sister-in-law Sarah has all three.  Despite her good intentions, juggling three kids, marriage, and a career and finding time to prepare home-cooked meals on a regular basis have become physically impossible.

So you can only imagine the squeal that pierces my eardrum when I call Sarah and invite her to join me for a class at Super Suppers. With headquarters in Fort Worth, this “assemble and freeze entrées” concept is the fastest growing segment of the home-meal replacement industry. The staff does your monthly meal planning and prep; all you need to release your inner June Cleaver is a cooler and a checkbook.

Once you tie on an apron, you make your way around the industrial assembly-line kitchen with 12 prep stations, each with its own menu. All of the ingredients are right in front of you. Meat portions are pre-measured, and measuring cups and spatulas are the only tools you need. You grab a freezer bag or tin baking pan, pile in the ingredients, and snap it shut.

Once you’ve assembled your chicken tamale pie, label the bag with cooking instructions and move over to Salisbury steak and cheesy potatoes. An hour to two hours later, your car is loaded down with 12 dinner entrées that serve four to six. No shopping, chopping, or—drum roll, please—dishes. Yes, you still have to hit the grocery store for salad or fresh veggies to accompany the entrées, but the majority of the work is in the bag.

“What a great idea!” screams the ever-entrepreneurial Sarah. “I want to buy a franchise!”

Once again, Sarah is not alone. In September 2003, Judie Byrd, who founded the Culinary School of Fort Worth 20 years ago, created her first Super Suppers class aimed at meeting the needs of busy parents who wanted to create quality family time around the dinner table but couldn’t seem to make it happen.

In July 2004, almost a year after the first class, she sold her first franchise. Seven months later, 113 owners in 19 states were in business. “We’ve had to update our phone system here three times to handle the calls,” says Judie, whose husband Bill is the CEO. “I have a room of potential franchisees who have flown in from all over the country waiting for me right now.”

I guess the Byrds will be ordering in Chinese tonight. Or perhaps they’ll stop by Dream Dinners, the pioneer of the assemble-and-freeze phenomenon with an outpost in Grapevine.

LIKE MARY KAY AND TUPPERWARE, Dream Dinners is an inspirational “you go, girl” tale.

Stephanie Allen and Tina Kuna, two gals from Snohomish, Washington, met through a unique supper club. Allen and a friend, tired of working all day and washing dishes all night, began to meet at each other’s houses once a month, where they would double their recipes, then split and freeze them. It wasn’t long before several friends, including Kuna, joined in.

The wine and gossip flowed freely. An e-mail—”bring your pans, a bottle of wine, and we’ll have some fun”—went out. Allen and Kuna provided the recipes and did the shopping, and the women toddled home with 12 freezer-ready entrées.

The “girls’ night out” sessions spread faster than a grease fire at McDonald’s. Eventually Allen and Kuna rented a commercial kitchen, and the rest is culinary—and big-business—history. Dream Dinners entered 2005 with a 60 percent increase in revenue over 2004. In less than three years, the company is running more than 80 franchises and is expecting a 250 percent increase in the number of franchises by the end of this year.

As a result, both Dream Dinners and Super Suppers, which rotate different menus each month, have hired franchise strategists to do the work that gets dirtier than dishes: market development, brand strategy, creative development, and interior design.

Obviously business is good, but is the food?

To answer that boiling question, Sarah and I start “Operation Assembly” at the Super Suppers on Lemmon and Douglas avenues. Grooving to the sound of the oldies, owners Elizabeth Watts and fiancé Keith Fletcher run us through the drill. Sarah, who signed up for the Super Supper 12 ($185), selects 12 meals from 12 recipes. Some, like the smoked ham with cowboy beans, don’t conform to her family’s taste, so she doubles up on others, like deep-dish stuffed pizza. I, being single, chose the Super Suppers 6 ($98). Fortunately metal pans are available in two sizes (9-by-13 and 4-by-6), enabling me to split the family-size portions in two. For the next hour we laugh, sing along with the Mamas and the Papas, and catch up on family business. Every time we set down a dirty bowl, it is whisked away.

We realize quickly why neither business uses “gourmet” in its name. Super Suppers and Dream Dinners are bonanzas for SYSCO, the industrial food giant that distributes canned, frozen, and packaged meats, fruits, vegetables, and supplies to hotels, hospitals, restaurants, schools, and other large institutions. Almost every product in both kitchens was delivered from a SYSCO truck. If a recipe calls for garlic, you stick a long teaspoon into a 1-pound jar of pickled garlic. Chicken tamale pie is thickened with cream of chicken soup from a No. 10 can. All of the vegetables and beef in the teriyaki and orange-glazed beef are lifted out of frozen cases, while the sauces come from industrial-size cans or bottles. Even “eggs” are poured out of a quart-size carton. Hence, we weren’t shocked to find most of the meals we sampled were cafeteria-quality, while others wouldn’t make it past the palate of a prisoner.

But hold the pickles—there is merit (and money) to mediocrity, especially when it comes to family-style dining. Take a look at Brinker’s (Chili’s, On the Border, etc.) rising stock price: average food sells. And early investors in these franchises are feasting.

Several days later, I head to Grapevine to taste test Dream Dinners. Here contemporary Christian music provides a more serene setting, and the 10 women in my class are mostly veterans. (Two walk in with ice chests on rollers.)

Dream Dinner recipes are a little more complicated, with a price tag to match: $200 for 12 entrées. At Dream Dinners, I get to use some “high tech” equipment, such as whisks and slotted spoons. I even zest a real lemon for a touch of freshness.

Time passes quickly. I learn that one mother’s life “has changed beyond belief.” After three months, she has learned how to make the system work to her advantage. As she packs her goodies to go, she calls her masseuse to see if he has a late-afternoon appointment available.

I admit I enjoy the experience. Home cooking these days is a lonely business, and both Dream Dinners and Super Suppers have revived the ancient tradition of cooking as a communal activity.

But somehow I missed the purple Kool-Aid station. How is it that these presumably smart women couldn’t see that they could do better in their own kitchens?

The idea of a quilting bee-type atmosphere is great, but what is the point if the food isn’t good? Who wants to get together to sew an ugly quilt?

I hate to bash the image these folks are selling—a happy, relaxed family gathered around the dinner table, discussing little Johnnie’s straight-A report card—because I think it’s important that we all step back and create more quality time and food at home. But why settle for a semi-quick fix of frozen ingredients?

Neither concept makes it possible to skip the grocery store, so why not pick up some frozen vegetables and at least cook them with fresh meat? Most of the chicken I tried was indistinguishable—in both taste and texture—from the vegetables. I mean, how many dirty dishes are we talking about?

Central Market in Plano will soon debut its brand of batch cooking classes, and, not surprisingly, the concept will focus on using fresh, high-quality meats and seasonal produce. No doubt the prices will be as high as the sodium content of the processed foods currently stacked in my freezer.

To double-check my assessment, I call Sarah. I catch her on her cell phone as she drives carpool. “How did the girls like the food?” I ask.

“They loved the stuffed pizza, hated the tamale pie, and surprisingly enjoyed the Salisbury steak and cheesy potatoes,” she replies.

“Would you go back?” I ask.

“Well, I do like having the security of food in my freezer,” she says loudly, competing with the soundtrack of Shrek II coming from the DVD in her minivan. “But the recipe for the barbecue chicken was six frozen chicken breasts and four cups of barbecue sauce. I think I can do that on my own.”

Let’s hope so.