A New Answer to ‘What’s for Dinner?’

By Christopher Calnan, The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville

Nov. 19–More help is on the way for time-pressed Floridians.

Super Suppers, a Texas-based company that sells ready-to-cook dinners, is entering the state by opening three Jacksonville studios beginning with a Beach Boulevard location.

Super Suppers bills itself as “a meal assembly program designed to get families back to the dinner table.” It features 12 different entrees that customers make themselves at Super Suppers studios, bring home to freeze, then thaw and cook when needed.

The Texas-based company that was founded in 1986 and started franchising last year, said franchise owners plan to open a location in Julington Creek next month and a third location at The Beaches next year.

Avondale native Kara Anderson, 36, opened her Beach Boulevard studio Oct. 21 and said 80 percent of the clients signed up to return this month, which she said is a good indicator of their satisfaction.

She’s expecting about 150 clients this month, half the monthly goal of 300 clients.

“We’re getting busy moms and single dads,” Anderson said.

But she’s also getting seniors and singles as customers who don’t have the time or energy to cook for themselves.

Customers sign up for classes that run twice a day, Tuesdays through Fridays and one Saturday a month for 90 minutes to 2 hours, depending on how much socializing clients do while preparing their meals. The classes, one in the morning and one in the early evening, provide clients with all the ingredients needed to assemble 12 entrees for three or six diners apiece, she said.

Super Suppers sells 36 servings for $110 and 72 servings for $215.

That comes out to about $3 per serving, Anderson said. Ingredients are placed in aluminum trays or plastic bags with frozen or thawed cooking instructions on them.

Nationally, similar meal assembly businesses have opened recently with names such as Let’s Dish, Main Dish Kitchen, Supper Thyme USA and Dinner Works Inc.

It’s been an emerging business model for the last two years sparked by time-starved families, said Mark Siebert, chief executive of the Chicago-area-based iFranchise Group. He dubbed it “the make-and-take segment.”

Siebert expects the industry will grow another two or three years before undergoing a consolidation with two or three companies dominating. “I think there will be some long-term winners in this,” he said. “Who that will be is yet to be determined.”

Ron Paul, president of Chicago-based food industry research firm Technomic, agreed. It’s too early to tell what will happen to meal- assembly companies because there’s been so little time to do consumer research on them.

“The jury is still out if they’ll have staying power,” he said.

“They’re a good value, but on the other hand it is frozen food.”

Super Suppers spokesman Trevor Hance said his company plans to open 20 to 30 Florida locations next year. Nationally, Super Suppers and its franchise owners expect to operate 200 studios by the end of the year, 2,500 within 35 years, he said.

Consultant Marshall Reddy, president of the Jacksonville-based Franchise Network Inc., said it’s too early if meal assembly businesses are a passing fad or on their way to become a permanent fixture of American retailing.

Meanwhile, such companies have to guard against growing too quickly.

Between 50 and 60 percent of all franchises fail during the first year of operation and fast growth is often a factor, Reddy said.

That’s because franchisees need training and corporate experts available to answer questions while starting up, he said.

Former professional golfer Brian DeAlexandris, 33, is building Jacksonville’s second Super Suppers at Race Track Road and San Jose Boulevard.

He and his fiancee were Super Suppers customers, first in Atlanta, then at the Beach Boulevard studio, before deciding to buy the franchise rights in the area that extends south of Interstate 295 to County Road 210.

“We thought it was the greatest thing in the world,” DeAlexandris said. “I’d love to open as many of these as we can.”

The businesses aren’t cheap. Hance said the typical franchise owner makes a total initial investment of $121,000 to $171,000.

Both Anderson and DeAlexandris said they paid Super Suppers a $35,000 franchise fee and pay the company a monthly royalty of 4 percent of sales, plus 1 percent for advertising.

DeAlexandris said he spent $60,000 to build his restaurant, not including equipment. Anderson said she spent $50,000 to equip her studio. She expects to open the Jacksonville area’s third Super Supper at the Beaches in late winter or early spring.

North San Pablo Road resident Lisa Eastburn bought seven meals for $128 during her third visit to Anderson’s Super Suppers studio this week. Eastburn and her husband have two teenage daughters and she works long hours as a nurse at Memorial Hospital.

She learned about Super Suppers in a Reader’s Digest article and viewed it as something that would help ease her time constraints.

“This way I can pull something out of a bag and it isn’t full of sodium and preservatives,” Eastburn said. “I think with the way the world is with two working parents it’s difficult to put a good healthy meal on the table. I hope it stays around a long time.”

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