Monday, April 16, 2007
Two new Lawrence businesses could help students replace ramen noodles and delivery pizza with items such as bacon-wrapped steak with gorgonzola sauce and butternut squash lasagna — for a reasonable price.
Barb Willoughby and her daughter Annie Wedman, both of Lawrence, prepare different entres together at Blue Plate Dinners. "It's so much fun. We prepare the food here and then take it home to cook later. It's a great place." Willoughby said.
Blue Plate Dinners, 4931 W. Sixth St., and Social Suppers, 3514 Clinton Parkway, call their business concept “meal assembly.” They both allow customers to come in and put together meals to take home, freeze and cook later.
“It’s a fast, easy, fun way to get dinner on the table,” said Lori Johns, co-owner of Blue Plate Dinners.
Johns helped start the Blue Plate Dinners business, and the Lawrence store is its only location. It opened in January.
Social Suppers is a franchise with 14 other locations, mostly in the Kansas City area. The Lawrence location opened in March.
While the meal-assembly concept is traditionally aimed at parents who want to feed their families with little time or effort, the owners of both businesses said they wanted to reach out to University students.
Barclay Hagen, co-owner of Social Suppers, said the concept could provide a way to split the cost of food among roommates.
“Sometimes one person ends up doing all the cooking, or it’s every man for himself,” Hagen said. “This is a good option to make things available and ready.”
Hagen said one group of college-age women came to Social Suppers for a meal session last week. One mother came in and prepared some meals to give to her daughter, a college student at a school away from Lawrence, to take back to school.
At both meal-assembly businesses, customers can move between different stations, each of which contains recipes and all the ingredients needed for a certain meal. Ingredients are already chopped, prepared and portioned as needed.
At Social Suppers, customers can make any number of meals, paying a certain amount for each meal. They also offer discounts for customers who make at least eight meals.
Blue Plate Dinners offers packages of eight or 12 meals. Both businesses offer single pre-made meals that customers can grab out of a cooler, and both will prepare the meals for the customers at an additional cost.
It will take one to two hours to put together eight to 12 meals, each of which feeds four to six people.
“You’re knocking out a month’s worth of cooking in two hours,” Johns said.
pullquote
You’re knocking out a month’s worth of cooking in two hours.
-Lori Johns, co-owner of Blue Plate Dinners
Social Suppers offers single meals for $19. Blue Plate Dinners sells only pre-made single meals, which cost about $24.
The largest meal package at Blue Plate Dinners — 12 meals for $199 — offers a price of about $2.76 per individual serving before taxes. At Social Suppers, a 12-meal package costs $204, a rate of $2.83 per serving before taxes.
“You can’t go out for that price,” Johns said.
Both businesses change their menu items each month.
Blue Plate Dinners requires reservations for meal sessions, and Social Suppers allows walk-ins or reservations. Both businesses offer additional ordering information at their Web sites: blueplatedinners.com and socialsuppers.com.
Kansan staff writer Matt Erickson can be contacted at merickson@kansan.com.
– Edited by Carissa Pedigo
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