Super Suppers: Winning Back the Battle in the Kitchen
How does crunchy baked chicken with seasoned noodles or crispy onion tilapia with rice pilaf sound for dinner tonight? Or how about chicken a la Florentine with braided bread or shrimp, chicken, and artichoke bake? Do these scrumptious choices sound like a menu for an expensive restaurant or your typical dinnertime meal? Super Suppers is hoping to make these types of meals more regular for families who are eating dinner in their homes. As a result, Super Suppers is bringing a fabulous taste revolution to their customers, providing classy meals like these for a fraction of the price it would cost at a traditional eatery, while at the same time encouraging slipping values of the past surrounding family meal preparation and consumption.
The home-cooked family meal was once an institution of American life, and now it's become an endangered species. Gone are the days of slow-cooked pot roast; replaced instead by pizza, fast food, and expensive take-out. In the early 1960's women spent an average of 2.5 hours making dinner each night, today women and men spend around 30 minutes. The result? Americans are eating poorly and missing the essential mealtime family experience. With people being busier than ever, it's a challenge to make time for the preparation of a quality meal.
Judie Byrd, the founder of Super Suppers, started working on this problem over a decade ago. At that time, Judie had already founded The Culinary School of Fort Worth, and when friends and family members complained about their families eating too much junk food and losing more and more quality time together she decided to do something about it. While considering the new meal trends, the idea for Super Suppers formed as she searched for a practical solution that could provide for essential values that were being lost. She then started testing the process at The Culinary School.
"Our goal all along was to get families back to the dinner table" says Byrd. "With Super Suppers, a Mom or Dad can spend an hour or two with us and assemble a month's worth of delicious meals that can go from the freezer to dinner table at their home. We don't just look at Super Suppers as a food operation, we see ourselves as a healthy lifestyle change. Super Suppers gives you quality food at affordable prices and gives you back 20-30 hours of your own precious time each month!" Maybe that's why more and more busy moms are turning to so-called "meal-assembly" chains like Super Suppers. Super Suppers not only provides great food options but does it in a fraction of the time it used to take. There are more than 700 Super Supper meal-assembly centers throughout the country, with 40 new ones opening up each week. It's an exploding industry that's expected to take in more than $270 million this year alone!
The Recipe for Success
Super Suppers was created to meet the demanding needs of busy people who want more quality family time around the dinner table but don't have the extra time and energy to pull it off. Finally, there's a healthy, delicious and easy answer to the question being asked across the United States "What's For Dinner?"
The secret to this venture's great success is rather simple. Super Suppers builds their business off core values such as healthy food and family together time. In addition to spending together time at the dinner table, Super Suppers allows families to tailor specific recipes to their needs and wants. Since the customers make the food themselves, they're able to pick and choose their meal options; all while making tasty food in a "party-like" atmosphere provided by the fun Super Suppers staff.
Bill Byrd, who is Super Suppers' Chief Executive Officer, says the company's mission is to "bring families around the dinner table, one meal at a time." He points out, "We know that when families eat together, there are less problems with teenagers. We know that when you talk and communicate well with each other as a family, you find out what the kids are talking about, what they're thinking about, who their friends are, what their interests are. But you've got to have good food, (as) a catalyst." He goes on to state that, "The problem we found when we did a survey, (is) that the average cook in the family-whether it's the man or the woman-has five recipes they work off of, and one of them is hamburgers, and another is hot dogs or some kind of chicken. So they get three varieties a week of different types of food. We give them 12 varieties a month." Super Supper's recipe for success is simple and yet elegant, focused and determined to bring some order to their customers' lives while helping them fight the battle of the bulge.
The "Super" Assembly Line for Culinary Satisfaction
Here's how it works. Super Suppers' stores serve as an assembly line where customers can go to make their meals. Customers show up, and within two hours families can come away with 12 scrumptious entrées for the rest of the month! Rotating between the twelve stations in the store, the assembly process is very simple. Super Suppers provides the recipes and ingredients for family-size meals and all you have to do is rotate from station to station. If you want to add something else to the mix go ahead! Super Suppers encourages its customers to bring additional spices, or anything else they want to make sure they have the right meal for their family's particular tastes. In short, all the customers have to do is assemble their preferred menu items at the store and then freeze them at home. The customer walks away from Super Suppers with great food options without having to spend the time shopping, prepping, and cleaning. With all of these perks it's no wonder their customers are catching on so quickly.
Customers can easily prepare for the Super Suppers experience by selecting their meals ahead of time online. When they show up, they just have to follow recipes that hang over restaurant-style work stations filled with ingredients like frozen chicken breasts, chopped onions and jars of seasonings. You're not on your own in the food preparation process, as cheerful workers hover around, carting off measuring spoons and other preparation utensils as soon as they get dirty (they also serve complimentary refreshments). If you are calorie conscious or sodium sensitive no worries, the Super Suppers employees will help you customize your meals to meet your needs. And if someone hates broccoli it can simply be left out.
The Atmosphere Beyond the Food
"With every generation, fewer and fewer girls-and boys-are growing up hanging around the kitchen," said Laura Shapiro, who writes about modern cooking in America. "But the incredible popularity of cooking shows on TV shows that people are hungry to cook, hungry to be in the kitchen." "Even an ‘assembled' family meal will always be more meaningful than takeout because of the physical connection between the cook, the food and the family," said Brad Shore, director of the Emory Center on Myth and Ritual in American Life. "When a mother says, ‘Do you like my lasagna?' that is much more loaded than ‘Do you like the lasagna?'" Dr. Shore said. "The fact that she made it with her hands is powerful."
In addition to the meals received at Super Suppers, the program also provides a great atmosphere of camaraderie and friendship for those pursuing similar goals in their homes. The experience at Super Suppers has become, for many, a wonderful social gathering that borders on a party. This is a complete change from the image of exhausted individuals slaving away all afternoon by themselves in a stuffy kitchen while trying to pull off a culinary miracle. At Super Suppers you can relax, meet up with a new (or old) friend and enjoy music and appetizers while you put a month's worth of meals together at your own pace. "People are looking for a communal feeling, whether it's around a table eating together or in a storefront measuring food into little bags with their friends." Meal assembly centers often encourage customers to attend with friends, while they "cook" and even dance, as a set of couples did on a recent night. The Super Suppers experience can be great for the individual, the couple, or a group of friends, whatever you prefer! Everything at Super Suppers is designed to simplify the food-making process while preserving personal values.
Their regularly scheduled sessions are a great way for a few friends to get together and spend time chatting and preparing, building both relationships and tasty entrees. Talk about effective multi-tasking! In addition, if you have a group of 12 or more for a shower, birthday, or just a "night out," let them know and they'll set up the store just for you-and if you set up the "party" they'll give you your meals free! These types of parties are easy to schedule and turn the food-making process into an entertaining event.
Even if you just show up you still might run into a party atmosphere. Evan Glass, a construction company executive recently attended a Super Suppers outlet. After making food for a while he was surprised and excited when the employees "turned off the music, [and] pulled out a big-screen TV." From there he explains that they all sat together to watch American Idol." Super Suppers is fun, relaxed, and dedicated to meet whatever need you might have. With an average entrée price of less than $3.00 per serving, customers save hundreds of dollars (that would have gone to the local burger joint) and hours of their priceless time, all while enjoying the people they really care about. What's to lose?
In addition to all of the perks associated with Super Suppers process, they also provide options for those individuals who want a nice food alternative but who are unable to come in to prepare the meal. If unexpected things happen to your family or if you get busy and don't have time to schedule a Super Suppers session, you can schedule to pick up a set of meals prepared by the staff. Although this will cost you a little more, it is still better than buying fast food for a couple of weeks while you try to get back on your feet.
So if you value spending time with those you live with, Super Suppers is a fabulous alternative to take-out, enabling you to enjoy both the preparation and consumption process all while focusing on the most important things in life. Families can rest easy knowing that a healthy meal is waiting to facilitate the "gathering time" around the table. With Super Suppers, many of your valuable needs are met by their commitment to bettering society one family meal at a time.
http://www.supersuppers.com/