When Kim Mattice Wanat, her husband, Ed, and their two teenaged kids visited the Dinner Factory in St. Albert five years ago, they were looking for help. Meal planning was chaotic in their busy family, and the Dinner Factory offered a trade-off between preparing whole meals from scratch and scooting to the fast-food outlet as a dubious solution to the problem.
The Dinner Factory, which a St. Albert couple started a decade ago using the American model called Dream Dinners, gave customers the option of getting a jump on meal planning. It offered them an assortment of nutritious recipes and the ingredients to prepare them. Once they’d assembled a variety of dishes, they took them home and put them in the freezer, ready to pop in the oven later. The stress of deciding what to make for dinner was eliminated efficiently, and they knew what they were eating was delicious and good for them.
Mattice Wanat and her husband liked their first Dinner Factory experience so much that when the company went up for sale shortly after that first visit, they bought it.
There have been other companies like the Dinner Factory in the region, most of which have moved away from the dinner assembly concept. Mattice Wanat says currently only the south Edmonton outfit Simply Supper offers a similar service.
Her customers are looking for three things, she says.
“They want to eat delicious food, and they want convenience, and they don’t have time. Those three things are only going to become an increased need in our society.”
Customers have two options. They can come in and put the ingredients together themselves, or they can order meals and pick them up. Mattice Wanat says in the early days, most people assembled their own meals, but lately about 60 percent of the clientele order ahead, and the Dinner Factory’s 10 staff fill the orders from the monthly menus of more than a dozen choices, including a featured dessert.
Pat Basaraba and her husband have been coming to the Dinner Factory to assemble their weekly dinners for almost two years, and Basaraba says the couple makes a weekly trip from Edmonton to prepare their meals.
“It’s our date night,” Basaraba says.
Discovering the Dinner Factory has reduced the stress of coming home after work and having to figure out what to make for supper, she says.
“It’s pretty much all we eat … We hardly eat out anymore because the meals are so good; it’s nicer to stay home.”
Mattice Wanat says they have about a hundred customers who come in regularly to prep their own meals, and 300 who order ahead. And in May, the company started a new initiative to offer single-serving meals for seniors.
“What we’re focused on now is families who have elderly parents, and they’re worried about what their parents are eating. That’s one of my main passions right now,” she says.
One selling point of the Dinner Factory model over other prepared meal alternatives is its flexibility, according to Mattice Wanat.
“You’ve got places like Superstore and Costco, and M&M Food Market. The difference is you can customize your meals (at the Dinner Factory.) When a person puts in an order, they can say, ‘Please, no mushrooms’ or ‘my family doesn’t like onions’ or all of these meals need to be made gluten free. Or ‘I need to avoid nuts’.”
The ingredients at the meal assembly stations come from businesses in the St. Albert area. The beef comes from Darcy’s Meat Market and local Hutterite communities raise the chicken naturally. The vegetables are also purchased locally.
Most customers come from the Edmonton and surrounding area, and one group of women comes in from Cold Lake. Some clients even use their visits as a learning tool.
“Sometimes mothers will come in with their children. They don’t have to do all the cutting and the chopping and the cleaning up afterwards. But they can still help their children understand all of the real ingredients that go into making a meal and the way you make a meal,” Mattice Wanat says.
More information about the Dinner Factory is available at http://www.dinnerfactory.ca/
