Feeding Success

A few years ago, it seemed like the family dinner had gone out of style along with Leave It To Beaver. But that's starting to change. According to the National Center on Addiction and Abuse, the number of American families who eat dinner together is on the rise, reversing a decade-long downward trend. That's good for our collective health: Numerous studies have concluded that families that eat together have better overall nutrition and a lower risk of being overweight or obese. It's also good for Stephanie Allen and Tina Kuna, Dream Dinners' co-founder and CFO, respectively. The two best friends founded the company in 2002 because they saw the kitchen table as one solution to America's obesity epidemic. The idea was simple, as most blockbusters are: Women (and occasionally men) pay about $215 and go to their local Dream Dinners, where they find all of the ingredients to prepare up to 72 fresh meals--from honey pecan pork roast to lemon-thyme marinated shrimp and scallop skewers--in just over an hour. The dinners are kept in the home freezer until a harried parent pops them in the oven and then gathers the family for an old-fashioned home-cooked meal.

Before opening the first Dream Dinners franchise on Nov. 4, 2003, in Katy, Texas, Allen owned a small catering company. By tapping into the psyches of their customers--mainly suburban, working moms--she and Kuna have become media darlings and owners of a multimillion-dollar business. Their story has been broadcast or publicized virtually anywhere that a mom is likely to see or hear it. This exposure, coupled with a strong business plan, has propelled the company's rapid growth. By the end of 2006, there were 235 locations sold or open in 33 states with projected gross revenue of $57 million. Allen spoke with Forbes.com about feeding her own family and the rest of America, too.

Forbes.com: What's the recipe for success? Allen: The idea really came out of necessity. I ran a small catering company for 12 years, and as that business grew larger, I found that I had a harder and harder time budgeting time for my family. I started making meals ahead of time and putting them in the freezer. When friends heard about this, they wanted to do the same thing, so we started getting together to do it as a group. This created an economy of scale of sorts that enabled us to save both time on meal preparation and money because we were buying in bulk.

You were the first to think of this as a viable business, but has the rapid success of the company meant a proliferation of copycats? There are probably over 200 different meal-prep businesses now. Of course, some are as small as a single store. Our most formidable competitor is probably Super Suppers.

What are you doing to build your brand identity and differentiate? From a branding standpoint, we released our first cookbook in the fall, and it has sold extremely well. From a business development standpoint, we are working to expand our market. We have been very good at attracting middle income and upper middle income clients, but we realize that there is an even a greater need for easy-to-prepare and nutritious meals for middle to lower middle class families. We've also found great interest from companies like Boeing (nyse: BA - news - people ), Sysco (nyse: SYY - news - people ) and Fox Networks [owned by News Corp. (nyse: NWS - news - people )], who want to provide the Dream Dinners opportunity as a benefit to their employees. Right now this is coming in the form of company-subsidized employee participation; however, we can see the day when we have Dream Dinners locations on corporate campuses where workers can drop in on their lunch hour or immediately after work and walk out with a month's worth of good meals for their families. Any interested corporations should feel free to contact me! Thus far you've had the kind of immediate success that entrepreneurs often dream about. What's next? I think the company has a real opportunity to change dinner time in America. In an average month, there are two million of our dinners on America's tables! As we continue to grow, we have the potential to make a tremendous impact on the health of our customers. We have notebooks full of letters that we've received where eating our meals has helped customers lose weight, lower their blood pressure and cholesterol, and even reduce the amount of insulin they need to use to control their blood sugar. We try to be very conscientious in the types of foods and recipes we offer and, because of our size, are able to work with our suppliers to provide healthier, better quality products to our clients.

You're the CEO of a fast-growing start-up. Do you have dinner with your family every night? Almost. And I'm in the Dream Dinners location in Seattle once a month preparing meals for my family just like the day the business started. It saves so much time! But let's be realistic--sometimes even your dinners aren't quite fast enough. That's true. We're a busy family, too. That's when we head to Quizno's.

Dr. Ridge, Executive Health Columnist for Forbes.com, is on the faculty of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He is also Vice President for Healthy Living at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

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