Another Entree into the Meal Assembly
Entrée Vous franchisee signed his franchise agreement in May 2006 and will open with eight workers this week in Dayton, Ohio.
The shop helps time-pressed consumers get dinner on the table. The shopper chooses entrees from an online menu and sets a time to come to the kitchen to prepare them or picks up pre-made dishes. Staff prepares the ingredients for the entrees. It doesn’t provide side dishes.
The entrees serve between four and six and cost $21 each, about $3.50 per diner. Martin said customers must buy at least six entrees per month, which costs about $115. While the menu changes, the 14 entrees available this month include Chicken Wellington, Seafood Paella and Sesame Pork Stir Fry.
A location of 1,400 to 1,600 square feet in a neighborhood strip center would be typical for an Entrée Vous kitchen
The linked article above is confusing because it says the chef-founder formed Entrée Vous in 2006, but I saw advertisement that claims Entrée Vous was formed in 2003. My guess is the entity doing the franchsising was formed in 2006, but the chef operated a similar concept during the previous 3 years.
To be honest, the picture above looks like a Chinese take-out, but I guess you can only dress up a 1,500 square feet strip-mall location so much.
There is a lengthy discussion and debate in the forum regarding Meal Assembly franchises, Super Suppers in particular. Check it out for more perspective.
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No one has concrete numbers to show that the model can even work. Most franchisors started to franchise with one store under their belts with less than one year of experience.
It is not possible for several Meal Assembly Kitchens to co-exist in one geopgraphical area. One bleeds customers from the other and there is not enough customer base to go around. No amount of “it’s the education of the public stupid” is going to help. There is just to much wrong with the royalty, advertising fee franchise system. You cannot sell a franchise based on an unproven model.
As I read somewhere else Meal Assembly is a “dandy idea” but a dandy idea doesn’t make it franchise-able OR profitable. Earning numbers available are bogus, growth numbers are bogus, the whole industry is smoke and mirrors and those still standing in front of the mirrors chanting “we still beleive in this industry” are kidding themselves and practicing mass denial. Ask any one of 85% of the stores independent or franchised owners if they are ‘Profitable” and that means you are paying yourself a fair & equitable salary on a regular basis and the answer will be no, qualified by some lengthy explanation as to why. My food costs are going up, my rent is too high, I’ve only been in business for less than 5 years, the public needs to be educated about the concept. To which I say Bull Hockey. I would venture an educated guess to say that most Meal Assembly stores are not even breaking even.Was it so a few years ago? The answer to that from veterans is that they started losing money and closing when
competitors came into their markets and in the same breath tell you it was necessary for competition to exist for public education purposes, then tell you it will just take time for that education of the public to take place. I’m confused by all the double speak and rationalizations.
Here is the bottom line.
There is just too many peoplefood companies competing for the ” a piece of the tummy pie” and Meal Assembly Kitchens are the most inefficient of the bunch. You went from a ticket ching of $200+ per customer to less than $30. Super Suppers founder Bill Byrd said ti would take 500-700 customers A MONTH to run a profitable(?) store at the $200 level based on the original model of a customer assembling 12 meals per visit. That is just not happening ANYWHERE in the industry on a regular basis. Dream Dinners lawsuit is just the beginning of a long an painful demise of this industry. There is just NO need for it in our society any longer.
Big chain casual restaurants are posting losses and closing stores, who has seen the least impact on their business? Is it Meal Assembly kitchen? NO it’s Mac Donalds, Wendy’ and the the like.
The food supplied by a meal assembly kitchen can be easily had at your local grocers for much less both in cost to produce and end cost for the consumer with no clean-up or extra prep at home; and for those who want fast & organic, Trader Joes, Whole paycheck Foods is there to supply it for you.
All of the things Dinner by Design is touting has been tried and found wanting in the meal assembly industry. You need large numbers of people through your doors on a REGULAR weekly basis and the numbers are not there, will not be there EVER.
People in the industry can wax poetic about being pioneers in a new industry and they will be the power brokers when the concept catches ad nauseum…..blather and more blather. The story of the Meal Assembly industry
is in the lack of real verifiable numbers, the store closures and the lack of real interest by the masses for this “dandy idea”. It is a boondoggle and the only ones to make it rich were the people like the former owner of Dinners by Design who sold before all hell broke loose. The Bert Vermuelens of the Meal Assembly business who helped to sell the inexperienced entrepenuers of our time a faulty dream and pump out numbers and statistics and projections that goodness knows where they came from. This man singlhandedly perpetrated statistical fraud on a whole lot of people. He also has NEVER owned or operated an meal assembly kitchen or been anywhere in the culinary world.
The current franchisors will be hounded by franchisees, lawyers and dwindling sales until one by one, they quietly lay off corporate employees and finally close their doors and file for bankruptcy like so many of their victims have.
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