Dream Dinner

Case Background

The Dream Dinners is a retail service center. And it provides pre-arranged session for preparation of self prepared home meal. Dream Dinners provides the meal plans, ingredients, and kitchen facilities for preparation to help families both save tome and enjoy healthy, delicious dinner in their own home.

Dream Dinners was found by Stephanie Allen and Tina Kuna. They adopted the assemble-and-freeze method which can results in better tasting meals and they developed a collection of recipes. They opened two more locations within six months and by early 2003 their concept was attracting national interest. At the end of the year, there are 35 new stores and 6,800 applications.

In early 2004, the partners moved headquarter to Snohomish, Washington. The new office included a recipe test kitchen, corporate training facility, and playground for employees’ children. The value of proposition is showed below:

At Dream Dinners, busy parents who want their kids to eat right can crank out 12 meals, up to 72 servings, in less than two hours for just $250. The company insists (based on its own research) that preparing those same meals at home would require 18 to 20 hours of shopping and cooking and cost between $525 and $585.

Margaret Kramer found opportunities in the new emerging industry. At the mean time she applauded by the commitment of Dream Dinners that to provide quality nutritious meals at reasonable price. Base on the trend of development of Dream Dinners which launched nearly 200 new retail establishments by the 2007, Kramer believed the chance can give her a good return on investment. The return is doable with her limited financial resources because Dream Dinners just required an initial investment ranging from $245,000 to $370,000. The initial investment would cover many expenses for six months of operation.

Based on the pro forma, just 187 monthly customers would generate $75,000