Mechele Davis, front, prepares a meal as Entrees Made Easy co-owner Lloyd Brogan jokes with customer Jessica Hanson, right, on May 3.

The family’s busy, there’s little or no time to cook – let alone do all the planning and shopping – and eating out all the time isn’t an option.

Sound familiar?

Four dinner-assembly businesses that have opened throughout Bend – Dream Dinners, Dinners Ready!, Dinners Done Right and Entrees Made Easy – think they’ve got just the ticket.

Dinner-assembly businesses do the menu planning, then they shop, chop, dice and peel all the ingredients needed for a variety of dinners. Customers assemble the dinners and take them home in Ziploc bags or aluminum trays for baking or cooking later.

Customers apparently were hungry for the concept.

Dream Dinners started franchising the idea in 2002 and now has 230 stores throughout the country.

In those five years since Dream Dinners started in Washington state, the concept has spawned 420 different companies with stores throughout the United States and Canada, according to the easymeals prep.com Web site.

”You can see this industry itself is growing throughout the United States – there are more than 1,400 stores that sell this type of concept,” said Dream Dinners co-owner Alan Whiting, who owns the Bend store with his wife, Kim Whiting.

The Whitings opened the first dinner-assembly business in Bend in fall 2005. ”We saw Bend with a lot of busy women,” explained Kim Whiting.

”These are women who, if they’re not working, they’re active moms with busy lifestyles. In two hours or less, people can make a month’s worth of meals and it’s generally less expensive than eating out, about $3.25 per serving.”

Because they’re able to buy in bulk, dinner-assembly companies say they can offer dinners at a lower price than if customers were to buy all the ingredients.

An average (main course) dinner that feeds four to six people runs about $20 to $30.

The push toward eating healthier and eating as a family also has bolstered the dinner-assembly business, store representatives say.

”This is less expensive than most take-out or fast-food meals,” said Pete Dumont, who attended a recent Entrees Made Easy party night. ”This isn’t a garbage meal. This is gourmet food, along the lines of a Merenda’s or a Cork’s entree.”

Ann Marie Lybarger, a mother of three boys, scooped, sprinkled and measured ingredients for a meal at a recent Dream Dinners session.

”Where else can I make 16 meals in two hours?” she said. ”This is great, it saves me so much time.”

Saturation?

Six months after Dream Dinners opened its doors on the west side, Dinners Ready! debuted to the north in the Cascade Village Shopping Center.

In February, Dinners Done Right, based at Borden’s Corner on the east side, began taking customers.

At the end of March, Entrees Made Easy ventured into Bend River Promenade.

All four are within a six-mile radius of each other.

”I think there is room for everyone, but four is about saturation for this community,” said Entrees Made Easy co-owner Lloyd Brogan, who also owns all the licensing rights to franchise the company in Oregon. ”Is this the business that’s just the flavor of the month? Is this real, or is it the flash in the pan? I don’t know the answer – and it can be scary, but high risk, high reward.”

Brogan says he takes some solace in the fact that the business model is relatively new, and he feels he and his business partner and co-owner, Charles Owen, got in on the ground floor. Brogan’s wife, Sally, also a partner, works in the store as a hostess.

Both Brogan and Owen left the high-tech industry in the Silicon Valley.

”We pulled the rip cord and came here,” Brogan said with a laugh. ”We hope to open 25 to 30 more of these stores (Entrees Made Easy) in various cities throughout the state within a four- to five-year period.”

Despite being the latest dinner-assembly franchise in town, Brogan is optimistic about the growth potential.

Dinners Ready! owner Debby Bever did plenty of due diligence before opening and liked what she found.

”The difference with a restaurant is they don’t know what people are going to order … so they have to have everything,” said Bever, holding up an online customer order form. ”With this type of business, I usually know at least a day ahead what people want to make, or pick up for dinner, so we never have to over-order, so there’s no waste. Also, at a restaurant, you may have 20 waiters just standing around if it’s slow.”

Expanding an idea

Bever said Dinners Ready! built on the concept of Dream Dinners.

While customers can come in during business hours to assemble meals as they would at Dream Dinners, Dinners Ready! also offers the option of pre-making the meal for customers, who also can buy a single dinner rather than a bundle of dinners. Bever calls this concept the ”Grab n’ Go.”

Bever was a fan of the company long before she became a franchisee.

”I’m a really bad cook, and I realized how poorly my kids were eating,” said Bever, who has 7- and 9-year-old sons. ”I went with a friend in Seattle to Dinners Ready! and I said, ‘This is for me.’ When none of these businesses were here, I’d drive to Portland to make up a bunch of dinners at that store to bring back to Bend, and that’s when I decided we needed Dinners Ready! here.”

Convincing the Dinners Ready! franchiser to allow a store in Bend was difficult. Bever said the company receives about 100 inquiries every month and only 2 percent to 3 percent get a franchise.

”The interview process is rigorous,” Bever said. ”They are pretty picky and they turn people down if they don’t think the city is the right place for their franchise. They like to see a city with a population of about 100,000. Bend is 80,000, but I figured with the outlying areas where we pull from, Redmond, Sisters, we’re easily over 100,000.”

After one year, Bever’s store is among the top five out of 47 Dinners Ready! franchisees in the country. It’s a number she’s proud of, but Bever says she still works seven days a week.

Bever feels Bend and the surrounding communities can support four dinner-assembly stores. She also has mentored Dinners Done Right owners Lindsey Harris and Jake Helms.

”We’re not competitors, we’re friends, I wish them the best,” Bever said. ”Everybody is slightly different, with different business models that will appeal to different groups. I’m not worried about it, I’m too busy looking after my business.”

After a soft opening in February, Dinners Done Right is starting to connect with its customers.

”The first month was really hard for us because there was so much construction going on around here. We were kind of lost in a sea of construction equipment and trucks,” explained Harris, who said she and Helms wanted an east-side location.

A new concept

Of the four dinner-assembly franchises in Bend, Dinners Done Right is the smallest. The company has 17 stores in the Western United States.

”Being smaller, I think it allows us to be more personal, and we also have a little bit more flexibility,” explained Harris, whose father owns two Dinners Done Right stores in the Portland area. ”For now, it’s just me and Jake who work here. We like to call it, ‘Owner run and operated.’”

Harris is grateful for the other three competitors in Bend and says Dream Dinners laid the groundwork for everyone who followed.

”It’s a really new concept, people are confused. No, we’re not a restaurant. And no, we don’t cater your food or cook your food,” explained Helms, whose mother owns the Eugene franchise for Dinners Done Right.

”It’s always kind of hard to get the concept out. It’s like the drive-through coffee huts,” Helms said, likening it to Dutch Bros. ”(It) was there at the right time and it caught on – that’s what we hope happens here.”

It’s a matter of getting the word out, dinner-assembly store owners say.

Brogan attended a women’s show in Portland and said only half the women had heard of the dinner-assembly concept.

”Out of the 50 percent who had heard about it, only a very small percentage had even tried it,” Brogan said. ”So you see we’ve barely even scratched the surface for this type of business.”