Jiffy Prep

By angela murrills

Publish Date: 4-May-2006

Jake Eby and Lisa Daly whip up meals to fill their freezers, without having to do any of the slicing and dicing themselves. Shawn Taylor photo.

DinnerWorks is not a community kitchen, although it has the same chatty social aspect, and it’s not takeout in the way that we know it. What it most feels like, as you assemble ingredients for dishes you’ll complete later at home, is being a professional chef with your mise already en place. Others have done the scutwork of buying groceries, chopping peppers, shredding cheese, and making sure there’s enough paprika left in the jar. They also clean up the mess. All you have to do that night (or a week, or several months later) is cook, serve, and bask in the glory.

While e-twitterers salivate over new restaurants with the fervour of pubescent girls swooning over the football captain (“Oh God, let me taste him first”) and gastobatory bloggers digitally photograph every ingested atom, while TV chefs are mono-name superstars and being seen in McDonald’s is more ignominious than being spotted sneaking out of a massage parlour, while our culture is almost pathologically obsessed with food and we know we should eat fresh and homemade all the time, the irony is that there’s no one at home to make it, which is why—pause to draw breath—the meal-assembly centre is a concept whose time has come.

It’s already come big time to the U.S. of A., says Chris Roscoe, who runs DinnerWorks with wife Allie and hands-on business partner, former nurse Gerry Maw. The Roscoes became aware of the idea last year in California when their perennially busy host served up home cooking night after night. Back in Vancouver, the concept still in their heads, they sampled a couple of places on excursions to Washington state. The first produced lacklustre “American” fare made from low-cost ingredients, says Chris Roscoe, but the second was light-years ahead with more steps included in the cooking process. It brought home the culinary potential, he says, and they could already see the commercial one.

According to a March 26 article in the New York Times, meal-assembly centres “are opening at a rate of about 40 a month, mostly in strip malls and office parks in the nation’s suburbs and smaller cities, and are projected to earn $270 million this year, according to the Easy Meal Prep Association, the industry’s trade group”. Predictions are that there will be 1,100 in the U.S. by the end of 2006, says Roscoe. So far, Canada has six.

After breaking trail in terms of zoning and other areas, DinnerWorks, Vancouver’s first meal-prep centre (a second, separate operation is already on the local horizon) opened in late February. Cheerily painted, spiffily furnished, and equipped with a good sound system, the space has successfully overcome its former existence as a real-estate office. A whimsical touch in otherwise professional surroundings, chandeliers hang over the two stainless-steel islands that dominate the huge kitchen. (All in all, the space takes up 2,800 square feet.) Behind the scenes are a walk-in freezer and fridge, and the table where, early each morning, Roscoe and Maw start chopping and slicing.

“The American concept is that a housewife comes in midweek,” he says. Not in Vancouver. Although 30 to 45 years old is the typical U.S. demographic, DinnerWorks’ customers range from 25 to 60. “Evening sessions are busiest,” says Roscoe. “We’re seeing lots of younger people…[and] so many different types.…We thought it would just be families.” Instead, it’s BCIT and UBC students, Yaletowners in their 20s, the broad sweep of ethnic communities that typifies this city, clients from as far afield as Squamish and Abbotsford, and corporate groups who use meal assembly as a team-building exercise.