Food & Beverage

Dream Dinners makes the meal kit a millennial 'must-have'

Newly named Dream Dinners CEO Tina Kuna has been around the block when it comes to making meal kits into big business. In fact, the transformation she led at the company with the onset of the pandemic is proof that she has an innate sense of what millennials want now.

Dream Dinners provides complete family meals, answering a huge need for families during the pandemic. (Photo from Dream Dinners video provided)

August 13, 2020 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group

Life with limited access to restaurants is testing all of us, but perhaps none so much as that couple with young kids. With many families homeschooling, moms and dads also are responsible for all meals.

Dream Dinners CEO Tina Kuna. (Photo provided)

Dream Dinners newly named CEO Tina Kuna knows this all too well because she's been hearing it from customers. The 18-year-old meal kit concept has found new relevance among millennial-led families during the pandemic.

But even before this health crisis, Dream Dinners had an almost cult-like following among its mostly millennial customers who actually looked forward to spending an hour or so a month — often with friends — at one of the company's 70 locations to assemble ingredients needed for the next 30 days of meals. The assembly or "make" sessions allow participants to use chef-created recipes to package individual family meals, right down to the herbs and spices.

When COVID-19 hit the U.S. this past winter, Dream Dinners had to flip the business model inside-out.

"What we've learned through this whole experience is doing 100% 'made' (meals) has actually lowered our labor costs and food costs. ... We're also more efficient with our assembly now and we've realized that it's really helped the business model. So we increased our revenue and lowered our expenses."
-Dream Dinners CEO Tina Kuna

"Before COVID approximately 30% of our business was (meals provided through) curbside pickup, and 70% was in-store sessions with you coming in and doing your own (meal) assembly," Kuna told QSRweb in an interview.

"With COVID, we had to pivot 100% … and I would venture to say that moving forward, the model will have moved to 70% curbside pickup and maybe 30% in-store sessions. … Pre-pandemic, we had plans to expand curbside pickup and look at delivery … down the road. However, COVID has pushed us into moving these things up sooner, so that toward the end of March, we began testing a delivery model … which has been very well received for us."

Was it worth it?

Well, with same-store sales now up more than 6% for the entire Dream Dinners system and June sales up more than 9% over June 2019, Dream Dinners franchisees would likely say yes. And the added fact that nearly 40% of Dream Dinners stores flat-out blew the socks off previous years sales between March and June is just icing on the pre-assembled meal kit cake.

But that's not all.

"What we've learned through this whole experience is doing 100% 'made' has actually lowered our labor costs and food costs," Kuna said. "So not only have we increased our revenue … but we're offering a real service to our guests.
"When the time was where grocery stores were out of a lot of ingredients, we had fully stocked shelves. But we're also more efficient with our assembly now and we've realized that it's really helped the business model. So we increased our revenue and lowered our expenses."

Dream Dinners … plus lunches … breakfasts

The success that flipped the concept's business model has also put Dream Dinners on track to reignite franchise sales beginning sometime early in 2021, Kuna said. In fact, the brand is expanding via ghost kitchens with the first opening in a San Diego store that will create the frozen meal kits solely for pickup and delivery.

"We don't only want to be a dinner solution — we want to be lunch and breakfast solutions," she said. "We (customers who are parents) obviously are going to have a tough time with many of our children having to home-school. … So we want to offer solutions for those lunch items and breakfast items that families will now face where they didn't have to face it before. So we just really have had to examine what our traditional model was and adapt.

"I go just once a month, pick up my meals out front, and I'm done. … And because I can fix it so quickly, I'm more relaxed at dinner."
-Dream Dinners customer Kelly Thomson

"And we will also be looking at our brick-and-mortar in-store build-out our and whether it needs to be what it currently is. … So maybe we'll look at building out satellite stores that are solely for the purpose of curbside pickup and delivery."

There's got to be some sweet satisfaction in all this success in the hardest of times for Kuna, who actually is credited in some places with giving birth to the whole meal kit idea in the first place. She and Dream Dinners co-founder, Stephanie Allen, first launched the company in 2002, long before today's $2 billion-plus meal kit industry and its 150-plus brands were even twinkles in restaurateurs' eyes.

Meal kits as conduits for 'hilarious' toddler talk

Dream Dinners bacon jam burgers, one of the chef-created rotating monthly meal offerings. (Photo provided)

Judging by the laudatory feedback we received from customers and just people trying the concept for the first time, the commitment to Dream Dinners' products is pretty darn strong.

One Cincinnati-area professional couple who recently tried the service for the first time said they were wowed by the quality and the ease of doing nothing more than 15 minutes of prep after the meal thawed to put a Kentucky pork chops dinner on the table after the 9-to-5 and traffic home.

"Yummy, easy, fast and delicious!" said Dana Roberts, adding that the trial sent her to one of the brand's nearby stores to begin an account.

Other longer-term customers relayed how helpful the service has always been for working parents, particularly in the wake of the pandemic.

Mother of two youngsters under 5, Kelly Thomson, uses the Made for You pickup service in Encinitas, California.

"During quarantine, oh, my gosh, Dream Dinners has been amazing!" said Encinitas, California mother of two, Kelly Thomson in response to questions from QSRweb. "I go just once a month, pick up my meals out front, and I'm done. … I now have a 4-year-old and a 1½-year-old and both of them will eat almost every Dream Dinners meal I prepare. And because I can fix it so quickly, I'm more relaxed at dinner. I can spend more time with them at the table, and we can have some pretty hilarious conversations with the 4-year-old."

In Missouri City, Texas, Brittnie Blackburn also has two youngsters, including a special needs child. She's used the service for three years now and also greatly appreciates how it reduces stress around meals.

"I make my meals for the month. I throw them all in the freezer, and literally all I have to do on Sunday night is open the freezer and say, 'What do we want this week?' …'and it's there and it's done," she said. "Taking the stress out of meal planning has been the No. 1 benefit and blessing of Dream Dinners."

Those types of endorsement will likely go a long way toward helping the brand succeed as it expands geographically, virtually and with its offerings across meal day-parts. So while Kuna acknowledges that the service isn't for everybody, for those it is designed for, she believes it has found its legs.

"We would love to be the solution for everybody, but I don't think that that's a great business decision," she said. "So we really need to focus on our goal of families eating dinner and connecting … around the dinner table. Our vehicle is the food."

About S.A. Whitehead

Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.