The 20-minute dinner dash

Prepared Foods, April, 1999 by Jennifer Timpe

Consumers crave comfort foods. Seems easy enough, until that meal has to be on the table in 20 minutes or less.

`What's for dinner?" has to be among the most dreaded questions facing today's time-pressed consumer. With so many other activities in our busy lives, traditional ways of preparing meals simply no longer fit the bill.

Luckily, help is on the way, but don't call it an HMR. The term "home meal replacement" conjures up images of families sitting around a dinner table ingesting meal tablets. What consumers want are fast and easy ways to make their traditional favorites.

The entrees, salads, soups, stuffing and potato subcategories all posted slight gains over last year's numbers, and the category as a whole boasted some innovative new products. In other categories, issues like healthy eating and good-for-you products took center stage. While that may also be important here, the cry manufacturers heard the loudest was definitely "Help me find a way to make preparing dinner as easy as possible!" All-in-one meals, pre-prepped vegetables and sides, and more convenient packaging came to the rescue.

One-Stop Shopping

The all-in-one entree trend hit its stride last year, as 1998 saw numerous companies make fixing dinner a little bit easier with new frozen meal-in-a-bag options. Dean Foods, Franklin Park, Ill., introduced its new Birds Eye Chicken Voila! line, then sold its vegetable/entree business to Agrilink, Rochester, Minn. Stouffer Foods, Solon, Ohio, expanded its meal solution portfolio with Lean Cuisine and Stouffer Skillet Sensations lines. Meanwhile, ConAgra, Omaha, introduced Marie Callender Skillet Meals. All include the meat, vegetables, starch, and sauce in the package.

Consumers embrace this concept for obvious reasons: These meals require virtually no prep time, they cook up quickly (usually 30 minutes or less), and they make for easier shopping.

The only fault with these meals is the size. Perhaps manufacturers are still feeling out consumers to see which combinations they are buying most, but it wouldn't be surprising to see larger sizes hit mainstream supermarkets this year.

Jimmy Dean Meats, Cordova, Tenn., took the concept of a quick meal one step further with its Jimmy Dean Dinner and Dessert For 4 line. It consists of four frozen entrees, side dishes and Sara Lee desserts, all for less than $10.

Of course, all one-stop meals don't have to come from the freezer aisle. Campbell Soup, Camden, N.J., introduced a new line of soups that are most definitely geared towards the dinner-in-a-hurry crowd. Supper Soups are offered in heartier, entree-style offerings such as Pot Roast and Vegetables and Vegetable Lasagna. They retail in 24-oz. glass jars, perhaps a bit small for a family of four. At $3.29 each, however, two jars are still several dollars shy of a restaurant tab for the same family.

Frozen pizzas haven't lost their appeal yet either. Once again, pizza introductions were piping hot with excitement, with many top brands emulating their cousins usually served in restaurant settings. Tony's Pizza Service, Marshall, Minn., made a move with its Freschetta line of Sauce Stuffed Crusts, Single Serve Rising Crusts, and Red Baron Baked to Rise additions. Kraft Foods, Glenview, Ill., also crossed the line from restaurant service to retail with its California Pizza Kitchen frozen pizzas. Kraft entered a licensing agreement with the restaurant to make and market a line of seven frozen super-premium pizzas for supermarkets.

Where's the Beef?

For the record, some households still like to take it easy and linger over dinner preparation. These lucky souls may even have the luxury of spending, say, an entire hour on their meals. For these consumers, a completely separate sub-movement of "just add meat" options became available. Hamburger Helper and Chicken Helper mixes from General Mills, Minneapolis, already fit this bill, but 1998 saw the trend expand much further.

For example, Kraft Foods introduced its Stove Top stuffing brand to the entree market for the first time with the debut of Stove Top Oven Classics Stuffing and Rice Dinner Mixes. Consumers just add chicken and bake to create a hearty casserole-style main dish. Other popular vegetable and seasoning mixes were sold frozen, with the vegetables either being coated in a sauce that blends when heated, or in separate packages. Most of these options were for beef or chicken, so where are the varieties for seafood? Being inherently lower in cholesterol and fat, it seems that similar seafood varieties would be appealing as well.

Prepared sauces, gravies and seasoning blends again played major roles in dinner preparation. Sauces with ethnic flavors, in particular, offer a quick and easy way to get an interesting dinner option on the table in a reasonable amount of time. They offer consumers a wide flavor selection and relatively short prep times.

Manufacturers are learning that many consumers cook the same things over and over again simply because they don't know how to make anything else. In an attempt to solve this problem, several companies introduced ethnic sauces for creating specific dishes, rather than just seasonings for meat and poultry.