Meal Assembly Franchise Saga Continues

{www.thefranchiseking.com}

Please file this under your "Joel told you so' file. Last year I discussed this fad on another franchise blog. Sean kelly's Franchise Pick is a great blog, and Sean is quite the character. In his post from July 24th, 2007 concerning whether or not these meal prep franchise concepts are real or a "flash in the pan", here is what I said in the first comment on the story:
Sean,
"This is a flash in their pan…
I predicted this 1.5 years ago. Not only am I a franchise industry
veteran that knows what I am talking about sometimes, I am a dual
income household type human. Question:
If my wife and I don’t have time to cook, or to do much of anything
M-F, how would one of us have time to cook 10 meals ahead of time for 3
hours on a sunny Sat. morning, right here in Cleveland, Ohio?
And…here is the other thing…What if we don’t even have freezer space to keep the 10X3 meals needed for our family of 3?
This was not well thought out.
Another fad. More bad PR for our industry a couple of years from now,
when 80% of them are out of business, unless they figure out how to add
some more services or products."

Today, The New York Times published this telling story concerning this failing concept. Here

I suggest reading the entire comment stream on Sean's Blog. Pretty intriguing. Here


 

Comments

[Carole Cohen]

You know your stuff! I got involved managing a store in Maryland and it was frozen gourmet food, mostly sous vide 'boil or nuke' gourmet meals, a lot of items supplied by Stouffers. Anyway, I was never sure if they just spent too much money and didn't have the best locations (we did two stores at once) but not only did the franchise idea not work, the two stores did not work. We were busy Fri and Sat only. I think you may have hit the nail on the head here.

[The Franchise King]

Hi Carole,
Thank you. I wish more folks would take the time to do the proper research before they start "franchising" their idea. Also, I have met so many people over the years, who after hearing my presentation on "How to choose a Franchise...Safely", wish they would have known about how I help, BEFORE they invested in a franchise of their own!
Joel Libava