Dialling A Meal Deal To Your Door
THE SUNDAY AGE
Saturday April 6, 1996
DRIVE-through take-aways, home-delivered pizzas, TV dinners.
Melburnians who want to take a step beyond these fast-food fads are now having every meal of the week delivered to their door.
Dial-A-Dinner, Dial-A-Menu, Dial-A-Munchies; these meals on wheels are a growth industry thriving on the work-to-gym- to-bed regime of people too busy to cook.
It is a trend that has seen diet food preparer Lite n' Easy move from low-calorie food to offering breakfast, lunch and dinner deliveries for those whose concern is convenience not calories.
``We started with the weight-loss menu but then we twigged.
`Hold on, these people have been on this for two or three years'," owner Mr Cliff Gale said.
``We realised people were ordering Lite n' Easy for the convenience, not to lose weight." He said busy professionals and singles didn't have time to shop and cook. ``Rather than spending three to four hours in the supermarket or the kitchen they can spend it in their businesses."
At $65 for three meals a day, five days a week, it was a viable alternative to the cost of cooking it themselves, Mr Gale said.
South Oakleigh florists Wilma and Doug Overton haven't cooked a meal since October; they work long hours and have busy lives.
They began buying the meals to lose weight but now plan to continue just for the convenience.
``Everything is fresh and you get a big choice. The meals are lovely; we get home at night and just put the evening meal in the microwave," Mrs Overton said.
Home-delivered meal services are springing up all over the suburbs. One of the oldest is Katrina's Kitchen, in Murrumbeena, which has been operating for 10 years and offers roasts, pastas, fish and chicken dishes for about $5 a serve.
The general manager, Mr Royce Horwood, said Katrina's made thousands of meals a week and delivered them, frozen, to suburbs as far apart as St Albans and Baxter.
Most deliveries were to older people but there was a growing number of young buyers who liked the convenience. ``We get younger people who order for a week and then go pizza happy for a week," Mr Horwood said.
Accountant Ms Marina White, 27, of Elwood, shifts her custom regularly but virtually never cooks. ``I've used most of them at some stage. If I'm really busy at work, I'll stock up on Katrina's. They're frozen but taste like stuff mum used to cook. I don't have time to shop or cook. And I don't want to."
Brighton home delivery service, Choice Meal Service, has a slightly more sophisticated menu than many of the others with offerings including smoked salmon and cream cheese crepes, eye fillet steak, beef burgundy, Tasmanian salmon salad and rack of lamb.
Manager Mr Bryan Harrison said home-style meals served on china plates were what people received from Choice.
But this trend to ``can't cook, won't cook" has alarmed nutritionists, including Ms Rosemary Stanton, who said there was always some nutrient loss when food was prepared in advance.
Children used to be taught cooking at school or in the kitchen with their mother but now ``children spend a lot more time in front of the television and don't venture into the kitchen as much".
DOUG AND WILMA'S CULINARY ADVENTURE.
One day of the Overtons' home-delivered menu.
Breakfast: high fibre bread, margarine and vegemite, apple, an egg.
Lunch: high fibre bread, tuna, mayonnaise, lettuce, coleslaw, orange and cookies.
Dinner: barramundi normande.
© 1996 THE SUNDAY AGE
