Dinner at your doorstep(1)
Laura Kriofske (from left), Alexandra Flowers, Claire Calvin and Donna Harris pack meals for the weekly Tuesday delivery for Dinners on the Porch at the Sociale Gourmet's commercial kitchen on Knollwood Street.
Claire Calvin remembers a conversation with an old friend in Texas a couple of years ago.
The friend was still living a busy lawyer's life that Calvin had given up when she had children.
"She was saying, 'Wouldn't it be great to have dinner waiting for me when I came home?' " Calvin said.
Yes, Calvin thought, it would. And on the long drive home to Winston-Salem from her native Texas, Calvin started cooking up an idea to help busy families have a "home-cooked" meal after a hectic day.
Calvin is always coming up with business ideas. None had ever materialized because they always looked like they would thrust her back into full-time work.
This idea, though, seemed different. "On the drive back from Texas, I worked it all out."
And last year, Dinners on the Porch, a food-delivery service, was born.
"I just started making enchiladas for my friends, like for 10 people. Then it just grew," Calvin said. "It kind of mushroomed by word of mouth."
She started a blog about what she was doing and soon added two partners, Alexandra Flowers and Caroline Chambers. "We're neighbors, with one house between us," Flowers said.
Flowers started helping Calvin part-time, then quit her job at GMAC Insurance to devote her time to Dinners on the Porch.
As business picked up, Chambers quit Dinners on the Porch. But Flowers and Calvin are still going strong, churning out and delivering 60 to 70 meals a week.
They target working parents who often have difficulty finding time to cook a meal from scratch during the week.
As a working mom, Flowers immediately understood Calvin's concept. "If you work full time and get off at 5 o'clock, by the time you pick up kids and everything, it's 6 o'clock and you have to start cooking dinner," Flowers said. "That's hard. And you don't want to go to McDonalds five nights a week."
That convenience attracted Lisa Norman, a full-time doctor and mother of three young children. Her husband also has a busy career as a financial adviser. But convenience isn't all she likes about it.
"The convenience that it's delivered to my front door is huge, and I think the quality of the food is very good," Norman said. "And the diversity is nice — it's things that I would never make. And I think it's economical, too."
Each week, Calvin posts a menu on her website, and regular customers receive an email reminder about it. The menu typically will list an entrée and an appetizer or side, which are all sold together as a complete meal. Most people order that meal, which costs $33 and serves two adults plus two to four children.
Calvin and Flowers also offer a vegetarian alternative each week, which is a boon to people like Paige Lester-Niles, a working mother whose working husband and two children are vegetarian. "Claire will even change something to make it vegan for me, which is great. It seems to me that's part of her goal, to make this accessible. She really wants to please people and give them good food," Lester-Niles said.
"I could go to Whole Foods and buy prepared food, like a frozen pizza, but that's not what I want," Lester-Niles said. "In my family, we really appreciate food that's made well and not processed and that's good for us."
