Business 1st Edition by William Nickels ,James McHugh ,Susan McHugh

Exercise 1

Home Cooking in Half the Time
Men and women today are often very busy with work and don't have much time to make home-cooked meals. Nonetheless, they would like to offer their families good meals. Such meals create more family time and are often more nutritious than restaurant fare. What can marketers do to help working families prepare meals? One answer: a company called Let's Dish. Let's Dish does the planning, shopping, and chopping for you. All you have to do is combine the ingredients, then cook at home whenever you're ready.
The idea behind Let's Dish is popular. A competitor, Dream Dinners, relies on a similar concept. It's like a community kitchen where moms and dads can whip up a couple of weeks' worth of meals in just one or two hours. Here's how it works. Customers go to a Web site to pick a time and date and the meals they would like to prepare, like herb-crusted flank steak. When they arrive at Dream Dinners, the ingredients are ready. Customers mix and package them and bring them home, uncooked. They put the meals in the refrigerator until needed. No shopping for groceries. No looking for recipes. Just meals, ready to go. Sound good?
Dream Dinners now has over 115 stores in 19 states, with many more to come. Of course, a good idea brings in competitors. Besides Let's Dish and Dream Dinners, companies with names like Designed Dinners and Simply Cook It have sprung up. Simply Cook It goes a step further and helps you make a minimum of 24 dinners at the store. You have the assistance of a professional chef and take home what could be a month's worth of dinners.
What does such a company offer as its "product"? First, it provides a place to meet others and have a good time preparing meals. Second, it saves time for people too busy to shop for groceries and prepare meals at home every night. Third, it saves a lot of stress and mess. Finally, the company saves people money, because they don't have to buy big supplies of condiments they'll use only sparingly. Perhaps most important, the company offers a quick and easy way to create healthy and satisfying meals for the whole family. What else might such a company add to its product offer?