LOAD-DATE: February 21, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
CORRECTION-DATE: February 28, 2008
CORRECTION: A picture caption last Thursday with an article about homeowners who hire professional photographers to take pictures of their houses misidentified Juergen Nogai, who was shown with two such homeowners. He is a photographer and the business partner of another photographer, Julius Shulman, who was also pictured. Mr. Nogai is not Mr. Shulman's assistant.
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: ALL IN THE FAMILY: After Julia and Malcolm Butler, above, renovated their 1852 town house in Savannah, Ga., left, they commissioned a photographer to shoot it, ''much in the way you might have portraits of your children taken,'' Ms. Butler said. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEPHEN MORTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
ATTIC FIRE ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY) (pg. F1)
GROUP SHOTS: Elliott Kaufman, above, has photographed Laura Bohn's Manhattan apartments, above and right, as well as her country house. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOYCE DOPKEEN/THE NEW YORK TIMES
ELLIOTT KAUFMAN) (pg. F5)
PRACTICED EYE: Julius Shulman (above and left) was commissioned by Dana Garman and James Jacobsen (both standing at left, with Mr. Shulman's assistant, Juergen Nogai), to shoot their home in Los Angeles (center left and right). (PHOTOGRAPH BY ABOVE AND ABOVE RIGHT, MONICA ALMEIDA/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. F5)
COUNTRY IN THE CITY: After Sandy Perlbinder, left, and her husband, Steve, won a Todd Eberle photo session at a charity auction, they had him photograph their home in Sagaponack, N.Y. The three framed portraits hang in her Manhattan apartment to remind her of the home. ''They are modern and abstract and beautiful,'' Ms. Perlbinder said. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY ABOVE AND TOP RIGHT, JOYCE DOPKEEN/THE NEW YORK TIMES
ABOVE AND ABOVE LEFT, JULIUS SHULMAN AND JUERGEN NOGAI) (pg. F5)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
1054 of 1231 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 21, 2008 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Passports Essential for These M.B.A.'s
BYLINE: By JAMES FLANIGAN
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; ENTREPRENEURIAL EDGE; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 1024 words
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA universities have long led the nation in the number of students enrolled from other countries. Now the universities' business programs are taking the globalization of education to a different level, offering courses that go beyond dry corporate case studies and broadening their collaboration with universities and businesses abroad, particularly in Asia.
The Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the National University of Singapore have programs allowing students in the executive master of business administration program to be awarded degrees from both universities after 15 months of taking classes in Singapore and Los Angeles, and also in Shanghai and Bangalore, India.
The Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California in collaboration with Jiao Tong University in Shanghai has a global M.B.A. program involving executives from 10 countries studying in China and Los Angeles. The Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine, collaborates with the Indian Institute of Technology, Peking University in Beijing, City University of Hong Kong and others in teaching business courses around the world.
The programs are not simply overseas duplications of standard courses in accounting and finance. ''In our global access courses, we challenge teams, in a language that is not that of the United States, to drop an egg from two stories without breaking it,'' said Andrew Policano, dean of the Merage School. ''One must learn to innovate with other cultures.''
Judy Olian, dean of the Anderson School at U.C.L.A., agreed. ''It is critical to learn other cultures,'' she said. ''We are taking entrepreneurial leaders to operate in Palestine and Israel, in India and China''
She added: ''That has not been thought of as the mission of business schools, but it is in the emerging world of today. If we did not do this, we could be accused of staring at our own navel.''
C. L. Nikias, provost and head of academic affairs at the University of Southern California, wants the university to become a place where ''students and faculty can cross academic and geographic boundaries to innovate, an institution with a public service mission that spans continents.'' About 21 percent of the students at the university's Marshall School are international. The university is ''receiving requests to put branches of the school in many countries,'' said Adam Clayton Powell III, vice provost for globalization.
The Global Access Program at the Anderson School provides a good illustration of the new types of offerings. The program enrolls 175 M.B.A. candidates who are working at other jobs during the three years it takes to earn their degrees. Their average age is about 33. Students consult for six months at a time for international companies that want to get into the American market or simply ''operate beyond their current borders,'' explained Robert Foster, dean of the program. The students, who work in teams of five or six, average 500 hours of work on a typical project.
Payem Tehrani, who graduated last year, counseled ICAR Vision Systems, a developer of identification cards and equipment in Barcelona, Spain. ICAR wanted to break into the American market. But after the students surveyed that market and worked in Spain, Italy and other countries, ''we found that its equipment was not advanced enough to make it in the U.S. market, but that ICAR had opportunities for expansion in Italy,'' said Mr. Tehrani, a 35-year old electrical engineer who now works for Yahoo. The Spanish company, like all other corporate customers of the program, contributed $15,000 to the Anderson School to cover part of the program's expenses.
Gerald Gutierrez, 33, who also graduated from the program last year, worked with an Italian company that wanted to sell thermoplastics to Boeing and Airbus. But the company's products were less advanced than the thermoplastics the companies already used to build aircraft. ''We advised the company that it needed to do more research and development,'' Mr. Gutierrez said.
In another case, a team of students studied markets in Russia for the Technology Agency of Finland, a government office, on behalf of software, communications and construction service firms. Why would Finland hire American students to study a market in Russia? The answer, Mr. Foster said, is that the Americans ''know how to commercialize technology, to map out the complex of distribution channels, marketing and finance that any product needs to be successful.''
The global access program is expanding in 2008 to 240 students and 48 projects, reaching out to India and China, Mexico, Spain and Austria for new companies and opportunities.
Global study brings perspective. Ronald Lewis, 21, a student at the Marshall School, studied for four months at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and visited the bustling port city of Shenzhen, China. It was, he said, ''my first time immersed in another culture,'' an experience that he will bring to a management consultant job at Bain & Company after graduation this year.
Alda Mostofi, 28, found that his fellow students of many nationalities, had differing views about Western culture when they visited the General Motors plant in Shanghai as part of their studies for the dual business degree from U.C.L.A. and the National University of Singapore.
Ronson Wong, an executive at Reach.com, a Hong Kong-based provider of cable and satellite communications, said, ''A degree from an American university, from U.C.L.A., is highly valued in Asia.'' He received a dual degree from U.C.L.A. and Singapore last year.
American universities are so prized abroad because ''we have a different kind of pedagogy,'' said James Ellis, dean of the Marshall School. ''We are much more inclusive of students, allowing their participation on many levels, in contrast to the classic Oxford lecture model. The students learn from one another, particularly in the global classes where individuals from different cultures work together.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: STUDENTS & STUDENT LIFE (89%); GLOBALIZATION (78%); EDUCATION (78%); COLLEGE STUDENTS (78%); PASSPORTS & VISAS (77%); MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS (73%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (73%); ACCOUNTING (66%); BUSINESS EDUCATION (92%)
COMPANY: CNINSURE INC (91%)
ORGANIZATION: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (90%); UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA (83%); UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA (LOS ANGELES) (82%)
TICKER: CISG (NASDAQ) (91%)
PERSON: TZIPORA LIVNI (53%)
GEOGRAPHIC: LOS ANGELES, CA, USA (94%); SHANGHAI, CHINA (90%); BEIJING, CHINA (72%); DELHI, INDIA (54%) CALIFORNIA, USA (94%); EAST CHINA (90%); NORTH CENTRAL CHINA (77%); KARNATAKA, INDIA (54%) UNITED STATES (94%); CHINA (94%); SINGAPORE (93%); INDIA (92%); ASIA (92%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY (79%); ISRAEL (79%); HONG KONG (77%)
LOAD-DATE: February 21, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: The Anderson School of Business at U.C.L.A. assigns consulting work with international companies as part of its curriculum for the M.BA. program. Judy Olian is dean of the school. (PHOTOGRAPH BY J. EMILIO FLORES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
1055 of 1231 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 20, 2008 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
With These Nutrition Bars, Every Order Is Special
BYLINE: By LISA NAPOLI
SECTION: Section H; Column 0; Small Business; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 781 words
DATELINE: Los Angeles
AVA BISE and Anthony Flynn share more than a typical mother and son: a birthday, a love of healthy food and a devotion to athletics. Ms. Bise, who teaches belly dancing and practices yoga, taught Mr. Flynn how to snowboard after she learned at age 44.
Both mother and son faced a challenge common to many active, health-conscious people: how to eat well during a busy day. In theory, a nutrition bar could be eaten between more substantial meals, but the dozens of bars on the market did not appeal to either of them.
''They disguise it as healthy,'' said Mr. Flynn, 24. ''It's like, how is that healthy? It's sugar, low-quality sugar, even.''
Ten years ago, Ms. Bise started making her own nutrition bars at home, using pure, mostly organic ingredients like soy-nut butters, nuts, granolas and dried fruits. Her son began making his own when he was around 18, and the two would swap recipes. Friends had asked them to customize the bars to individual tastes, and Mr. Flynn and Ms. Bise complied, sealing their creations in wax paper.
One night two years ago, they decided to start a business making bars to order for a wider market. Mr. Flynn was weeks from graduating from the University of Southern California with a degree in business administration.
Because neither mother nor son had experience in food service, Mr. Flynn took a job at a juice bar to see how the business worked. Then he wrote a computer program that allowed online customers to choose the base ingredients for their bars, as well as fruit, protein and vitamin infusions. They could even name the bar whatever they liked. The You Bar (youbars.com) was born.
After starting the business in their homes and later borrowing commercial kitchen space from the synagogue that Ms. Bise attends, the duo moved into their own space last summer, not far from the Farmers Market in downtown Los Angeles. The 800-square-foot kitchen and warehouse is bright and neat and filled with jars of nut butters and containers of dried fruits, as well as food scales and mixers.
Although the bars are not sold in stores, orders come from all over the world via the Internet. With eight employees, Mr. Flynn and Ms. Bise weigh and mix the requested ingredients, mold the bars and seal them in packages. They then print computer-generated labels stating the bars' names and nutritional facts.
Gary Meyer, a fitness and nutritional consultant who runs the Elite Fitness Center in Wilmington, Mass., stumbled onto the You Bar Web site four months ago while looking online for an organic protein powder. He has ordered them ever since and encourages his clients to do so.
''Learning to eat healthy and eat six meals a day is difficult for most people,'' he said. ''Supplements like nutrition bars have become a necessity because it's quick and easy. But the wrong kind of bar can be counterproductive. Most of the ones available are just candy bars infused with protein -- reverse liposuction.''
Mr. Meyer says some members of his fitness center are nervous about making the wrong choices when they design their own You Bars, which cost $40 for a baker's dozen.
''You experiment until you get it right,'' he said. Mr. Flynn and Ms. Bise allow customers dissatisfied with their choice of ingredients to return them and reorder.
Mr. Flynn said he had received only five or six return orders, usually from people complaining the bar was too dry for whom he would recalibrate the recipe.
''Originally I was afraid that I'd see the bad side of humanity come out,'' he said of the ''satisfaction guaranteed'' offer. ''But people haven't taken advantage of it. They've been great.''
For those who want You Bars but cannot make decisions about the ingredients, the site offers several popular recipes with ideas on customizing them.
Ms. Bise, a certified snowboard instructor who specializes in teaching women over 30, said she had never imagined such a partnership with her son. She said each contributed strengths to the business.
''He has a lot of energy and interest in technology and was right out of business school,'' she said. ''I have all these odd things I've done over the years. It's been fascinating to get to know my son not just as my son but as my business partner.''
It took a while for suppliers to treat Mr. Flynn as an equal partner in the business because of his youth, Ms. Bise said.
You Bar, a private company, prefers not to specify sales, but Mr. Flynn said orders had been doubling each month for the last eight months.
''I knew there was an industry where I would wake up every morning just stoked to go to work,'' he said. ''Every day it's like I just jump out of bed and love it.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: NUTRITION (91%); SNACK FOODS (90%); FUNCTIONAL FOODS (89%); ORGANIC FOODS (78%); EXERCISE & FITNESS (78%); RESTAURANTS & FOOD SERVICE (78%); FOOD INDUSTRY (76%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (73%); FRUIT & VEGETABLE STORES (72%); INTERNET & WWW (69%); BUSINESS EDUCATION (71%)
ORGANIZATION: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (54%)
GEOGRAPHIC: LOS ANGELES, CA, USA (93%) CALIFORNIA, USA (93%); MASSACHUSETTS, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (93%)
LOAD-DATE: February 21, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: THE MIX: At You Bar's kitchen in Los Angeles, Marcia Monterroza, a worker, and Dennis and Anthony Flynn. Anthony and his mother are the owners. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ANN JOHANSSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
1056 of 1231 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 20, 2008 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Go On, Leave Your Job
BYLINE: By ELIZABETH OLSON
SECTION: Section H; Column 0; Small Business; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 575 words
FOR those who have started their own business or are thinking of doing so, there's inspiration, comfort, camaraderie -- as well as nitty-gritty advice -- online. Dozens of blogs offer small-business owners and entrepreneurs free start-up tips and business advice -- much of it drawn from their creators' experiences.
The blogs include the inspirational and motivational, for those who are thinking about chucking corporate life and going out on their own. One of these is escapefromcubiclenation.com, where Pamela S. Slim, a former leadership development consultant, writes about traits that fence-sitters should consider about themselves -- like their working styles and finances -- before deciding whether to take the leap into self-employment.
After a decade advising corporations like the networking systems supplier Cisco Systems, Ms. Slim decided in 2006 that she wanted to switch her focus to helping people who were pondering the idea of striking out on their own.
In her first posting, Ms. Slim, 41, castigated corporations for how they treated their workers and pledged to lure their ''brightest, most creative, hard-working and passionate employees'' to the self-employed life.
At the other end of the spectrum are blogs offering practical advice, like franchisepundit.com, where a Chicago lawyer, Ryan M. Knoll, 32, helps his readers navigate the sometimes treacherous waters of franchise ownership.
In 2004, Mr. Knoll decided to post his research into buying a franchise, a deal he eventually decided not to pursue. Instead, he went to law school but continued the blog, where he lists specifics like the 10 most common mistakes in buying a franchise.
He also gives thumbs up or down to some popular franchise picks, and his advice can be blunt. His blog -- which readers contribute to -- tries to point out potential franchise problems and steer his audience clear of losers. For example, he flagged eBay retail stores, which were ''exploding over the last five years,'' as potentially troublesome for a long-term investment. ''Now they're all closing,'' he said.
Those already running small businesses are the audience for Anita P. Campbell's blog, smallbiztrends.com, which she began in 2003. It draws some 100,000 readers monthly.
Some of her most popular entries recently have been about how to avoid employee embezzlement, top marketing secrets and what to do if your Web site is hacked -- like hers was once.
She also posts guest columns from small-business experts. But mostly Ms. Campbell, who operates from Medina, Ohio, tries to talk about ''real-life situations to make blogging more real and valuable.''
For those who want to skip the corporate trenches and go right to being the boss, there is younggogetter.com, run by three small-business owners in their 20s.
One is Aaron Kuroiwa, who operates LeTranslator, an online business and legal language translation service, and gives concrete advice -- like his recent posting of three steps to becoming more productive.
While blogs can motivate those who are thinking about taking the plunge into self employment -- or offer an online shoulder for those reeling under the time demands of running their own business and the lack of a paycheck -- they can also be a marketing tool.
Ms. Slim, for example, said she got enough interest from readers that she was able to earn a living by coaching them on how to leave the corporate suite and become their own boss.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: BLOGS & MESSAGE BOARDS (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); SELF EMPLOYMENT (90%); FRANCHISING (89%); SMALL BUSINESS (89%); TELECOMMUNICATIONS EQUIPMENT MFG (73%); LAW SCHOOLS (65%); RETAILERS (50%); EMBEZZLEMENT (50%); FRANCHISEES (86%)
COMPANY: CISCO SYSTEMS INC (56%)
TICKER: CSCO (NASDAQ) (56%); CSC (LSE) (56%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS334210 TELEPHONE APPARATUS MANUFACTURING (56%); SIC3661 TELEPHONE & TELEGRAPH APPARATUS (56%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (52%)
GEOGRAPHIC: OHIO, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: February 21, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: BYE: Escapefromcubiclenation.com, an advice blog on self-employment.
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
1057 of 1231 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 20, 2008 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Inspiration Strikes Only a Desk Away
BYLINE: By DAN FOST
SECTION: Section H; Column 0; Small Business; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 304 words
ONE of the most frequently cited advantages of coworking is the cross pollination that takes place. People share ideas rather than actually drum up business.
''I'll ask Ryan for video tips, or I'll ask John for travel advice,'' said Eddie Codel, a Web video producer who works at the Hat Factory in San Francisco, referring to his office mates Ryan Bailey, who runs a Web video start-up called Viddyou, and John Vlahides, executive editor of 71miles.com, a travel site.
At Citizen Space, Kurt Smith, who works for a Dutch firm, Culgi, that makes software for computational chemistry, took a desk two months ago. His company is delighted that he has found a place to tap into the entrepreneurial mentality of Silicon Valley. ''Everybody's got a blog,'' he said. ''Everybody's on Twitter. I've never been on the cutting edge.''
But with his coworkers as inspiration, he got his more far-flung coworkers -- the Culgi employees in Europe and Asia -- onto a Twitter group, which is fostering interoffice conversation that never existed before.
Similarly, if someone is looking for a Web designer, there's a good chance the coworker at the next desk could do the job or has a network to tap into.
Jeremy Pepper, a technology publicist who rents a desk at Sandbox Suites, said he often lends expertise in social media to a woman who works for a large corporation and rents a desk nearby. He'll also tap others for their insights into, say, engineering.
At the Werks in Brighton and Hove, England, one person who owns a comedy club has tapped engineers for free help, said James McCarthy, a founder of the space. It happened because he griped out loud about the difficulty he had with his Web site.
''That coincidence would never happen without the coworking resource,'' he said. ''That's the feeling we're aiming for.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: INTERNET VIDEO (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); BLOGS & MESSAGE BOARDS (72%); VIDEO INDUSTRY (72%); HAT CAP & MILLINERY MFG (72%); WEB DEVELOPMENT (70%); ENGINEERING (70%); CHEMISTRY (69%); INTERNET SOCIAL NETWORKING (90%); COMPUTER SOFTWARE (77%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (52%)
GEOGRAPHIC: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CA, USA (57%) CALIFORNIA, USA (88%) UNITED STATES (88%); ENGLAND (69%); UNITED KINGDOM (69%); EUROPE (69%); ASIA (54%)
LOAD-DATE: February 21, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: THE CAT FACTORY: Eddie Codel, left, John Vlahides and a friend. (PHOTOGRAPH BY RANDI LYNN BEACH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
1058 of 1231 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 20, 2008 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
It's on to Plan B as a Hot Trend Cools Off
BYLINE: By DEE GILL
SECTION: Section H; Column 0; Small Business; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 1147 words
IN 2005, meal assembly shops were the hottest trend in small business, a concept taken on with gusto by mom-and-pop entrepreneurs. In storefront and shopping-center kitchens nationwide, they sold millions of uncooked entrees in freezer-ready Ziplocs and to-go tins, with stick-on instructions for boiling, simmering, baking or stir-frying the contents into quick dinners at home.
The concept boomed, as the number of stores mushroomed from four in 2002 to 1,400 in 2007, almost exclusively by catering to women who wanted to provide home-cooked meals for their families, according to the Easy Meal Preparation Association.
The customers placed their orders online days ahead, paid about $200 for 12 meals and donned store-supplied aprons to personally assemble each dish at the site one or two times a month. They adjusted the recipes to their families' tastes, maybe leaving the chopped onions out of the enchiladas. They often came with friends, sipped glasses of wine as they worked and treated the two-hour assembly sessions as guilt-free nights out.
The loyalty of these wives and mothers landed meal assembly companies on various lists of top franchises and hot new businesses throughout 2005 and 2006.
But growth in the industry has slowed sharply, long before reaching expectations. Industry revenue, which two years ago was forecast to reach $1 billion annually by 2010, is now projected around $650 million by then, said Bert Vermeulen, an industry consultant and founder of the easy meal association.
Some 264 meal preparation stores closed during 2007, Mr. Vermeulen said, more than three times as many as in the previous year. He forecasts fewer than 50 openings in the United States this year, compared with 562 in 2006.
It turns out that lots of people are simply not motivated to plan so many meals in advance. The desire for last-minute convenience remains powerful in America, often trumping the more ephemeral rewards of home cooking.
Finding themselves ill prepared to offer such convenience in the context of a business model built on prescheduled two-hour sessions, meal assembly owners are trying to find new ways to bring ready-to-cook meals to the masses.
The typical customers ''were women who enjoyed the time away from the kids -- getting out, having a glass of wine -- because they felt good about taking care of their families' meals,'' said Bill Byrd, chief executive of Super Suppers, the second-largest franchiser in the business. ''What we found is that the market wasn't as big as we thought it was.''
Super Suppers, which is based in Fort Worth, once forecast it would have 600 stores by the end of 2006; it now has about 200. Dream Dinners, based in Snohomish, Wash., originated the concept. It has 236 stores, not quite meeting expectations. No single competitor of Super Suppers and Dream Dinners has more than 70 stores.
The majority of owners bring in less than $25,000 a month, or $300,000 a year, in revenue, according to Mr. Vermeulen's data. He figures that is about $5,000 a month short of what they need to stay out of financial trouble.
Book It N Cook It, an independent store in the Tampa, Fla., suburb of Lutz, never exceeded $4,000 in monthly revenue in its eight-month life, said Terry Warner, its former owner. Monthly expenses averaged about $7,500. Mrs. Warner and her husband closed the store in November after losing about $250,000.
The Warners, retired insurance adjusters who spent two years studying the industry before jumping in, say they underestimated the public's aversion to meal planning.
''People here have a grab-and-go mentality,'' Mrs. Warner said of Florida, where free time can be spent outdoors year-round. ''The last thing anyone wants to do here is plan dinner.'' She said that the burger joint next door to her shop seemed to be doing great.
Book It N Cook It did keep preassembled meals ready for walk-in customers, but Mrs. Warner said that attracting foot traffic was difficult.
The industry is selling more preassembled uncooked meals. In 2008, Mr. Vermeulen forecasts, store employees will assemble more meals than customers will for the first time. In 2004, customers in prebooked sessions assembled about 90 percent of all meals sold.
Dinner by Design, the third-largest franchiser, expects to get out of the session business completely, said John Matthews, chief executive of the company, which is based in Grayslake, Ill.
Dinner by Design renovated a store in Gurnee, Ill., to sell only preassembled uncooked entrees, side orders and desserts for pickup or delivery. Customers can phone in to pick up meals, order online or buy from the store's fridge.
Mr. Matthews, who came to meal assembly after building sandwich and pizza franchise companies, hopes to copy the model throughout the chain.
''There's a huge market that is not going to book a session,'' he said, including his wife. ''She wanted to know why we don't have drive-through windows.''
Deeelish (yes, three e's), based in Menlo Park, Calif., runs meal assembly sessions but is expanding mainly through delivery. For a $25 additional fee, the store will send frozen, uncooked meals by overnight delivery via FedEx to homes in several Western states.
The FedEx program is a small part of Deeelish's more than $1 million in annual revenue, said Jeff Stevens, a co-owner. But he expects corporate deliveries, in which office workers preorder meals to take home, will account for half of sales by the end of the year. Deeelish trucks fresh (not frozen) meals to commercial refrigerators it has installed in three office buildings so far.
Not everyone thinks that preassembled meals will be the salvation. ''We think a lot of the rush to change has been from lack of success with the core business,'' said Erik Ginsberg, referring to the sessions. Mr. Ginsberg is president of a Baltimore partnership that owns some of the highest revenue-generating stores in the business. ''That hasn't been our experience.''
Average annual sales for all his nine stores -- called Let's Dish, although independent of that franchise -- is about $1.3 million, Mr. Ginsberg said. About 85 percent of sales come from traditional session customers, a percentage he expects will shrink but remain the majority of business.
Dream Dinners' stores rely solely on preordered meals, mainly assembled by session customers. Darin Leonard, the chief executive, argued that his competitors blundered in chasing the grab-and-go business, which he says turned their $200-a-month session customers into $50-a-month pickup customers.
Despite moving toward pickup sales, the industry strives to set itself apart from fast food. Mr. Byrd of Super Suppers pointed out that his meals were healthier than most takeout fare and cheaper than those in casual restaurants. That's true even if Mom had nothing to do with making them.
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