Trends

Americans, pinched for time and increasingly uncomfortable in their kitchens, have been on a 50-year slide away from home cooking. Now, at almost 700 meal assembly centers around the country, families like the Robbinses prepare two weeks’ worth of dinners they can call their own with little more effort than it takes to buy a rotisserie chicken and a bag of salad.

The centers are opening at a rate of about 40 a month, mostly in strip malls and office parks in the nation’s suburbs and smaller cities, and are projected to earn $270 million this year, according to the Easy Meal Prep Association, the industry’s trade group.

“It’s been keeping us from ordering pizza all the time,” Ms. Robbins said. “And you still feel like you’re cooking.”

The prototype, a kind of elevated cooking session among friends in a commercial kitchen, popped up in the Northwest in 1999. The concept did not take off until 2002, when two Seattle-area women streamlined the process so customers could make 12 dinners for six in two hours for under $200. That company became Dream Dinners, which opened a year later and now has 112 franchise stores, with 64 under construction.

Super Suppers, which opened a year later in Fort Worth, is the largest chain, with 121 franchise stores and 77 more under construction. For people with few cooking skills, the centers keep things simple with a rotating menu of mostly stews and casseroles designed to be assembled in freezer bags or aluminum trays, then taken home to be baked or simmered in a single pot.

NYT

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jimmy woo

Coca-Cola said trials of new vending machines that allow users to take digital photos and download ringtones for mobile phones could be replicated worldwide as the soft drinks company seeks to interact more directly with consumers.

The Cokefridge machine, on display at the CIES world food business conference in Paris last week, has an interactive screen that runs advertisements, and allows users to obtain free photos, games, logos and ringtones after they have bought a drink.

Users type a numerical code inscribed inside the cap of the drink into the interactive screen to get access to the photos and games.

The interactive screen says: “Available here: Cool mobile logos. SMS and ringtones and exciting mobile games. Every Coke and every Code is an experience!” Drinks available for purchase include bottled water as well as soft drinks.

Consumers can use a “Coke Cam” to take a photo of themselves in a frame that contains a Coke logo, and send the photo to an e-mail address or to a mobile phone. They can also interact with a website, www.cokefridge.de

MSNBC

German brewer Karlsberg (not to be confused with Danish Carlsberg), is convinced that it can get more women to drink beer. In countries such as the UK and Spain, roughly equal percentages of men and women drink beer (around 40%). Surprisingly, this isn’t the case in Germany, where women view beer as unhealthy, fattening, or unsophisticated.

Springwise

Karlsberg

Giving them priority access, Mobo lets customers order from restaurants and pay for meals using sms.

How it works? Customers create an account, which includes their credit card details. After signing up for the service, they can order online via www.gomobo.com, or by text message/sms. The order appears on the restaurant’s in-store Mobo system, and is automatically billed to the customer’s credit card. The restaurant confirms the order, and the customer receives a text message stating when the order will be ready for pick up.

Every Mobo restaurant has a separate Mobo Pick Up counter, so when their order is ready, Mobo users can walk straight to the counter, state their name and last four digits of their phone number, and pick up their food. For those customers that can’t leave the office, Mobo also delivers.

Since complicated orders (medium rare, hold the mayo) are cumbersome to order by text message, users can store their favourites in their online account, simplifying the procedure to just texting a corresponding number to Mobo.

Website:https://www.gomobo.com

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Dinner assembly companies offer essentially the same service: customers schedule a session online, picking meals from a monthly menu. The store, a large commercial-grade kitchen, organizes freshly chopped and prepared ingredients in practical stations. Customers move around the store, assembling a meal at each station by scooping ingredients into freezer bags or disposable baking pans. Meals are easily customized to accommodate personal tastes or diets – the customer just adds more or less fresh garlic or ginger, or substitutes pork for beef. Finally, the packaged meals are clearly labeled with cooking instructions.

The whole process takes about 2 hours, preparing 12 six-serving, or 24 three-serving meals at a cost of around USD 3 per serving. And no time spent shopping for food, planning meals, prepping beforehand and cleaning up afterwards.

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As competition for deposits intensifies, a number of banks are trying to capture customers’ attention by revamping their buildings to look more like coffeehouses and retail boutiques, and less like the stodgy brick-and-mortar operations of old. The new designs stress more open spaces and softer lines to create a less-formal environment, and more common areas and activities to encourage people to linger longer — and get them to shop for more banking products.

NC Financial Services Group Inc.’s PNC Bank is unveiling more than 40 newly designed branches this year that feature amenities such as Internet cafes and coffee bars.

Umpqua Bank customers often stop by the local branch to print out business documents using the bank’s computers or to have a cup of coffee.

Wall Street Journal

Casual dining restaurants and even fast-food joints are feverishly searching for ways to speed up service to increasingly time-crunched customers.

Indeed, more than 40 percent of sit-down restaurant operators polled by the National Restaurant Association said they expect takeout orders will make up a bigger part of their sales this year.

To speed up meal orders, restaurants are investing in new technologies that allow customers to place orders remotely via the Internet or through touch-screen kiosks at tables or next to cashiers.

For example, a display by Miami-based Boink Systems pointed to the future of the fast-food store. The company sells touch-screen ordering systems that fast-food restaurants can install in front of cashiers, in the store and in the drive-through.

Customers place orders by touching menu items on a screen. Some of Boink’s machines can also take credit cards and function as ATMs. The system frees up fast-food workers so they can make and sell a lot more orders, Chief Executive Officer William Toro said.

Toro said he expected the system, which is being tested in North Carolina, to make its debut in Central Florida this year at KFC and Taco Bell stores.

Another time-saving contraption garnering a lot of attention this week was an ice-cream-making machine that promises a couple of scoops of vanilla — or 11 other flavors — in about 45 seconds.

Customers can place an order on the machine’s touch screen and then marvel at the hard-packed fresh ice cream that comes out immediately. The MooBella company touts the device as a way that fast-food and casual restaurants can boost ice cream sales.

orlandosentinel.com.