How much would you pay?

[engineergurl]

So in my spare time, I create meal plans for many of my friends and they always tell me I should try to do this for a business... I am not looking to start something big, just something to do in my "spare time". I have found web hosting for $100 per year, and would like to find out if I am completely crazy even thinking about trying this... and how much people would be willing to pay for this potential service.

I know economic times are bad, but I'm going with the thought that if you spend the money on the plan, you will save some money at the grocery store checkout... plus I am not trying to get rich, this is something I actually enjoy doing. I figured at between $5 and $10 for a general meal plan and just a few orders a month, that there actually might be a chance that it could pay for the web hosting service... which is all I'm focused on... I can create a dinner plan in about 3 hours, and if I have one generic plan, even if I get no custom orders, I might not be throwing my money away. (Hey at $10 and one order per month, I'd make $20 profit for the year arty-smiley-048: and would probably just use the meal plan I do for my husband and I anyway so no extra time would be invested!)

I thought a poll would give me an idea since this is a wide group of people, and I have no other way of doing any research except through my personal friends. I'm not looking to sell you guys stuff, just wondering if I'm crazy thinking about spending the money for the web site

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

Are you talking about customized nutrition plans, plans for a fancy dinner party or catered event, or saving someone the time of writing a grocery list for the week?

It takes us about 2 hours to pick out recipes for the week, buy the groceries (provided no specialty ingredients are involved), and put them away. So I'm thinking you're going for something more elaborate than Tuesday Taco Night.

If you've got a passion for it, and it won't put you in the poor house, go for it I say!

 

[snickerd3]

I would need a none of the above option. I'm to cheap, I mean frugal, to pay for a service like that. and mr. snick is rather picky about food, so fancy recipes that need weird ingredients are usually out.

 

[SuperAlpha]

Aren't there services jus like this online already? allrecipes.com dinnertool.com, etc

 

[engineergurl]

I should have been more elaborate, thanks for the input! To answer your question, I guess I would offer all three if needed...

Most of the recipies I have created on my own and are designed for specific nutrition needs... although I'm not a nutrtionalist. I also plan out for time and cost saving meals.

For example I currently do a meal plan each month for one friend where each meal can be prepared in under 15 min. (She works the swing shift at one job, a part time job and goes to school full time) She was sick of frozen food, fast food and take out so I specifically developed recipies to meet her needs, based on various nutrition calculators, her time available, and her money available. For her it is low cost, speed and nutrition...(her chicken parm would be a tyson breaded chicken patty, ragu sauce, and cheese served with leftover noodles and a bagged spinach salad)

I recognize that everyone can't eat gourmet food that takes hours to prepare but have spent plenty of time developing short cuts to make it seem like it. In "Tuesday Taco night terms" Our meals for this week are

"Italian Night" (Grilled Chicken Parm, Whole wheat pasta, home made sauce, bread with dipping oil, spinach salads and home made or store bought canolies, red wine)

"Steak Night" (Garlic Lime Flank Steak w/mushrooms and peppers, wild rice, and salads with sorbets for dessert, red wine)

"Cheese Burger Night" (French Onion Cheese burgers on toasted rolls, home made sweet potato french fries, steamed fresh veggies, cheese cake OR rootbeer floats)

"Pork night" (Citris glazed apple stuffed pork chops, mashed roasted sweet potatoes, sweet corn on the cob, baked apple betty)

"Home made take out" (home made veggie pizza with spinach salads, garlic bread, roasted red pepper dip and whole wheat tortilla chips, home made boneless buffalo chicken chunks)

"Fish night" (Grilled Garlic Lemon Pepper Salmon, Roasted onion and potato dish, grilled garlic and lemon asparagus, Italian bread with dipping sauce and bannana pb fudge frozen yogurt cups)

"Company Night" (Roasted Rosemary Chicken, Toasted Almond and Green bean potato dish, steamed garlic baby carrots, Pineapple/cherry dump-it cake with vanilla frozen yogurt and berries, white and dessert wines)

All of the above cost us under $70 for the week (that's inclusive of what I spent for breakfasts, lunches and snacks too), and takes less then 30 min to prepare (except for company night unless you have the special pampered chef cooker I have) and specifically fits with my current under 1600 mg of sodium per day need. Just as an example...

 

[SuperAlpha]

I have made chicken Parmesan exactly like that before! 1 minute in the microwave and dinner is served!

Drained ramen on the side.

 

[engineergurl]

I have made chicken Parmesan exactly like that before! 1 minute in the microwave and dinner is served!
Drained ramen on the side.

Then you would enjoy my meals like "taco chicken mush", "chili and cornbread cass" or "tuna in a pot"

 

[SuperAlpha]

college and bachelor gourmet cooking....

 

[Supe]

With my work schedule and complete inability to prepare a grocery list, I'd love to have one of the dinner and grocery list combos. It's free for EB'ers, right?

 

[Capt Worley PE]

Kraft has a pretty nice recipe generator where you type in what you have in the fridge and it spits out recipes for the ingredients.

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

EG - when is EB night at your house?

All of the above cost us under $70 for the week (that's inclusive of what I spent for breakfasts, lunches and snacks too), and takes less then 30 min to prepare (except for company night unless you have the special pampered chef cooker I have) and specifically fits with my current under 1600 mg of sodium per day need. Just as an example...

Now that's something I'd like to hear more about. We're hard pressed to spend less than $160-$170/week for groceries (including non-food items) and we're cheap bastards.

 

[bigray76]

My wife and I took a hard look at our grocery spending... with the three kids we were easily at $200 a week not too long ago (exclusive of diapers, etc.).

My wife now hits Costco for certain items every other week; and Shoprite for the things we don't need a bulk of (or we share the bulk with her parents)... we have managed to wrangle that $200 down to about $120. Granted, our three little eating machines will only eat more (and start having friends over that will eat more); but we feel like we got it under control.

Our time saving thing is to do a bulk of the week's food prep on the weekend. We will make a meal on Sunday that we can eat again and modify a bit a couple of nights a week and have also incorporated in having a hearty omelette one night a week (with enough leftover to be breakfast one morning as well). For example, I grilled up a big London Broil on the grill over the weekend... we have eaten that as london broil, and chopped it up, added mushrooms and onions and had a 'cheesesteak' wrap one night... We do buy the precooked rotisserie chicken breasts from the store and use those of some dinners and our lunches (we both ususually pack a salad). We used to grill the chicken breasts each week, but found that it was worth a couple of bucks to not have to grill/prep chicken for a few hours.

Engineergurl - I do like the idea... my wife and I have fallen into the rut of rotating the same 3-4 ideas and are always willing to try something new! Time is always a premium for us!

 

[TouchDown]

It sounds like a nice option - I was thinking that SuperAlpha is correct in that some of these services already exist. My wife has talked about "paying" for these meal plans with shopping lists before, to which she get's a blank stare from me...

I'd check out what's on line already and undercut what their prices are, if you are looking to provide similar service.

One thing the local grocery store is doing recently (they have a dietician on staff that you can use to assist you in making meal plans), is providing their private label stuff on a center aisle with a recipe. All you have to do is pick up the recipe, and pick up the goods in the aisle (maybe have to venture off the path for any meats / etc.). But, it makes a couple meals a week easier.

And we typically live off of leftovers, I like the idea of a "meal plan", but what the hell do you do after a week where everything is planned out, and you end up throwing away food because you didn't have 2-3 days where you just ate leftovers?

 

[frazil]

I think this is a great idea!

It would be much better to work with someone one on one that use a recipe generator online. We eat a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables and very little processed food. I like to cook, but I need things that are quick and the kids will eat.

It's much easier during the week when we (I) sit down and plan out the meals and then shop for them at once, but usually it doesn't happen. So I end up deciding what to make on a daily basis and running to the store for what I need.

I would pay $20/mo for specialized dinner meal plans and extra for the grocery list, and if we liked the dinners I could see keeping it up.

It could get tough keeping up with a lot of individual preferences though. To really turn this into a big business, you should have a library of recipes and have people rate them as they try them. Then, based on certain criteria, you could write maybe a neural network program to suggest recipes to individuals based on their preferences. It could be like netflix for meal plans.

 

[frazil]

EG - when is EB night at your house?

All of the above cost us under $70 for the week (that's inclusive of what I spent for breakfasts, lunches and snacks too), and takes less then 30 min to prepare (except for company night unless you have the special pampered chef cooker I have) and specifically fits with my current under 1600 mg of sodium per day need. Just as an example...

Now that's something I'd like to hear more about. We're hard pressed to spend less than $160-$170/week for groceries (including non-food items) and we're cheap bastards.

I think food costs in New England and quite a bit higher than many places.

 

[Chucktown PE]

Mrs. Chucktown is a stay at home mom/home economist so she does that as part of her "job". She takes it a step further with the super couponing so our meals consist of things that are on sale and she has a coupon for. So we wouldn't pay for a service, mostly because the service would need to be tailored to our local grocery stores' sales and their coupons.

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

I didn't think that people literally clipped coupons anymore. Every store I go to has one of those rewards cards that automatically marks off stuff that's on sale. Whenever we get ads we usually just toss them in the trash.

 

[frazil]

<-- professional coupon clipper. You can save a lot, but you have to deal with other shoppers looking at you like wtf?! :brickwall: when you pull out your stack of paper clippings.

 

[Slugger926]

Have you ever heard of Pass Your Plate?

You could make meal plans for a month of dinners where you provide a grocery list, and even list of disposable cookware and ziplock bags, and instructions on how to divide up and pre - prepare the food to be cooked. We do this with some of our recopies we lifted from Pass Your Plate where we will freeze uncooked meals ready to be thawed and cooked. It is a real time saver, and no prep or cleanup after your initial preparing such as chicken manicotti prepared in square disposable baking tins. Some of the recopies are like gumbo where all of the shrimp and sausage and spices are placed in a ziplock ready to be fried, followed by the rice. Hopefully you get the idea.....

 

[Chucktown PE]

I didn't think that people literally clipped coupons anymore. Every store I go to has one of those rewards cards that automatically marks off stuff that's on sale. Whenever we get ads we usually just toss them in the trash.

There's that too. The super deals are when you stack the rewards with the coupons.

<-- professional coupon clipper. You can save a lot, but you have to deal with other shoppers looking at you like wtf?! :brickwall: when you pull out your stack of paper clippings.

Mrs. Chuck uses a 3 ring binder with baseball card inserts. She has the coupons sorted by aisle/page so as she's shopping she pulls the coupon and paper clips all of the ones she's using together.