Super Suppers: Is the Cash Worth the Convenience?

Americans typically live very fast-paced lifestyles, and quite often taking the time to prepare a meal and sit down with the family for a good ole fashioned supper takes the backseat to more pressing activities and tasks. One franchise has decided to capitalize on this fact and offer a manner for families to be able to once again be able to sit down at the supper table together without spending nearly as much time preparing the food. The company is called Supper Supers, and its around in most major markets, but is it worth the cost? Let's find out.

So how does it work? Each supper supers store has several kitchenettes. At each kitchenette there are the ingredients, directions and small appliances to make one specific meal. You can go around to each kitchenette and make as many different entrees as you'd like. You'll pay a fee for each meal you make, or you can pay the employees to make the meal for you for an added fee. They rotate the menu on a monthly basis so there are always new food items to bring home to the family. They state that it takes an average of 10 minutes to make one of their meals using the setups that they have. You can store your meals in one of their freezers and pick it up on the way home from work if you don't have the space to store the food at home.

You're not really buying food, but rather you're buying time. You can prepare a month's worth of dinners in just two or three hours. They provide you all of the ingredients and clean up for you afterwards. I've eaten a couple of meals prepared through Super Suppers, and it was just as good if not better as a meal made at home by the folks.

The price per serving will vary a little bit depending on how big your family is and what kind of appetites you have, but it's a pretty reasonable bet that you'll pay around $3.00 per person per meal. That's a little bit higher than what you'd normally pay for a nice full meal at home, but it's not terribly unreasonable considering the amount of time saved. An average meal prepared at home would probably go for about $2.00 per serving. For a family of four you'll probably spend an extra $4.00 per meal or so but save forty-five minutes to an hour of time put into preparing the meal. I don't know about you, but my time's certainly worth more than $4.00 an hour!

If there's a stay at home mom in the family, chances are it doesn't make a ton of sense to make use of Super Suppers, but if you're a middle to upper class family that never seems like you have enough time on your hands, Super Suppers might be a good way to save a five or ten hours per month in food preparation.