By Sally Huggins

Entrepreneur: Jansen Fredal
Company: Social Suppers
1839 N.W. Vivion Road
Riverside, MO 64150
(816) 505-1220
www.socialsuppers.com
Type of Business: Meal Preparation
Year Founded: 2003
Number of Employees: 3 (corporate staff)
Number of Franchises: 11
Keys to Success: "These stores really need a hands-on owner. No one loves your business the way you do," Jansen Fredal

What's for dinner?

That's a question that causes anxiety for many parents with families waiting on the answer.

For Jansen Fredal, that question translated into an idea for a company. She founded Social Suppers in 2003 to make it easy for families to put a healthy meal on the table and sit down to dinner together.

"Studies show that mental health and physical health are hugely impacted by sitting down to dinner together to connect. We hoped to encourage the family to sit down to dinner together by making it easy," she said.

Fredal founded Social Suppers as a single store where customers could go in and prepare meals for a couple of nights, or more, from menus that changed monthly. The company has since morphed into a franchise company with individually owned stores throughout the area.

When you visit a Social Suppers store, all the ingredients for a menu are laid out ready to be measured and mixed into meals, which can be cooked immediately or frozen. And you don't have to do the dishes. The company also prepares the meals and has them ready to take from the freezer for those who don't have the time to package a meal themselves.

"We aren't making pacemakers or anything important like that, but we are making life easier. The weight of the decisions about making dinner-generally on the woman-is a daily thing. There is great angst about it for most women. Our customers say this is adding a bit of sanity to their evenings," Fredal said.

The company's mission statement is: "To share with others our love of food, family and hospitality by providing our customers enjoyable occasions to make delicious, healthful meals as well as the extra time in which to savor them."

Bringing the West Coast Concept to Kansas City
Fredal first heard of the meal preparation concept while traveling as a sale rep for Campbell Soup Company. Another sales rep told her it was big on the West Coast. After doing some research, Fredal decided it was a concept that could be successful in Kansas City.

"Everything eventually comes here from the East and West Coasts, but I decided Kansas City needed to have access to this service sooner rather than later," Fredal said.

Even she did not realize how difficult it would be to own a small business. She now has a healthy respect for anyone who can successfully run one.

"I say I have given myself an MBA-I have learned so much," Fredal said.She began working on the concept with a partner. After a few months, however, it became apparent that it wasn't the right time for her partner to move ahead with the business, so they agreed Fredal would proceed alone. She said that while the partnership didn't work out, it did give her the confidence to start the process and once she had started, it never occurred to her to stop. But she felt pressure to hurry and get it open because she felt there could be a lot of competing companies on the horizon.

"I felt there were going to be all these other stores opening in town," she said.

Fredal worked incessantly, developing menus, testing the menus, writing instructions and writing preparation lists. Her grandmother and her aunt worked tirelessly with her to test the menus and learn what worked and what didn't.

Three weeks after her son, Baker, was born and while on maternity leave from Campbell's, she opened her store at 1839 N.W. Vivion Road in Riverside. It has been successful from the beginning. Convenience and healthy eating are a powerful combination.

Healthy Alternative
The meals all are made without preservatives or trans fats and some are low carb or low fat. As much as possible, Fredal steers clear of fructose corn syrup, but it is occasionally already in an ingredient. The company supplies nutritional information on each item.

"It's a lot cleaner eating than you'd ever get in a prepackaged meal you would purchase from most grocery stores," she said.

The company suggests that customers have two meals in the fridge rather than all in the freezer. Because the meals will keep 2-4 days, depending on the ingredients, you always have one ready to pop in the oven, Fredal said.

"You won't go through the drive-thru to pick up dinner if you know you have something in the refrigerator ready to go. We help you to make better decisions," she said.


Franchising
Almost immediately after opening, customers began asking Fredal how they could have a store like hers. While franchising was in the back of her mind from the beginning, she hadn't really focused on how to proceed. But as the requests continued, Fredal worked with an attorney to create a Uniform Franchise Offering Circular (UFOC), which is a legal document containing information about a franchise operation and is designed to help franchisees analyze the merits of a franchisor. In July 2005, she released the UFOC and her first franchisee opened a store in October 2005.

Today the company has 11 franchisees operating 12 Social Supper locations. Several of the stores opened at the same time and have been open since May 2006. One franchisee owns two stores in Lee's Summit. Locations in Leavenworth and Lawrence are newer.

Initially, Fredal continued to operate the Vivion Road store and acquired another one when a franchisee could not make a go of his location. She since has closed that store and sold the Vivion Road location to focus on owning the franchise. Under the new franchisee, the Vivion Road store is used as the test location for menu items.

She admits now that she was naïve in her early months of franchising. She said she didn't have a good process for screening potential franchisees for their chance of success.

"We've had two stores close which is really hard. That was partly our fault. I didn't think about testing, business experience or a psychological profile in picking franchisees," Fredal said. "You need to have a business background to realistically understand the requirements of owning a business."

Social Suppers has solid franchisees now, she said. It is a very labor-intensive business and really requires owner-operators.

"These stores really need a hands-on owner. No one loves your business the way you do," Fredal said.

"And, I am amazed at the small business community that we have here that I didn't even know existed."

The company is currently working with a woman who lived in Kansas City and has moved to North Carolina who wants to open a franchise there and with someone in Manhattan, Kan., expanding the company outside this area.

Constantly Evolving
When Fredal opened the first Social Suppers location, customers had to sign up online for a session in which they would prepare a minimum of eight meals. Each item, from steak to quiche, was priced at $19.95.

They also had a party concept where a hostess would invite several friends to come and prepare meals along with her, with the idea that one of those guests would in turn book a meal-preparation party.

But the company is constantly evolving. When customers said they didn't always want to take the time or spend the money to prepare several meals at once, changes were made to have menu items prepared and frozen for customers who pre-ordered them or to pick up on a drop-in basis.

Most recently, Fredal said, they changed the pricing structure so it more accurately reflected the food costs of the specific menu item. A quiche will cost less than the pork or steak entrée. She said they are waiting to see how successful that will be.

"We are capturing customers we didn't have before. You used to pay $150. That was a barrier. But the challenge now is that you have to have more people come in. Which is going to be easier to sustain - 10 people at $150 or 150 people at $10?"

Allowing customers to prepare one meal at any time rather than by reservation has also caused a change for the franchisees, Fredal said, because the stores need to be open longer hours. Where before a franchisee might spend the morning preparing for an afternoon session, now the store needs to be open for the drop-in customer, as well as preparing meals to have ready for pickup.

"We've had a lot of growing pains. It is a constantly changing business. Imagine you buy a business and two years later, it's turned into something completely different. But you have to adapt to compete," she said.

Fast Growth
Social Suppers has experienced rapid growth, which has its pros and cons, Fredal said. The staff for the company now consists of her, her husband, Don, and Nicke Briscoe  By developing better processes for their work, they have gained more control and organization for long-range planning, she said.
The company outsources its accounting, marketing and legal affairs to keep costs down, she said, allowing the staff to concentrate on what they do best. Don Fredal focuses on the operations and information technology and she concentrates on franchisee relations. Nicke handles menu development and the supporting materials for the franchisees.

Development of the Social Suppers Web site was outsourced because it is a very sophisticated site, Jansen said. But Don oversees the day-to-day maintenance of it. The site contains the latest menu items, as well as nutritional information about them, and allows customers to sign up for sessions and pay online. As the company has grown, the Web presence also has grown, Jansen said.

"Our first site cost $2,000 and our present one $80,000 to develop. That's how much more sophisticated we have become," she said.

All of the menu items are tested first by Fredal, who says most meals at her home are tests for menu items. The new menu is then rolled out at the Vivion Road location and any tweaks made. The next month, those menu items are available in all of the locations.

The company contracts with local suppliers for its ingredients, including Planters Seed & Spice Company, L&C Meat, Inc. and American Foodservice for distribution. Fredal is a proponent of using local businesses whenever possible.

Marketing Challenges
The concept for Social Suppers centers on a neighborhood feel. The company targets two-income families who live nearby. Fredal said singles often don't even want to take the time to cook something and one-income families where one of the spouses stays home tend not to use convenience foods.
Social Suppers has consciously avoided going into the higher income areas because statistics show that high-income families generally prefer to eat out rather than cook something, even if it is ready to go into the oven, she said.

"We didn't know what the skill level was of our franchisees, so we have provided them with some instruction to help them," she said.

Early Help
In the beginning to help with cash flow, Fredal continued to work for Campbell's for several months while operating Social Suppers. When her sales job was eliminated in a reorganization, she took the time to concentrate solely on her company. "It is not a part-time thing for us. This has been our life for four years. We have invested so much in it," Fredal said.

Social Suppers was funded with an SBA loan, which Fredal was determined to pay off in the first year, and did.

"That was priority one. I tell our franchisees to focus on that the first year. Once you own your own business, there is a total freedom that comes with that," she said. "Although it does encompass 24/7 of your life, it also is enormously satisfying to pull up in front of a store and know that you created their meals and the atmosphere."

In addition to financial resources, Fredal tapped into a moral support network. She especially credits Linda Eakes, owner of Business Growth Solutions and the former director of the Missouri Women's Business Center with helping her prepare a business plan, as well as the challenges that came from the company's rapid growth.

Competition has come into the market as Fredal expected, but she feels her company is holding its own and even surpasses the others in number of locations. While the others are locally owned franchises, they have corporate headquarters elsewhere. If she has a complaint, it's that the others get larger play in the press when they open than her homegrown company. She is working to make Social Suppers at the top of people's lists.

But she said the challenge is not just being known above her competitors, but about the concept being understood. Fredal said people she has worked with in other areas still don't fully understand what her business is about until they go to a store. Then there is an "aha" moment when they get it, she said.
The best part for her is the customers and how grateful they are to have help with dinner.

"Every once in a while I will be overwhelmed by the business end of it, but then I will participate in a session. They are so grateful. It reinforces the reason for opening the business," Fredal said.