HMR: Food Like Your Mama Used to Cook

If you're a whiz with basic meal planning and your forté is home cooking, hitch your catering career to the latest dining trend: home meal replacement. As a caterer, you can beat the mass market HMR folks at their own game.

If you’re a whiz with basic meal planning and your forté is home cooking, hitch your catering career to the latest dining trend: home meal replacement. As a caterer, you can beat the mass market HMR folks at their own game. Here’s how:

Know your market, grow your catering career

Who longs for home cooked fare? The market for HMR lies mainly with married couples. Oddly, family-style cooking appeals most to couples who don’t have children. And it’s not just high income power couples either. The market for HMR covers a broad social spectrum, though it rarely includes singles. If you cater to the home meal replacement market, you’ll be satisfying the culinary (and probably the emotional) needs of two-income marrieds whose busy, busy lives leave little time to create the comforts of roast beef and gravy.

Get your HMR catering education from the mass markets

Catering gurus credit Boston Market for popularizing the HMR trend. Their secret? Homestyle meals to go. What separates HMR from any other restaurant takeout? Mainly the menu and the spirit. Set a homey tone and put comfort foods on your menu and your HMR catering career will thrive. Of course, HMR has its challenges, according to Marcia Schurer, consultant and president of Culinary Connections in Boulder, Colorado. “Selling takeout food, especially if it’s not for immediate consumption, is one of the hardest things to do in the food business,” she says. So your job in catering to this market is to do what the big boys can’t: provide fresh, high-quality home cooking.

HMR catering career starters

How can you make a name for your catering business and tap the HMR market?

• Emphasize evening delivery. Get your food to their doorstep and your clientele won’t head for a chain restaurant or supermarket.
• Offer prepackaged meals. After a long workday, your clientele can be hard-pressed to choose between chocolate and vanilla. Meal packages appeal to tired, hungry people.

Sources:

• Cullen, Noel C. Culinary Arts Career Starter. New York: Learning Express, 1999.
  Home Meal Replacement Finds Its Place at the Table.

Posted on June 4, 2006 at 11:58 AM

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