By 6 a.m. Monday morning, Julie Darling and Jill Pelletier already know what dinner is going to look like for the rest of the week.
They gather in the kitchen of Concord Beef & Seafood, owned by Darling’s husband, and by 8 a.m. they’ve chopped their vegetables, prepped their proteins and portioned out enough food for everyone.
It’s not dinner for them, but for their customers; the two women are the minds behind Gourmetish, a new pickup meal kit service based out of the Capital City.
They’re currently offering one meal a week. But as meal kit businesses continue to grow in popularity – the national industry was valued at $2.2 billion last year by food industry consulting firm Pentallect – the women say their dreams are as big as their customers’ stomachs.
Pelletier said what makes Gourmetish stand out from other meal kits, an industry that’s meant to take the guesswork out of meals, is its accessibility: All the ingredients are prepped ahead of time, taking most of the labor out of the meal. She said most dishes take around 30 minutes to make.
“The national meal kits are great, but they’re time-consuming,” she said. “They’ll give you a whole onion, but you have to dice it, and a lot of people don’t know how to do that. … We want people to have the full experience of the food, but have everything ready to go when you pick it up.”
And Darling said meal kits can make people more comfortable with using pricey meats, like swordfish and salmon, with less risk.
“People are afraid to get a high-quality protein and mess it up,” she said.
By including a placard with each kit that lays out the exact steps customers have to take, Darling said the idea is to make people feel as though someone is in the kitchen talking them through each step.
The idea for Gourmetish was born around a kitchen table. Darling, a former social worker, and Pelletier, a part-time elementary school teacher, get together often to cook and talk. When they both started feeling burned out on their jobs, the dream of going into business together started to percolate. They officially went live the second week of January.
Dishes are mostly pulled from each woman’s repertoire of recipes that they’ve either created or found online and added their own twist to. They aim to make their ingredients as fresh as possible, so they’ll revisit and prep multiple times during the week depending on how many orders they get and when customers want to pick up, Darling said.
Prices vary – a recent dish, breaded pork tenderloin with honey-garlic root vegetables and parmesan mashed potatoes, was $24 a kit and served two people. The meal before that, a spicy miso soup with gulf shrimp, was $28 and also served two people.
Kits are available for pickup Monday through Saturday at Concord Beef & Seafood; Darling said they try to keep a few extra kits on hand in case a curious customer wants to try one out. A subscription guarantees one of those kits will be yours, according to Gourmetish’s website.
For more information, visit gourmetish.net.
Things are happening at the Concord Municipal Airport.
The city is planning some work to spruce up the airport, including asbestos abatement; an electrical overhaul; and new furniture, fixtures and equipment.
At the same time, they’ll be able to renovate the airport’s terminal and pilot’s lounge, thanks to the Airport Advisory Committee’s chairman.
Joseph Alosa, whose family’s business holdings include Freightliner of NH and Northeast Logistics, has committed to providing the labor, materials and supplies to paint the walls and redo the flooring on the space at no cost to the city, according to a report written by Carlos Bais, deputy city manager for development. The project was slated to begin last week, according to Airport Advisory Committee minutes from January.
The donation would complement the $20,000 the city set aside for fiscal year 2018 to renovate the airport, pending private donations. The city council voted to spend that money during its regular meeting last week.
But wait, there’s more – the city is also seeking bids for the reconstruction, lighting and marking of Taxiway A. That work would include filling cracks, installing a new gate, taking erosion control measures, completing drainage work and reseeding the topsoil.
The bid is open until Friday.
It might not feel like it now, but summer is closer than you think. To get people excited, the Concord Parks & Recreation Department has released its summer camp guide.
The guide, a 16-page document that details all the city has to offer when school gets out, touts the new Community Center as “Summer Camp Headquarters.”
Details on price, location and how to sign up are available. To check out the guide, head to the city’s website, concordnh.gov.
(Caitlin Andrews can be reached at 369-3309, candrews@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @ActualCAndrews.)