With many of us not willing or able to eat out at restaurants, we are relying heavily on our grocery stores to provide the ingredients for healthy meals. But when we’re not in the mood to cook, it’s great to have meal options like prepackaged dinners that give us a shortcut to fast, wholesome meals.
This article discusses the many benefits to customers – and grocers – when stores offer prepared meals that can be cooked in minutes.
Healthy Eating at Home Begins at the Grocery Store
By offering Ready. Chef. Go! (RCG) cook-in-the-bag or cook-in-the-box meals in your store, you’re providing customers with many eating at home benefits. The primary benefit is the variety, which allows you to give customers what they all want – lots of choices!
Let’s look more closely at the choices you can offer customers with prepackaged dinners cooked in RCG bags.
- Different ingredients and types of meals
- Different cooking methods
- Different meal sizes
Tip: Follow these 5 tips for effectively offering prepared meals in RCG bags.
Customers Can Select from an Endless Variety of Meals
RCG bags and containers use a steam cooking method in combination with the 400-year-old French-cooking tradition of “en papillote” (pronounced ain-pah-pee-yet), which literally means “in parchment.” This method is healthier than frying in oil, but the results are just as savory.
The steam cooking method works well with a wide variety of proteins like chicken, meatballs, oysters, fish, lobster, ribs, and wings. Additionally, the list of vegetables you can cook in the same bag or box is extensive.
This means you can offer a variety of meals to please all types of eaters, from Atkins-lovers to vegetarians. Here at RCG, we’ve gone through the trial-and-error of creating easy-to-prepare recipes to get your in-store cooks started.
Customers Can Choose Their Cooking Medium
RCG has several different types of bags that give customers flexibility in how they can cook their meal, including for the grill, microwave, oven, or even the slow cooker.
The benefit here is that no matter what type of appliance is used to cook the meal, the steam method of cooking results in the same moist, delicious results, time after time.
Customers Can Pick the Meal Size That Is Just Right
Continuing with our theme of variety, RCG bags and boxes are manufactured in dimensions that take into consideration many sizes of households:
- Singles
- Couples
- Small families
- Large families
Although RCG offers a wide range of bag sizes, it’s also possible to design custom-size bags based on your measurements. Also, while RCG bags do come with complete written instructions on the back of the bag, you can also purchase bags that have no printing – or choose your own custom printed message.
Tip: For picky eaters, RCG bags are also sold with dual compartments
to keep the protein and vegetables separate while cooking.
Eating at Home Benefits for Customers
The benefits to customers don’t end with the variety of meals, sizes, and cooking methods you can provide to them. Once customers are at home, they will:
- Enjoy a meal with almost no preparation required
- Feel good that they’re feeding themselves (or their family) a minimally processed meal with quality ingredients
- Appreciate that the cooking bag or container significantly reduces cooking odors, like those from seafood
- Be able to clean up quickly by simply tossing out the cooking bag or box
Also, in the rare case of leftovers, customers can store them in the RCG bag (fridge or freezer), thus eliminating the need for foil, plastic, or storage containers.
So, there you have it – the many eating at home benefits to offer customers!
Here at Ready. Chef. Go!, we believe healthy eating at home begins when grocers offer easy, affordable, and high-quality meals to their customers. We invite you to explore the possibility of offering prepared meals in bags at your store(s).
To join the cooking bag program and offer Ready. Chef. Go! products in store(s), contact us for more information.
