Meal planning for a family every week can be difficult. Angie Secor of Hudsonville wants to take that stress away, and do the meal prep for you.
She created a business called DinnerGirl. It’s a local meal prep business, delivering homemade, fresh and healthy meals right to your door.
“I like the planning and I like the shopping,” said Secor. “I realized my friends were struggling with the same thing, my peers that were also having kids and getting busy with the schedules. So they asked me to start doing it for them on the weekends. It grew from there.”
It began as a hobby, then grew into a business. Now, Secor has a fully state licensed kitchen in her home. She makes and delivers about 60 to 80 dinners a week, with four portions each.
“The way we function now, it’s not we all sit down and eat together, very rarely does that happen,” said Secor. “And I think part of the reason is the work it takes to put a meal out; we just don’t have time.”
Ordering is all done online, on the DinnerGirl website. There is no subscriptions or minimums. A customer can select the number of meals they wish to order out of three planned meals each week. Then, Secor makes all those pre-orders on Monday. Tuesday, she loads up her car with coolers, and makes all the deliveries.
Most of the deliveries are made around the Hudsonville area. She also delivers meals to the northern area of Grand Rapids on Wednesday.
Secor said many of her customers leave coolers on their porch, give her a code or schedule the deliveries when they are home to leave the food in the refrigerator. By not including cooler packs with the meals, Secor said it cuts down on the cost for the customer.
Making meals that are healthy is important for Secor. She also uses as much locally sourced ingredients as possible. Much of her produce comes from local farmers markets, and the beef is sourced from a farm in Zeeland.
“We’ve seen what happens when eating convenience and processed foods,” said Secor. "And I think the ideal would be to make real food every day. But it’s just not possible. And we have a lot of guilt about that.”
The customers must make their meal pre-orders by Thursday or Friday the previous week, so she can buy the ingredients and make the meals.
Secor says she tries to create a variance in her menu each week. She includes a variety of proteins and can work with many different diets.
“I think our American food system has let us down,” said Secor, “All of the sugar and chemicals and processed food. It’s cheated our kids from knowing what real food tastes like.”
She also has the option to add on sides and healthy desserts to each order.
To view this week’s menu, or order from DinnerGirl, click this link to her website.
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