Dream Dinners opens
new Mill Creek location

By Kimberly Hilden
SCBJ Assistant Editor

Dream Dinners, a Snohomish-based meal preparation franchise chain, will hold a grand opening celebration Feb. 1 for its new flagship location, 15021 Main St., Suite G, at the Mill Creek Town Center.

Snohomish County Business Journal /KIMBERLY HILDEN Sharon Burlison is the operations manager for Dream Dinners’ new flagship location in the Mill Creek Town Center. The new site will pull double duty as a meal-assembly store as well as training grounds for new franchise owners.

From 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. there will be Dream Dinners “giveaways” to the first 100 attendees to the event, and Dream Dinners co-founders Stephanie Allen and Tina Kuna will be on hand to mark the occasion, said Sharon Burlison, operations manager for the Mill Creek location.

“We expect 300 or more guests on grand-opening day,” said Burlison, who joined Dream Dinners six months ago after operating her own business, the Snoho Mojo espresso stand, for the past few years.

The Mill Creek location, in the Clock Tower building of the Mill Creek Town Center, takes the place of Dream Dinners’ original company-owned store near Interstate-5 in south Everett, which closed in December.

“When we originally opened the (Everett) store, we were a destination location,” Kuna said, noting that customers regularly would drive for hours to get to the store, where they would, during a given session, create a number of family entrees to be frozen for later consumption.

With growth in the meal-preparation marketplace — seen in franchises such as Dinner By Design, Dinners Done Right and Super Suppers — Dream Dinners has made it a practice of locating its sites in neighborhoods for the convenience of its customers, said Kuna, chief financial officer of the company she helped launch nearly five years ago.

“Mill Creek is one of our hot spots” in terms of market demographics, said Kuna, noting that Dream Dinners’ core customer base is made up of women age 25 to 45 who usually, “but not always,” are part of a two-income family.

The new site will pull double duty as a meal-assembly store as well as training grounds for new franchise owners.

“The Mill Creek training center will have best practices in place” as well as have the look and feel of the newer Dream Dinners franchise locations, said Kuna, adding that franchise owners from across the country come to the company’s home office in Snohomish for a weeklong training session.

With the new Mill Creek location, franchise owners will spend a full day at an operational store, gaining hands-on experience, from opening to close, she said.

Dream Dinners’ Clock Tower at Town Center site, as it is called, will have customer sessions Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, Burlison said. Two days a week, there will be additional private sessions, and one day a week will be set aside for franchise owner training.

Dream Dinners has 180 locations across the country, with another 70 under construction, said Kuna, noting that the company experienced 100 percent revenue growth in 2005 and 2006 and plans for the same this year.

Recognized for its growth by Entrepreneur Magazine as well as Ernst & Young LLP, Dream Dinners competes in the marketplace by staying true to its original goal, Kuna said.

“We long ago established what our mission is: feed a nation,” she said, noting that children benefit when families sit down and eat meals together. “Our mission is really to change a generation — it’s at the core of every decision we make.”

For more information on Dream Dinners, go online to http://dreamdinners.com. For more information on the company’s new Mill Creek location, call 425-316-8260 or send e-mail to clocktowerwa@dreamdinners.com.