Entrepreneurs are endlessly coming up with new business ideas
Shamoli Patel, an electrical engineer often too busy to cook dinner for her children, came across a newspaper article two years ago about a new concept called the meal-assembly business.
To Patel, it sounded like the perfect antidote for time-starved people who longed for home-cooked meals. They could visit a store and prepare a week’s worth of dinners in less than two hours.
Rather than try it as a customer, though, Patel went a step further. She opened her own store, Super Suppers, in Marlboro. “It seemed like the right opportunity,” Patel, 43, of Freehold Township, said.
Patel is one of at least four entrepreneurs in the Monmouth-Ocean area since the beginning of 2006 who have latched onto a novel idea and opened a meal-assembly business. In doing so, they hope it will not only resonate with consumers, but also have staying power as a business for the long term.
For entrepreneurs, lining up behind a good idea is an inherent risk of owning a business. Are they truly getting in on the ground floor of a trend that will catch on, like McDonald’s in 1948 or Starbucks in 1971? Or will consumers, with their notoriously short attention spans, tire of the idea and desert them?
“You have companies that (transcend) the trend, and it no longer becomes a trend, but a part of society,” said Justin M. Klein, a lawyer who specializes in franchising for Marks &Klein in Red Bank. “That’s part of the mystique of getting in on the ground level.”
The idea of a meal-assembly business has been compelling enough to attract a contingent of entrepreneurs. They include Super Suppers, Suzanne’s Kitchen in Eatontown and Entree Vous in Marlboro. The owners have spent upwards of $35,000 each for a franchise, not including equipment or rent.
A fourth company, Simply Dish in Middletown, is independently owned. But co-owner Margot Meahan said the company is selling its own franchises and plans to open stores in Wall and Brick.
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