Feves cooks up fresh food for busy families

By Katie Gourley

article created on: 2010-09-01T00:00:00

Americans eat out an average of one out of every four meals and snacks. Be it fast food, take-out, or a sit-down restaurant, most Americans for one reason or another chose not to cook for themselves.

This is where Margot Feves steps in. The 28-year-old, bubbly founder of Dinner At Your Door has made it her mission to provide Portland households with a fresh, healthy, home-cooked meal once a week. This native of the Portland Jewish community discovered a passion for cooking and for alleviating the stress of cooking for others when her busy sister and brother-in-law had a child in 2009.

“It is so fulfilling to know I’ve done 25 deliveries that week and there are 25 families sitting down to a meal that I prepared.” Feves said with a grin spreading across her face. “They’re actually able to sit down and take a minute and breathe and not have to think about what’s for dinner.”

After high school Feves headed south to the Bay area where she got a degree in business and communications from the University of San Francisco. She then entered the world of advertisement and account management in Chicago working for the major ad agency Leo Burnett. Feves said she loved the team she was working with, but was missing an element of customer service and working one-on-one with people. Feves “phased out” of the true ad agency business and found herself working with a new restaurant concept in Chicago where she did party planning and pre-opening press.

“I really enjoyed the food and beverage industry and the hospitality and customer service there,” Feves said.

When Feves’s sister, Jordana, and her brother-in-law, Ryan had their daughter, Sadie, she knew it was time to leave the Windy City and be with her family. It was easy for her to know that she wanted to remain in the food industry. By chance, Feves began working with what she calls her first real customers: her own family.

Feves started cooking dinners for her sister’s family and said she fell in love with the whole process of cooking and helping her busy family.

“It was such a great feeling to have [my family] walk through the door and have dinner on the table in the dining room, not standing up around the kitchen, but actually sitting down at a nicely set table,” she said. “It wasn’t take out with plastic and Styrofoam containers but just a really good meal.”

In the summer of 2009, after realizing
how much she enjoyed spending time cooking for her family, Feves said she decided to research businesses that could provide families with home-cooked meals. She couldn’t find any service that provided what she was looking for, so she decided to start her own: Dinner At Your Door.

Dinner At Your Door is a weekly service that provides houses within a 12 mile radius of downtown Portland a home-cooked meal including “a balanced and healthy portion sized entree, salad, side and dessert for a minimum of two people.” She said she quickly learned that it is not just busy families who use her service, but a wide range of different lifestyles from single professionals to empty-nesters.

Feves’ motto for her business is that it is “one less night per week to think ‘what’s for dinner?’”  

“I am not trying to come in and take over the entire culinary arts in your household because there are a lot of people who like to cook but do they like to cook seven nights a week?” she said.

Customers subscribe to the service and chose from Feves’ seasonal menus–including vegetarian and gluten-free options–and can have as many as 10 or as few as two entrées cycled through each week. Feves has concentrated on developing a nutritional menu while not sacrificing the taste of her meals. The meals arrive at the customer’s doorstep fully cooked and chilled with re-heating instructions.

Environmental sustainability is at the core of what Feves is trying to accomplish with her business. Her meals come delivered in reusable glass wear and reusable shopping bags and her meals are prepared with fresh and local produce.

“With my generation and the future of our planet, I think it’s important to do as much recycling of all the paper bags that I’m using.” Feves said. “It is the same with purchasing local produce. The more local it is, the less time it has to travel, the less emissions that are put out in the air.”

Feves started her business on her own and has been able to expand enough to now have two employees: a baker and a kitchen assistant.

“Word of mouth had been amazing for my business, especially within the Jewish community,” Feves said about her growing success. “I have a 98 percent retention rate. Once people try it, they really like it and see that it’s really convenient for their lifestyle. It becomes like having a gardener.”

In the future, Feves said she hopes Dinner At Your Door will continue to grow and become a lifestyle service that people can rely on. She also said she envisions taking her business to other cities and franchising it to a whole network of customers. For now, Margot Feves is providing the Metropolitan area with one night a week of stress-free home cooking.