The Sunnyvale Sun

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Photograph by Diana Diroy

Just Super: Lori Fraleigh creates dill salmon with lemon rice, one of the 12 different meals on the Super Suppers November menu.

Super Suppers aims to get families back to the table

By Erin Hussey

By the time dinner rolls around, many families, couples and singles living in Silicon Valley opt for eating out instead of spending time chopping and dicing a real homemade meal in the kitchen. But Mark Liu and Trina Grube, owners of the new Super Suppers, a meal assembly store in Sunnyvale, just on the Cupertino border, want to help bring people back to their long-lost kitchen tables.

"We had been looking for a business to do together because we now have children," Grube said. "I was looking through one of our twin magazines, and it listed all of the meal assembly companies and I said this is what we should do."

Super Suppers is a studio kitchen where customers can make a month's worth of family-sized entrées during a two-hour session. Customers can choose among 12 menu options that change monthly. This month included cider pork chops with apple-raisin stuffing, dill salmon with lemon rice, and crispy Asian chicken wraps. There are also walk-in days when no appointment is necessary, and people can drop-in and make as many meals as they wish. There is even a grab-and-go freezer, where the meals of the month are already prepared.

With no cleanup needed and at only $3.50 per serving, it's no surprise that both families and young singles from Sunnyvale, Cupertino and other neighboring cities are taking advantage of what Super Suppers has to offer.

"We were really surprised about our single clientele," Grube said. "A lot of them are interested in saving money. They don't want to go out and buy lots of groceries and then, as they told me, have them turn into a science project in their refrigerator."

In addition to making a variety of tasty entrées for the month, Grube believes her customers are also learning valuable cooking skills.

"There are a lot of people who just don't cook nowadays or don't know the art of cooking, who don't understand the simple things," she said. "When they try [preparing a meal at Super Suppers], people think, 'wow this is easy, I could do this at home.' "

Unlike trying to follow an unknown recipe, buying all the necessary ingredients and then finding out it doesn't taste good, Grube said Super Suppers permits experimenting without all the hassles. In the end, if you like what you've made, she will give you the recipe.

Grube and Liu also came up with the idea of donating their services to various schools as auction items. In one of their first packages, a private party session for 24 where the participants get to make one free meal, have appetizers and watch a cooking demonstration, the local school raised almost $500.

"We are actually not only donating to schools, but I belong to a twins group, and I deliver meals for them and will be donating meals to women in my area," Grube said. She recalled how stressful her life was when her twins were born three years ago and how grateful she was to friends and neighbors who brought food. "It was wonderful, and I want to give that back," she said.

While Grube and Liu are thrilled with the variety of customers who have tried Super Suppers thus far, helping families is truly what they are passionate about.

"While we are serving busy people and we're trying to save them time and money, our goal is to help families," Liu said. "There have been academic studies that say it's better for children to be eating at home with their families. We want to help families have better lives, and we think we can do that by allowing them to eat at home, allowing them to eat healthier meals and by supporting their community in other ways."

For more information about Super Suppers, call 408.625.7821 or visit www.sssunnyvaleca.com.