Hacker News Reader

Comment by marktangotango | Hacker News Reader

I would like to buy the same pre made meals and heat it up at my home, at a reduced cost. The quality isn't bad, I'd even say "good" in some cases and my kids like the chicken tenders. Kind of a Papa Murphy's take and bake casual dining thing. Does this exist?

View on HN

I don't know if they have a reach outside the upper Midwest, but that seems to describe Schwan's. They have a wide variety of premade foods ready for reheating or cooking (e.g., cheesy potato puffs). Haven't gotten food from them in a while, but I remember it being pretty good. At least, far better than supermarket frozen meals. I've actually been known to follow a Schwan's truck until it stopped so I could buy on the spot :-)

They typically have a number of households on a weekly rotation and deliver in temperature controlled trucks. You can buy food when they show up at your house or if you're well-organized, preorder.

They probably also ship.

Ignore the "salmonella vanilla" remarks: that was a long time ago :-)

Schwan’s website claims 48 contiguous states.

Most cities have a few local places that do similar things - mine certainly does. Some are dedicated take-home places, others are restaurants that also package prepared meals during their slow hours. The locals always know about the good ones. You'll find the majority of these places/meals are pasta, largely because pasta stores easily and reheats consistently.

As for chains, Maggiano's used to do an eat-one-take-one deal, where for a $5-10 add-on you could get a pre-chilled pasta dish to take home, but I'm not sure they still do. That deal was great for takeout. A hot meal for tonight, leftovers for tomorrow, throw the chilled one in the freezer.

I don’t know but I would assume the big food service providers don’t have some special “secret sauce” versus what you can buy in the freezer cases of the supermarket and at least assemble pretty quickly.

I’ve also definitely found frozen stuff I can order like soft shell crab and soup dumplings that make super easy meals.

Some chains like Lazy Dog have a parallel business doing takeout meals: https://www.lazydogrestaurants.com/blog/tv-dinners

I don’t know about meals but several popular restaurants chains offer branded food in the grocer’s freezer. From what I’ve seen they are mostly appetizers but there are also some entrees and desserts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com