InBerkeley

For Caroline and Renee Thomas  Jacobs, the family dinner has always been one of the most important parts of the day, the one place where they and their two young sons could sit down together around the table to share food and conversation, and just reconnect and enjoy each other’s company. But as two busy professionals – Caroline working in operations at Apple and Renee working for a high-end kitchen supply retailer – they were finding these dinners were becoming harder and harder to do. Then, about three years ago, they realized that pretty soon they were never going to be able to have their family dinners at all, and that this was not the kind life they wanted. They decided they needed a change, and so Caroline left her job to become an at-home mother.

Caroline and Renee had also always wanted to start their own business together, but again, with two crazy jobs they had talked about it, but never really had the time to do anything. Once Caroline was home, however, they started thinking about what they wanted to do and what their passions were, and decided they wanted to find a way to make it easier for busy couples like themselves to have the family dinners they had struggled to maintain.

The result is ReneeGourmet™, a small, family-run business managed from their home in El Cerrito, practically in the shadow of FatApple’s restaurant, and just a stone’s throw from Berkeley’s infamous gourmet ghetto. As their web site states: We seek to “feed family time” with wholesome, ready-to-bake meals proven to bring the family to the table.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Caroline around their kitchen table and talk about their new four-month-old business. I also got to sample some of their homemade pizzas.

“Renee’s always been the chef in the family, and she’s a big foodie and all that, and she came upon the idea of family dinners,” Caroline explained. “Technology has also played a major role in allowing us to do this with me at home, our web site, email, a Facebook page and a mobile phone. Without all this technology, it would have taken a lot more capital to get this off the ground.”

For now, the 12-inch homemade pizza is ReneeGourmet’s flagship dish, and they offer several interesting varieties as well as custom combinations. I tasted both the pepperoni pizza and the Mediterranean Madness, which includes sun-dried tomatoes, Kalamata olives, feta cheese, red onion, fresh basil and pine nuts, and both were delicious and truly looked homemade. The pizzas can be ordered with either regular or whole wheat crusts, and Renee also offers a unique gluten-free crust. Renee is also looking to expand their offering, and is testing new recipes for lasagna and macaroni and cheese, but these are not yet generally available to all customers.

A basic 12-inch cheese pizza – called Sonny’s – costs $14, while the combination pizzas will set you back $16, and discounts are available if you order more than 5 or 10 at a time. A wide variety of toppings, fresh herbs and cheeses are available for you to make your own custom pizzas, too. Or, you can join the Pizza Club and Renee will design a unique pizza just for you each month based on seasonal ingredients, your order history and stated likes and dislikes. They’ll even accommodate food allergies. Orders can be placed by email or phone, and Caroline recommends ordering all pizzas at least two days in advance (custom pizzas require it).

ReneeGourmet provides free delivery for all their foods, which come frozen and packaged in a vacuum sealed plastic bag that is recyclable. Caroline says it’s easy to buy in bulk because you can fit 10 pizzas into a 7 by 13-inch space.

Renee still works weekdays at her regular job, and does all the cooking on alternate weekends at the commercial kitchen space they rent nearby, while Caroline handles day-to-day operations – marketing, sales and customer service – and generally manages the business from their home.

“When Renee shows up in the kitchen on the weekend, I’ve literally got everything she needs already there for her, so she can just start baking. During the week, Renee is home in the evenings for the boys, and I go out and do our deliveries.”

ReneeGourmet is truly a family business. The older boy, Neil, helps Renee brainstorm recipes for the pizzas, and both boys sometimes go on deliveries with Caroline and often go with her to the local merchants.

Caroline buys all their ingredients from local sources, either in Berkeley or, like for the meats, from Northern California sources. Cheeses come from Country Cheese, the prosciutto and pepperoni is purchased from Magnani Poultry and the ground pork Renee uses to make the home-made sausage comes from Niman Ranch. Even the tomato sauce is made from scratch.

“Cole, our youngest boy, often goes with us to buy the ingredients, and the other days he was playing at home with a friend and they were making believe they were the Country Cheese store selling cheese. That’s what it’s all about. Our boys are getting to see a part of our business, be a part of it and imagine and build something with us. And this experience will last them a lifetime.”

Convenience is a major selling point for ReneeGourmet. When they first started thinking of ideas for a business, they considered either a storefront selling ready-made meals, or a place where people could come in and prepare their own meals ahead. But there had been a place like that in El Cerrito Plaza, and it went out of business.

“It wasn’t convenient enough for people. With us you can place an order once a month and we drop it off at your home. Our value proposition is we’re less expensive than Zachary’s and we’re out of your freezer, but we’re just as good. When we officially launch the mac and cheese and lasagna, we’re going to offer a dinner club where you can have your monthly dinner order with us, and we’ll deliver your assortment each month.”

ReneeGourmet delivers five nights a week: Tuesday and Thursday to Oakland and South Berkeley; Monday, Wednesday and Friday to North Berkeley, El Cerrito and Richmond. But as Caroline explains, if an order is large enough, they’ll deliver to just about anywhere in the Bay Area, and Caroline encourages group orders. Apparently, there’s a large group in Novato, and Caroline makes a delivery up there about every three weeks. In the fall, Caroline says, they will start offering ReneeGourmet House Parties, where people can invite groups of 15 or more friends together and discover how good the food is. Not only will Caroline deliver the food and offer the host a good discount, but she will cook the food, too, to demonstrate how easy it is to prepare.

So far, virtually all of ReneeGourmet’s customers have become repeat buyers. While Caroline and Renee initially envisioned their typical customers to be busy working couples with children, they’re discovering that their pizzas have become popular with grandparents looking for kid-friendly food they can serve easily when their grandchildren come to visit, as well as with busy singles who want to have something in the freezer they can pop into the oven when friends come over.

What’s in the future for ReneeGourmet? Will they start franchising and get too big? As Caroline says, “We don’t want to become another Amy’s Organic, a big manufacturing and production facility. The idea is we’re a local business, we use local businesses as our suppliers and we have local customers who we’re creating family time for. The whole point of this for us is that we know it’s hard to have quality family time especially for meals, which is a time where families get to come together and can really engage with each other.”

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ReneeGourmet has a special offer for InBerkeley readers!  Buy one pizza, and get a second pizza of equal value or less for 1/2 off.  Just enter or mention the code “InBerk” when placing your order. Limit: one per customer.

Mark Haas Business, Food, General, People Pizza