In today’s fast-paced world, consumers have begun to rely on the convenience and efficiency of “meal prepping”—organizing a full week’s worth of meals all at once. Although meal prep is undoubtedly a time saver, it still usually requires a full day of cooking and an unavoidable sink full of dirty dishes.
To eliminate the less glamorous aspects of the practice, shops have been popping up all around the country to capitalize on the meal prep craze. Good Eats Kitchen, the newest entry into the Red Stick meal prep market, aims to be your one-stop-shop for healthy, ready-made meals that require minimal prep at home.
Good Eats Kitchen was launched in Lafayette in 2016 by Boyer Derise, a classically trained chef who began preparing meals for his sister in exchange for her babysitting services. What started within his family would soon evolve into a full-blown business.
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“Within a couple of months, I had a client list of 60 or 70 people,” Derise says. “We were making 300 to 400 meals per weekend out of my house. It was apparent that Lafayette had a need for something like what we were doing.”
Derise left his job to take advantage of the demand, opening a commercial kitchen and his first brick-and-mortar store in Lafayette in June 2017 offering deliveries and in-store pickups. Now, Good Eats Kitchen is taking on the Baton Rouge market, with one shop open on Perkins Road and two more coming soon as a result of its acquisition of Fresh Kitchen.
Across all locations and online, Good Eats Kitchen has roughly 40 menu offerings up for grabs right now, including breakfasts and entrées. While the company’s most popular options are constants, you can also expect its menu to change seasonally.
According to Derise, the kitchen’s most popular dish is its Green Chili Chicken Enchiladas made with braised chicken thighs and topped with a homemade tomatillo sauce, aged cheddar and an avocado crema. Check out its full menu here.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a meal prep service without package deals—online, you can place orders for three-day meal packs (nine total meals) or five-day meal packs (15 total meals). You can choose to have the packs delivered, or to pick them up at one of Good Eats Kitchen’s physical locations.
Alternatively, if you’d like to sample some of its offerings before committing to a week-long regimen, you can stop by one of the company’s brick-and-mortar stores to shop individual meals.
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Looking forward, Derise has big plans for his meal prep service.
“I’m a bit of a dreamer,” he says. “We have some pretty lofty goals. We’re in the process of designing our next production facility in Lafayette and we’re actively looking for a location in the Lake Charles market. Within the next three years, we’ll have a pretty massive, state-of-the-art facility with three or four more stores in the region.”
For now, you can check out Good Eats Kitchen online or at its first Baton Rouge location at 7673 Perkins Road, open Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Expect to see Fresh Kitchen’s two locations (Corporate Boulevard and Willow Grove) fully transition into Good Eats Kitchen shops come March.