Simply Gourmet is a company that was conceived out of the desire to achieve a balance between being a successful business woman and being a successful mom.

It is a story of two lifelong friends who knew that there had to be more to being a homemaker than attending PTA meetings and doing laundry.

And it goes like this:

Dana had worked for 14 years in Corporate America spending on average 12 hours per day out of the house doing the "corporate" thing. She was a Director for a major health insurance carrier and was responsible for Customer Service & Operations. Once she started a family, she quickly realized that the challenges of balancing both lives became increasingly difficult. After her second child, she decided to leave the corporate workforce and enjoy raising her children.

Dana had become friendly with the owner of the pre-school and child care center where her son had attended. One day they had lunch and began discussing future work ambitions. Dana told her that she planned on starting a new business out of her home, preparing meals for working families. This conversation then went one step further and the owner asked her if she would consider preparing meals for her day care center. Dana said yes.....and Simply Gourmet was off and running.

Shortly after, Dana asked Karen to come in and join her with this business venture. Karen also had spent some time in the workforce and had started her family so she too understood the need to find a balance between the two. She was in the field of Marketing & Merchandising with a focus on inventory management.

In 1998, Simply Gourmet began with two day care centers on board, an average of 40 meals served per day, everything done in a 400 square foot kitchen that was rented from a church. Our first stove was found out on a curb and was available for $25.00. We did everything ourselves from order entry, marketing, cooking, cleaning up, delivering meals, food shopping and lugging 40 pound cases of products into the kitchen on a regular basis. We were sure we had hit it big!

Each year we methodically took on new customers. We were never greedy about our growth, we had a tremendously strong work ethic and knew only our hard work would propel us forward. We fought, we laughed, we cried and ultimately we always persevered.

Many years later, we have 2 full commercial kitchens, we manage several on-site cafeterias and our business spans across the northeast part of the state. We have a broad spectrum of catering products and services that we offer. We employ about 50 people and have fully automated our entire process. We have had many bumps in the road along the way but were fortunate enough to gather some very talented employees that have come along for the ride.

Simply Gourmet continues to evolve and we look forward to what may still lie ahead.