Let's Dish!

In January, 2005, Let’s Dish!, a new concept in meal preparation, opened its first location in the mid-Atlantic region in Timonium, Maryland. This unique and social experience allows customers to prepare home-cooked meals on-premise, which are then packaged, transported home, and frozen until ready to be cooked. Customers register online for preparation sessions and select meals from the Let’s Dish! monthly menus. They then come to Let’s Dish! and rotate through various food prep stations to prepare their selections. Following easy directions and with the flexibility to modify recipes to suit their individual tastes, customers leave with cooking instructions and ready-to-cook, nutritious meals to store in their freezer.

Profiles was selected by Let’s Dish! to develop and implement a strategic and multi-faceted communications program to launch this new, exciting, and innovative concept, and to lay the foundation for expansion. To accomplish this, Profiles created and implemented the following marketing initiatives:

Market Launch
A concentrated outreach program targeting print, television, and radio media in and around Baltimore was activated to raise public awareness to introduce Let’s Dish!. Profiles created and packaged media drops that were hand-delivered to select media contacts and included made-from-scratch Decadent Molten Chocolate Cakes, press release, fact sheets, photographs, Let’s Dish! magnets, measuring cups, and measuring spoon sets. Additionally, materials about Let’s Dish! was distributed via email, fax, and USPS to more than 200 outlets in the Baltimore metropolitan region.

Following the launch, Profiles continues to work on behalf of Let’s Dish! in providing on-going media outreach efforts to print publications, radio stations, and television shows to reinforce Let’s Dish! as a preferred resource for busy parents, caretakers, and professionals.

Results: Let’s Dish! has been featured in The Baltimore Sun (front page Taste section), Baltimore’s Child, Style Magazine, Baltimore magazine, The Daily Record, Baltimore Messenger, Owings Mills Times, Towson Times, Smart CEO, Smart Woman Magazine, Towson Magazine, Baltimore Jewish Times, The Senior Beacon, Roland Park Newsletter, Maryland Family, Valley Times, A Bit of the Big Apple, and The Jeffersonian. An AP story on Let’s Dish! was featured on the websites of more than 40 media outlets across the country. Additionally, Let’s Dish! was featured in the New York Times Magazine and in a national NBC report by Liz Crenshaw. Multiple stories have aired on WWMX-FM, WLG-AM, WCBM-AM, and WBAL-AM. WBAL-TV has featured Let’s Dish! on its weekend news segment of “Sunday Brunch” and on its week-long series “Things to Make Your Life Easier” that included live shots from the store. WMAR-TV and MPT have also aired multiple segments on Let’s Dish!. Let’s Dish! was featured on WWMX-FM’s website promoting its interview with “The Jojo and Kenny Show” and as Maria Dennis’ “Website of the Day.” Additionally, WBAL-TV featured Let’s Dish! on its website for the “Making Your Life Easier” segment as well as recipes for the “Sunday Brunch” segments. AOL City Guide and Yahoo! Finance have both featured Let’s Dish!.

Expansion
With the immense success of its first location, Let’s Dish! opened stores in Bel Air, Columbia, Gaithersburg, and Rockville, Maryland, and Ashburn, Leesburg, Alexandria, and Fairfax, Virginia with plans for additional openings throughout Maryland, DC, and Northern Virginia in the coming years. As a result of its previous success on behalf of Let’s Dish!, Profiles was selected as the public relations resource for all Let’s Dish! operations in the mid-Atlantic region.

Grand opening events were planned and managed by Profiles and included food sampling, tours of the stores, ribbon-cutting ceremonies with representatives from both the Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development offices as well as elected officials, and “ceremonial first dish” moments in which participants of the ribbon cutting were invited to “dish” a meal.

Results: Grand openings in Bel Air, Gaithersburg, Rockville, Ashburn, Leesburg, Alexandria, and Fairfax welcomed hundreds of future “dishers” and garnered many registrations from new customers.

The Aegis, The Jeffersonian, The Baltimore Sun, The Daily Record, Maryland Pennysaver, Harford County Kids, and Harford Business Ledger published stories on the Bel Air location, and Let’s Dish! was also featured on Comcast’s “Business Beat,” which ran on CNN’s Headline News.

The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Times, Howard County Times, Frederick News-Post, Maryland Family, and The Business Monthly published stories about the Columbia Let’s Dish!.

Kentlands Town Crier, The Town Courier, The Baltimore Examiner, The Hill, The Washington Examiner, Washington Woman, Frederick News-Post, and The Gazette Newspapers published stories about the Gaithersburg and Rockville Let’s Dish! locations.

The Washington Business Journal, The Washington Times, The Washington Examiner, Loudoun Friday Times, Loudoun Business Journal, Loudoun Times-Mirror, The Loudoun Connection, The Loudoun Easterner, Leesburg Today, Washington Woman, Northern Virginia Magazine and the cover of The Washington Post food section featured stories on Let’s Dish!’s Ashburn and Leesburg stores.

The Falls Church News Press, Alexandria Times, The Washington Post, and The Fairfax Connection published stories about the Alexandria and Fairfax stores and an interview aired on WTWP-FM.

Let’s Dish! was also included in a national television segment by NBC, and Let’s Dish!’s location partner Elizabeth Marcotte was featured in a cooking demo on WUSA-TV and interviews on WAGE-AM and WTOP-AM.

Community and Corporate Outreach
Profiles has also helped Let’s Dish! earn its position as the regional leader in the meal-assembly industry through targeted outreach around community and business opportunities as follows:

Donations of gift certificates to local non-profits for fundraising events; participation in local and regional conventions with cooking demonstrations, and presentation booths; and the sponsoring of fundraising events in and out of the store.

Nominations for local and national awards: In 2006 and 2007, Let’s Dish! was nationally recognized with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Blue Ribbon Award. In 2007 and 2008, Let’s Dish! was named one of Baltimore SmartCEO’s Future 50 Companies, an award that recognizes organizations that stand out among peers in terms of employee and revenue growth over the last three years. The Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce honored Let’s Dish! as the “Product of the Year” for the 2007 Small Business Awards. That same year, Corridor, Inc. named Let’s Dish! one of the “Greatest Places to Work” and in 2006, Smart Woman magazine named the company one of the best “25 Places for Women to Work.”

Let’s Dish!’s co-owners Lisa Hardiman and Alexa Corcoran were honored as two of Smart Woman magazine’s Bravo Award winners in 2005. Baltimore Business Journal named Alexa as one of their “40 under 40,” a group of emerging business leaders younger than 40-years old in the Baltimore area. Alexa and Lisa were also honorary chairs at the Women Entrepreneurs of Baltimore annual Taste of WEB event in 2005.

Also recognized by their customers, Let’s Dish! has won several Reader’s Choice Awards in Washington Family Magazine’s 2006 and 2007 editions including ““Absolute BEST FOR FAMILIES in Our Area,” “Best Advice for New Parents,” “Best Family Friendly Company,” “Best Customer Service,” “Best Place to Meet Other Moms,” “Best Personal Chef,” and “Best Place to Work.”

Special Incentives for community organizations and businesses to use Let’s Dish!’s time-saving, healthy services. By example, recognizing the important role educators play in children’s lives and knowing how valuable their time is, Profiles initiated the Educators’ Program on behalf of Let’s Dish! at the beginning of the 2006-2007 school year. More than 100 schools and school systems joined the program, which offered a special discount to all educators employed by public and private schools throughout the region. Let’s Dish! also partnered with the Maryland State Teachers Association with a discount offer to more than 65,000 teachers who are members of the organization. In the 2007-2008 school year, more than 300 schools and school systems participated in the program.

Annual Initiatives
Let’s Dish!’s Pink Dish! Campaign. Dedicated to increasing breast cancer awareness and providing support to families who have been affected by the disease, in 2005, Let’s Dish! implemented its first breast cancer fundraising initiative and has since seen it grow, touching the lives of people throughout the country. In 2007, after co-owner Lisa Hardiman was diagnosed with breast cancer, Let’s Dish! launched the Pink Dish! Campaign to raise awareness about the disease as well as funds that go directly to families whose lives have been impacted by breast cancer in the form of Let’s Dish! meals.

Results: Profiles has coordinated the media efforts for the campaign and secured coverage in the following media outlets: The Baltimore Examiner, City Paper, The Daily Record, WBAL-TV, WUSA-TV, RLTV, specialtyfoodamerica.com, AOL.com, Yahoo.com, loudountimes.com, and loudounI.com.

Heart Health & American Heart Month. Because heart disease is the leading cause of death among American women, Let’s Dish! offers at least four meals each month that meet the American Heart Association’s (AHA) standards for a heart healthy lifestyle. Throughout American Heart Month in February, Let’s Dish! offers at least 10 heart healthy meals and encourages customers to participate in AHA’s Go Red for Women Campaign by providing literature about heart disease in-store and working with an AHA nutritionist to provide customers with heart healthy tips.

Results: Profiles has coordinated the media efforts for the awareness campaign each year and secured coverage in the following media outlets: Baltimore Jewish Times, Daily Record, WBFF-TV, WBAL-TV, WCBM-AM, WVIE-AM, AlexTimes.com, and Gazette.net.

Let’s Dish! was a client of Profiles, Inc. from 2004 through 2008.