You're driving from the office, the fuel tank is nearing empty, and so is your refrigerator at home. For Americans ravenous of appetite but starved of time (and in need of an oil change), a quick turn into the Chevron station off Interstate 680 in San Ramon, Calif., is the answer. That's right, Chevron, purveyor of premium gasoline, is serving fresh panini, three-cheese pesto and double espressos along with its usual selection of octanes.
Chevron cooked up its Foodini's Fresh Meal Market earlier this year, the latest player in the $100 billion bake-off known, charmingly enough, as home-meal replacement. You know it better as the store-bought, ready-to-eat food that is supposed to taste as if Mom made it. Foodini's is part of the evolving, highly moveable feast that has become dinner, catering to a country that wants its food fast but restaurant-quality fresh. "I work, my husband works, my daughter dances and plays soccer, and my son plays baseball," says Jan Tulk, an attorney, during her fourth trip to Foodini's. "I'd say I end up cooking about half the time. The rest of the week it's usually fast food. This [pizza, clam chowder, salad] is a lot healthier." Although just a gourmet-pizza toss from the gas pump, Foodini's is decidedly upscale: light jazz, vodka-blush pasta sauce and not a microwave burrito in sight.
Home-meal replacement is the critical battleground between supermarkets and restaurants for consumer food dollars. According to the marketing firm NPD Group in Chicago, of the $691 billion that Americans forked over for food in 1996, 46% was for dishes bought outside the home. And half of that went to takeout. The traditional grocery store is morphing into a catering hall-delivery service. Last month A&P announced that hungry Web surfers can view full menus and in-store specials, and order prepared meals online from one of the company's 700 stores. Restaurateurs are developing delivery systems that can dispatch linguini al dente with alacrity.
But new businesses are also springing up: EatZi's is a Dallas-based HMR supermarket developed by Brinker International that is expanding nationally. For those without time to shop, personal chefs who cook and run are springing into action to save us from a hot stove. "When I come home, I realize we have nothing for dinner, and I don't feel like cooking," says Lisa Bradlow, 33, a publicist in New York City. "It's easier to buy a roast chicken and pop it into the oven. If my husband and I have three home-cooked meals in a row, we congratulate ourselves."
The kitchen seems increasingly a place to pursue cooking as a hobby, not a daily grind. In 1987, 43% of all meals included at least one item made from scratch; in 1997, that dropped to 38%. "There has been a revolution forever to find someone else to cook," says Harry Balzer, vice president of the NPD Group. "We want to eat at home; we just want someone else to do the cooking. That is now the home-meal replacement."