Pine Valley Market has been in the prepared foods and catering business for nearly 20 years, and co-owner Christi Ferretti reports that in 2020, the market's prepared foods department saw a greater than 20% increase in sales. 

Much of that can be attributed to the market's regular frozen casseroles, but also an expanded menu that has included quiche, sausage gravy, cobblers and other comfort foods that grew in popularity during the height of the pandemic.     
“Our frozen prepared meals are quality, scratch-made dishes that freeze well and can be baked from frozen or thawed for faster heating,” Ferretti said. “A well-respected colleague in the restaurant business recently asked if we had a crystal ball so many years ago when we started offering the frozen meals. It’s what we have become known for and why people travel from distances to stock up on flavor and convenience.”

After a short break at the start of the new year for some remodeling and to strategize for 2021, Ferretti and her team are excited to begin offering a revolving list of fresh meals each day. A portion of the meals that normally go straight to the freezer each day will be packaged for the heat-and-eat case.

“This increases our daily selection and offers less time between the ride home and dinner on the table,” Ferretti said. “To make casseroles at home costs more money and also takes time, which is priceless to many.”

But it’s not only busy families that benefit from prepared meals; Ferretti said the market has many older customers who have long relied on their prepared meals for convenience, and even more so since the start of the pandemic.  

“Not only does it keep them out of the grocery stores, but our new fresh selections offer our older clients the opportunity to create smaller portions and freeze them themselves for later use,” Ferretti said.

The casseroles and dinner entrees will change seasonally, with current selections featuring winter comfort foods such as meatloaf and mashed potatoes, roasted chicken, pot pies, chicken and rice casserole, turkey tetrazzini and eggplant parmesan. Each fresh casserole will have a use- or freeze-by date. 

“Our new kitchen layout has optimized our space and allows us to produce and process more efficiently,” Ferretti said. “Our goal this year is to offer consistency in our prepared food category so no matter what day you stop in, you know what you’ll find. In the past year we were making up dishes on the fly -- mostly out of necessity to use the ingredients that we had and mitigate waste. While this is fun for a chef to be creative, it means our customers don’t know what will be available when they come in. 

"Standardizing the menu means we can increase our staff and thus increase production and variety, which we are really excited about. Prepared meals have been our niche over the past 18 years and no matter how the world around us changed, they have remained a constant for us.”

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