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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Meeting the Needs of Gluten-Free/Casein-Free Diets

Roni Piterman had no intention of hawking gluten-free food when she co-founded Your Dinner Secret a year-and-a-half ago. “The company started out with a different business model,” Piterman explained. “We started off as a meal assembly business.” Before long, however, Piterman and her sister and co-founder, Ari Kosmal, began to identify a number of clients with special dietary needs. For example, parents of children with autism wanted food items that were both gluten-free and casein-free, a diet known as GFCF. That’s because a diet free of gluten and casein, found in wheat, rye and barley and milk and cheese, respectively, is said to lessen the symptoms of the disorder. Such a diet also appeals to individuals with Celiac disease, a digestive condition in which an immune reaction results from consumption of gluten. Because Piterman and Kosmal felt that resources were lacking for people with special dietary needs, they began to research the GFCF diet. Initially, they considered featuring a gluten-free/casein-free diet alongside a traditional food menu but ultimately decided to form a niche meal business for those with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Celiac disease and other conditions in which a GFCF diet is desirable. Eight months after Your Dinner Secret launched, the company went 100 percent gluten- and casein-free. Based in Woodland Hills, Your Dinner Secret is set up like a market. “People can come to our door and just shop,” Piterman said. Menu items range in price from about $11 to $21 and include chicken tenders, hamburgers, curry and steak. “They have a lot of really delicious comfort foods,” said Dan Milano, who has shopped at the establishment for slightly more than a year because his wife has Celiac disease. Milano considers Your Dinner Secret to be a godsend of sorts because preparing meals for his wife can be trying. “It makes it difficult to have baked goods and pasta,” Milano said. “The great thing about Dinner Secret is they’re not a restaurant. They’re a market which sells freshly made goods. They have mined all the raw ingredients for you. Take it home, put it on the stove and cook it.” Piterman believes that, in addition to it being gluten- and casein-free, the quality of the food makes it stand out. “It’s ready to cook,” she said. “It’s not TV dinners. It’s not [something you] throw in the microwave. This is homemade: in the oven, stove top, crock pot.” Milano, for one, has been won over by the food’s taste. “You don’t have to have Celiac disease or autism to eat there,” he said. “It’s not strange food. If I were to serve you something that was made there, you wouldn’t know the difference.” Your Dinner Secret’s chef, Holly Markman, has been there since the company’s inception so she’s well-versed in the company’s mission. “We moved into this direction together,” Piterman said of Markman. “She has a very vast knowledge of healthy, more natural styles of cooking, and so she fit into the new business model perfectly.” Customers who live too far away to pick up the meals prepared by Markman at Your Dinner Secret’s Valley headquarters may place orders online. The company has a distribution center in Independence, Mo., from which food is shipped in dry ice and arrives directly at the customer’s door. In the greater Los Angeles region, the company makes bimonthly deliveries to customers who live as far as Orange County. Customers who place orders don’t have to sign up to be on a monthly plan or order a certain amount of items, according to Piterman. “We have no minimum,” she said. “They can order one thing or 30 things.” And no matter what they order, there will be enough food for at least two adults, Piterman continued. Milano isn’t just impressed with the quantity of the food but with the cost-effectiveness of it as well. “Their foods come out to be the same or less in price than if I had bought the goods myself at Whole Foods or Trader Joes,” he said. At present, Your Dinner Secret has about a 1,000 customers nationwide. Word has spread about the company from customer-referrals as well as through online advertising and participation in autism and Celiac disease-related conferences. Milano, for example, discovered the company at a Celiac convention. The purported health benefits of GFCF food continues to emotionally move Piterman. “It’s about not having digestive problems or not having skin breakouts,” she said. “It’s about not having a child who can’t speak to you. It’s very powerful. I spend hours every week on the phone talking to parents who are crying to me that they’re so grateful for what we do, so it’s become so much more of a business with a mission.” For more information on Your Dinner Secret, visit www.gfmeals.com.

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