In the Kitchen

For the past twenty years, Melissa Wieczorek and Theo Petron have enjoyed giving clients the gift of time as co-owners of Zest Culinary Services, a personal chef service and boutique caterer based in Buckingham. “Think about the value of your time,” Wieczorek says. “How much time does it take to get a meal on the table, factoring in the time shopping, the time planning, the time cooking and cleaning?”

Both Wieczorek and Petron earned degrees in marketing before feeling pulled to the world of food. Their culinary skills were honed working in restaurants: Petron was a chef and Wieczorek supported herself in college as a server. After meeting at a professional networking event, they decided to collaborate. Petron, who owned a personal chef service in Minneapolis-St. Paul, relocated to Newtown to join Wieczorek, owner of A La Maison Personal Chef Service. They rebranded as Zest in 2009.

Today, Zest prepares meals for between fifteen to twenty customers each week with the help of two employees in a commercial kitchen in the Point Pleasant, Pennsylvania, firehouse. “Most of our clients are couples with young children,” Wieczorek says, “or empty nesters that have cooked for their families all these years and are ready to give it up.”

Wieczorek and Petron take a divide-and-conquer approach. Wieczorek manages the business side. (She also is an adjunct professor of marketing of agricultural products and small business management at Delaware Valley University.) Petron, the executive chef, oversees the kitchen operations, developing menus and going on site for private dinner parties.

“It’s not like in the restaurant world, where you have a fixed menu of dishes,” he explains. “Every week we’re shopping for new ingredients, coming up with new recipes that my staff needs to get familiar with, and customizing dishes for customers with particular needs.” Zest’s meals come prepared to eat: Customers just heat them in the oven or the microwave.

For two years, Ceile and Anders Hedberg used Zest meal delivery for their adult daughter with special needs. “They routinely deliver to her door nutritious meals based on her special dietary needs and her food preferences,” Ceile says. “They’ve really gone above and beyond. They did a survey with her to make sure they hit all the right notes, and she’s been absolutely delighted with every meal.”

All new clients receive the onboarding questionnaire to help the culinary team learn their tastes, preferences, and lifestyles. They make a conscious effort to create seasonal menus, which change weekly. They use fresh vegetables year-round; the spring features lighter cuisine with seasonal vegetables. Sample dishes include seared scallops with a spring pea purée and yogurt-marinated chicken with sweet potatoes, mushrooms, and asparagus.

A dish doesn’t have to be fancy to be a client favorite. “Simple things like a grilled piece of fish are always a huge hit with clients,” Wieczorek explains. “It’s something that they probably wouldn’t make for themselves, either for fear of overcooking an expensive piece of fish or for lack of accessibility.”

Petron designs dishes to be healthful and fresh for customers. They often source their produce from local farms, among them Blue Moon Acres, in Buckingham, and CoCo’s Local, in Doylestown. They also work with purveyors that prioritize local goods, cutting down on the food miles that go into every dish. “What we heard over and over again about the larger meal prep companies is that the quality and consistency just wasn’t there,” Petron says. “That’s important to them, and that’s important to us. We take pride in our food.”

The community connection is what makes the River Towns an ideal location to run a business, Wieczorek says. “People tend to put down roots here,” she says. “When they find a business they like, they stick to it, and they tell their friends. We have people that have let us into their kitchens for the last fifteen years.”

In addition to their prepared meal delivery and catering, Zest recently launched Club 41, a new private dining membership program that brings members to their commercial kitchen for monthly interactive dining experiences. “This is another opportunity for us to showcase our cuisine in a totally different way and bring people together for a meal,” Wieczorek says.

After watching their daughter enjoy Zest meals, the Hedbergs became founding members of Club 41. “We are eagerly looking forward to attending those meals,” Ceile Hedberg says, “and trying whatever they whip up next.”