Modern Family Meals

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Sandy Pike was in the right place at the right time when she left Louisville for the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1960s. There, she worked in the food and beverage industry and saw the increase in demand for fresh and healthy meals. When she moved back to her hometown years later, she brought her expertise with her and introduced her wholesome cuisine to Louisville diners.

“The food in San Francisco was spectacular,” she said. “When I came back to Louisville, I watched the food scene evolve from rich Southern food, to clean, fresh foods, to now, when no one cooks.”

Sandy opened the legendary Jack Fry’s in Louisville, sold the restaurant in the late 1980s, and then opened Café Society, a swanky eatery in NuLu. It was there that she realized she had a flair for desserts, which sold out most days. She dove into her next food adventure, Queen of Tarts, a gourmet coffee shop serving decadent desserts by the slice.

By 2005, Sandy had sold Queen of Tarts but was unsure what direction she would go next. At the same time, her sister was diagnosed with diabetes and was struggling to eat properly for her condition. Sandy began whipping up flavorful, diabetes-friendly meals and dropping them off for her sister to reheat. She realized that others in her sister’s situation struggled to prepare meals and balance the ingredients, and this prompted her to open Home Cuisine, a fresh-homemade-meal delivery service.

“Even though we have been around for almost 20 years, it was hard to teach people what we are all about,” she said. “We pride ourselves on clean food with no preservatives and cook it how you would like it.”

The menus started out as diabetes-friendly classic meals, but as new diets emerged, like keto and Paleo, the offerings evolved, too.

Now, Sandy, 73, works alongside her daughter, Mae Pike, 46, who also has spent most of her career in the food and beverage industry.

With a reliable stream of clients in Jefferson County, and with planning in the early stages to expand into the Lexington area, the business currently has eight employees at its St. Matthews commissary.

Sandy found that many doctors referred their patients to Home Cuisine to help them stick to a specific diet or for other health reasons. One of those physicians became a steady customer himself. Dr. Mark Barrett of Prospect has been a customer for the past 18 months. His wife has an illness that requires a Paleo diet, and he has a stressful job.

“I’ll admit that I’m a good doctor, but I’m horrible in the kitchen,” he said.

Barrett raves about the food, particularly the corned beef and cabbage, shepherd’s pie, and a fish stew that he said he would eat every day. The couple subscribes to two different diets, and they receive one meal a day, delivered to their doorstep twice a week.

Barrett said the last thing he wants to do at the end of the day is prepare a meal. “This is about the easiest way for a lazy person to eat healthy as you can get,” he said.

Mae said that, although Home Cuisine started out as a way to help people with diabetes—which it still does—the business now finds most of its customers simply want a chef-prepared meal delivered to their door.

“In the early days, people were buying frozen meals like Healthy Choice because that was all that was available,” she said. “But we are able to offer the exact meal plan that people are looking for. If you are on keto but your family is not, how hard is that?”

She said another advantage of this service is that it is cost effective and easy. She explained that it can get expensive for people on special diets to keep so many ingredients on hand and, since Home Cuisine’s meals are simply reheated, there are no pots to scrub.

Home Cuisine provides home delivery to about one-third of its customers. The rest of the customers pick up their orders at the Prospect Party Mart or Rainbow Blossom Natural Food Market, which has multiple locations in Jefferson County. Customers submit their plan to Home Cuisine, and they get a time and date that their meals will be available at those locations.

“People love our meatloaf, but once they have it, they won’t see it again for about six weeks,” Mae said. “We have a lot of variety in our menus.”

Customers do not get to order specific dishes, as they would at a restaurant. Everyone on the same plan gets the same meals, but customers can request that certain ingredients be omitted. Home Cuisine’s meals do not contain white flour or sugar, and organic products are used whenever possible. Sandy explained that they cook with the seasons, shopping at local farmers markets, sourcing beef locally, and buying hydroponic lettuce that is grown just a few miles away.

Sandy said there are similar companies out there, but those businesses ship their meals in and use frozen vegetables. “Why would you do that?” she asked.

In the early years, the mother-daughter duo realized that people thought it was a luxury to have prepared food delivered to your house, but the world has caught up. Home Cuisine offers meal plans with limited calorie-per-day options and category selections of classic cuisine, keto, Paleo and a vegetarian menu that Mae said is so popular, it has almost a cult following. The meals can be ordered a few at a time or up to three meals a day, seven days a week.

“We are 100 percent the real deal—family-owned and -operated—serving up good local food,” Mae said. “We do what we say we are doing.”

That sentiment rings true for Jon Lee Cope, who has been a customer for about five years. He usually follows the classic menu but, over the years, has switched his meal plan around, depending on changing health goals.

“They believe the food you eat can heal your body,” he said. “So they keep me in check and make me eat right.”

Cope, a successful acting coach, was born in Harlan County but now lives in the Butchertown area of Louisville. He considers using Home Cuisine to be a quality-of-life issue rather than an extravagance, as he would prefer to do things other than planning and cooking meals.

“I’m from eastern Kentucky. If you can’t put it on a biscuit, I don’t make it,” he says. “But these meals allow me to have something I would never make myself.”

One of his favorite recent meals was Immune Boosting Super Food Soup. “Not only was it smackingly good, I felt so good after I ate it,” Cope said. “But really, in all this time, I’ve never had anything bad.”

Sandy and Mae will continue to meet the needs of their current customers, and both have ideas for ways to expand. One thing will remain constant: their commitment to bringing delicious, high-quality meals to as many as they can.

“If my grandma didn’t recognize it as food as a child, we don’t serve it,” Mae said. “No weirdo processed food here.” 

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