What to expect at Good Eats Kitchen, the newest Baton Rouge meal prep shop

In today’s fast-paced world, consumers have begun to rely on the convenience and efficiency of “meal prepping”—organizing a full week’s worth of meals all at once. Although it’s undoubtedly a time saver, it still usually requires a full day of cooking and, invariably, a sink full of dirty dishes.

To eliminate the less glamorous aspects of the practice, shops offering healthy, ready-to-eat meals that require minimal prep at home have been popping up all across the country. Good Eats Kitchen is the newest such shop to enter the Red Stick.

Good Eats got its start in Lafayette in 2016 when classically trained chef Boyer Derise began preparing meals for his sister in exchange for her babysitting services. What began in the family would soon evolve into a full-blown business.

“Within a couple of months, I had a client list of 60 or 70 people,” Derise says. “We were making 300 to 400 meals per weekend out of my house. It was apparent that Lafayette had a need for something like what we were doing.”

Derise left his job to capitalize on the demand, opening his first brick-and-mortar in Lafayette in 2017 offering both deliveries and in-store pickups. Now, Good Eats Kitchen is taking on Baton Rouge, with one shop open on Perkins Road and two more coming soon as a result of its recent acquisition of Fresh Kitchen.

Across all locations and online, the business has roughly 40 menu offerings up for grabs, including breakfasts and entrées. While its most popular meals are constants, you can also expect its menu to change with the seasons.

According to Derise, the kitchen’s most in-demand dish at the moment is its Green Chili Chicken Enchiladas made with braised chicken thighs and topped with a homemade tomatillo sauce, aged cheddar and an avocado crema. Check out its full menu here.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a meal prep service without package deals—online, you can place orders for three-day meal packs (nine total meals) or five-day meal packs (15 total meals). You can choose to have the packs delivered, or to pick them up at one of the physical locations.

Alternatively, if you’d like to sample some of Good Eats’ offerings before committing to a week-long regimen, you can stop by one of the brick-and-mortars to shop individual meals.

Looking forward, Derise has big plans for the business.

“I’m a bit of a dreamer,” he says. “We have some pretty lofty goals. We’re in the process of designing our next production facility in Lafayette and we’re actively looking for a location in the Lake Charles market. Within the next three years, we’ll have a pretty massive, state-of-the-art facility and three or four more stores.”

For now, you can check out Good Eats Kitchen online or at its first Baton Rouge location at 7673 Perkins Road, open Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Expect to see Fresh Kitchen’s two locations (Corporate Boulevard and Willow Grove) fully transition into Good Eats Kitchen shops come March.