Supermarkets up the ante on prepared foods

No time to cook? What if you could go to one place to pick up some Jamaican jerk chicken and coconut rice, chicken tikka masala and samosas, or if you're looking for something lighter, a roasted beet, apple, walnut and watercress salad?

What sounds like the choices at a gourmet food shop are actually the recent hot bar and salad bar selections from two local grocery chains — Whole Foods and Fairway.

The supermarket prepared food industry — worth $19.5 billion in 2012 — has seen a spike in recent years, as time-crunched customers are opting for lower-cost but healthy meals. The cost of prepared meals "are not on par with fast food and family restaurant options, they beat them — making them accessible to a wide range of household incomes," according to Packaged Facts, a research company. And while a range of take-home-and-heat choices has long been available behind the deli case or packaged to grab and go at most supermarkets, self-service hot bars, with food sold by the pound, are on the riseFor busy moms like Clifton's Jenny Ayala, picking up dinner at Fairway's hot bar is the next best thing to cooking for her family of four. "It's healthy and the food is fresh. I come here on the days I don't feel like cooking," said Ayala, who works at the Passaic County Prosecutor's Office. The self-serve buffet allows her flexibility to pick a variety of dishes and the exact portion her family will eat that night. Her Puerto Rican husband prefers rice and beef dishes, while one daughter likes the Indian curries. When bringing the takeout home, she always serves it to the family on dinnerware, she says.

"Prepared foods are the future," said Joe Gozzi, director of food service for ShopRite. "It's been growing double digits for us. Customers are not coming to our store for only ingredients. We offer options, so customers can feel like they've had a home-cooked meal."

In addition, supermarkets are moving beyond the usual rotisserie chicken and macaroni and cheese takeout, by adding well-known ethnic dishes such as shawarma, pad thai, doro wat (an Ethiopian chicken stew) and spicy chicken korma. Both Fairway and Whole Foods have monthly themes for their steam table offerings.

"Hot bars are not just for the lunch trade anymore," said Joe Spinelli, president of Restaurant Consultants. "Those gourmet products are more for the dinner crowd than the lunch crowd. … They've elevated the product. It's not just meat and potatoes."

Emphasizing that that their hot-bar offerings are fresh and high-quality. Fairway, ShopRite and Whole Foods all boast a team of chefs cooking on site to prepare the steam table offerings daily, using the same ingredients their customers can buy to cook at home.

"All foods match the quality standards of the store, with antibiotic-free meat and produce and sustainably caught seafood," said Whole Foods spokesman Michael Sinatra.

Whole Foods has a healthy eating program, Health Starts Here, that includes a prepared food bar dedicated exclusively to low-salt, oil-free, seasonal vegetable, grain and legume options. People making the transition to less meat-centered meals can sample inventive dishes such as edamame and mango salad, red cabbage and pecan salad and Southwest sweet and sour cabbage salad.

As someone who suffers from lupus, Ayala has to restrict her diet to low-salt and low-fat foods. Fairway's hot bar always has fish and steamed vegetables that she can eat. On a recent afternoon, she juggled a few grocery items in her arms — soy milk, rice noodles, and household cleaner — as she filled a tray with steamed string beans with sliced almonds. "It's less salty than a food court, and better prices than a restaurant. I come here and get my shopping done at the same time."

One-stop shopping seems to be the direction in which supermarkets are heading, even when it comes to dining. You can grab a loaf of fresh bread and a to-go container of your favorite hot-bar items, probably for less than you'd spend at a local restaurant. At Whole Foods in Paramus and Fairway in Woodland Park, you can pick up a bottle of wine, too.

"It's like going to a Costco. You can get about everything you want," says consultant Spinelli. "You can probably get your car fixed one day."