Figuring out what to make for dinner, taking the time to grocery shop, and spending an hour in the kitchen is more of a burden than a pleasure for most people. My Dinner Tonite provides customers with pre-made home cooked meals for the busiest days of your week. All that is required of you is to heat them in the oven and savor every bite.

Toni Lesak, owner of My Dinner Tonite, talks about her passion for cooking that led her to create the business. Since she was 10years old, Toni has been cooking for a full-sized family. “I grew up on a pig farm,” she says. “My dad had four daughters, and we had to work in the barn all summer long. Anybody who cooked lunch or dinner got to go in first.”

While cooking provided a way out of farm work, Toni quickly fell in love with the creativity she expressed in the kitchen. As a student, she earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Food Science from the University of Illinois before getting her culinary degree at The Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley.

Following her education, Toni took a position with the University of Connecticut in their student union where she cooked for thousands of students. She attributes her time there to learning how to cook large quantities of food.

After this, Toni worked at Ken’s Dressings. “I was a food scientist for [them] and I wrote those dressing recipes,” Toni says of her time there. She tested recipes for well-known establishments that were later showcased on their menus. Once, Toni recalls, “I made a jalapeño pepper glaze at my house because I had peppers in my garden. Then I made it in the food scientist lab and our corporate chef demonstrated it on Golden Corral’s Mahi Mahi.”

The jalapeño pepper glaze paired well with the dish, and executives at Golden Corral elected to use it as their dressing. Toni describes the sheer thrill at seeing her homemade dressing in a successful chain restaurant. “It’s fun to see something you make go nationwide.”

Around then, Toni’s husband left his part-time position with the National Guard for a full-time posting in the Air Force which brought their family to Georgia. Because of the move, Toni left her job with Ken’s Dressing and became a stay-at-home mom before teaching culinary classes at Helms College part-time.

Toni admits she missed her work as a food scientist. “I was[teaching]but the whole time I felt like there was something more useful. I was trying to figure out how to balance having a family with this four-year degree.”

Between her five children’s baseball and softball practices, track meets, and youth bowling league games, she struggled to find the time to cook dinner every night. Toni began asking herself, “If I went to school for this and it’s still a struggle, how does the rest of the world even start dinner every night?”

Determined to provide busy families an easy dinner option, she came up with My Dinner Tonite. In 2018, Toni tested this business plan. “I did one batch out of my home and I gave it away for free to my kid’s teachers,” she says. “Along with their three meals, I gave them a survey.” Toni asked questions to gauge how their families enjoyed the meals, if the quantity was enough to feed them, and how much they would be willing to pay for the product.

From the beginning, people highly favored these meals. “I had overwhelming feedback that they thought there was a ton of money’s worth of food, a large grocery value, and it saved them a lot of time,” Toni says.

Encouraged by these responses, Toni decided to get her business plan off the ground. A professional culinarian, she knew the right way to conduct this business was in a certified kitchen. Because of this, she sought a sublease from other community businesses. “I went into every bar, coffee shop, and café in town and I was like, ‘Hey, are you using your kitchen? Would you sublease it?’”

Soon, Toni found a cupcake store that was only utilizing their kitchen on weekday mornings. “I subleased their kitchen in the afternoons and all day Sunday and Saturday,” she says. “I did that until I figured out if this concept was doable.”

Toni is thankful for the comradery of business owners in the local area. The cupcake store owner’s willingness to share their space was crucial in setting the foundation for a successful business. She now operates out of her very own location.

Since becoming fully operational, Toni has seen exponential growth in My Dinner Tonite.“This week we’re making 250-300 family-sized dinners that all serve six people,” she says. “It’s like every week we’re catering a

4,000-person wedding. It’s almost harder because we cool it and then we lid it and plate it nicely and put directions on each container.”

At this capacity, Toni needs extra helping hands. She keeps two employees on staff that work just under full-time hours. To provide opportunities for the youth, she employees high school students to help with lidding, labeling, and cleanup.

Cooking such a large quantity of food every week requires methodical planning. Toni shares her method of operation, which includes prepping all freezer meals early in the week. “We chop all our vegetables and make sauces or sandwich breads on the finished product so when we’re ready to cook Sunday we spend all day cooking.” This system runs like a well-oiled machine, and Toni is delighted to have found a rhythm that works for her.

With all the ease of new inventions, Toni expresses wonder that people still cook daily meals. “Starting from scratch in the kitchen can be time consuming,” she marvels. If making family-sized meals is not your passion, leave it to the pros. My Dinner Tonite exists so you can go back to doing what you love.

Customers express great appreciation for the ease and deliciousness of My Dinner Tonite meals. One customer boasts to her peers that she has her own personal chef. The feedback has been extraordinary, and it shows in the rapid growth of orders. T

o give back to the community, Toni partnered with central Georgia outreach services in feeding homebound individuals during Covid-19. When the initiative ended, she refocused that time into making leaner, lowcarbfitnessmealsfor Max Fitness. These meals include macro labels for convenient macro tracking and can be preordered on mymacromeals.com.

“I couldn’t do the My Dinner Tonite without My Dinner Tonite,” Toni says ironically. While running the business and raising five children, she enjoys the feasibility of the homemade meals. Thanks to My Dinner Tonite, Toni only cooks at home once or twice a week. When she does, she admits, “A lot of the things I cook at home will end up onmy menu the following week.”

With their meals, you are feeding your family the very ingredients and recipes a professional chef makes for hers. Just heat it up, set the table, and dig in.