Eating dinner together as a family improves physical and mental health, benefits academic success, and helps maintain emotional connections between parents and children.
Unfortunately, only 23% of Americans polled by market research company YouGov break bread together four-to-six times a week.
Josephine Giesen is on a mission to allow more families to enjoy more dinners together by alleviating the stress of meal planning, shopping, preparing, and cleaning after weeknight dinners with her company simply called À Table.
She was born in Lebanon, where she grew up surrounded by immediate and extended family members. Every evening, her mother would call her children to the table by saying, “Les enfants, à table,” meaning “kids, at the table.”
Her multi-generational family, marked by war but renewed by intention, spent evening meals together to catch up on their days and have genuine conversations around the table.
As an adult, Josephine, her husband Jonathan, and son CJ moved from Beirut to London, where she and her husband took two years of entrepreneurship programs, his for technology.
After the program, they realized London was not their forever home, and returning to Beirut wasn’t an option either. In 2017 they landed in the Park Cities, where Jonathan grew up.
Inspired by her memories of family dinners and armed with entrepreneurial knowledge, Josephine created À Table. The meal delivery service provides families with clean, fresh foods that allow busy families the convenience of an already-prepared high-quality meal. Five years later, À Table thrives, serving more than 250 wholesome family meals weekly.
Clients such as Michelle Kaihani are delighted by À Table. “I’ve used them for several years, and it’s been a game changer.”
À Table has weekly rotating menus of dishes that utilize the best seasonal ingredients available. Dishes consist of organic, locally sourced foods and are offered as individual entrees, family size, a la carte, soups/salads, and for catering.
Entrees such as Chicken Marsala with Orzo Rice Pilaf, Baked Salmon with Tomato Vinaigrette, and the top-selling Fettuccine Bolognese are prepared in a ghost kitchen in Garland where experienced chefs prepare, package, and organize meals for delivery.
À Table’s chefs have solid backgrounds in the culinary industry. Jenny Hajduk was the executive chef at Neiman Marcus. Carolanne Treadwell is a Culinary Institute of America graduate and a former employee of Michelin star restaurants in New York like Ai Fiori and wd~50. Bennet Brown was Bonton Farms’ sous chef and then the lead line cook at Sachet. À Table has an A Team.
Josephine, who just became an American citizen, has big plans. “I hope to see À Table expand to other neighborhoods. The goal is to remain a niche service for clientele that want the convenience of elevated chef-prepared, farm-to-table, organic meals delivered directly to their homes.
If it means more families dining together nightly, I hope everyone gets a seat at À Table.