ASC offers gourmet meals at your door

A name like All Service Corporation demands a lot of effort to match the massive moniker.

But counting an online gourmet food store, an emergency delivery service for restaurants and shipping and delivery for a nationwide distribution business, a more moderate title might not indicate the wide range of services offered by the Wilmington-based company.

Its president, Braeden Redfearn, started ASC nearly 10 years ago. “We do a number of different things, but mainly, we provide people with restaurant-quality food, food you can’t find in grocery stores but cook for yourself,” Redfearn said. “We have stuffed flounder with crab imperial, salmon stuffed with spinach and cheese, chicken cordon bleu, every kind of steak you can imagine, fish from all over the world,” he said.

Online, ASC is the business behind “Gourmet Gobblies,” which ships steaks, seafood and other restaurant-quality fare, from stuffed shrimp to cheesecakes, nationwide.

Kennett Square, Pa., resident Harry Schiavi is one of the regular regional customers for Redfearn’s food delivery service. He said he often buys steaks and other ready-to-heat meals.

“He comes right to my house with his truck and tells me what is new, and what he’s got. And when it gets low, he comes by and stocks up my freezer,” Schiavi said. “He’s got some great steaks.”

As a busy professional, Schiavi said in the past, he’s used other home-delivery food services to avoid trips to the grocery store, but with mixed results. Often, he can’t rely on the quality and freshness of his meals, he said, but that has never been the case with ASC.

“Typically, I order for me and my family. At night, we will decide what we want, defrost it and cook for the whole family,” he said.  “It’s pretty convenient. We don’t have time to go to the store all the time, and if you have a stand-up freezer, it is pretty easy to pick out what you want and cook it that night.”

This is the online end of the business, priced for nationwide, next-day delivery, Redfearn said. However, with ASC’s fleet of vehicles regularly making deliveries statewide, he encouraged regional customers to call his toll-free number for local, often discounted pricing.

“In the summertime we have trucks throughout the whole state, but there is a minimum if we don’t have trucks in the area,” he said. “But we are downstate almost half the week every single week from end of April to beginning of November.”

While “Gourmet Gobblies” is thriving, ASC also offers other services. As Redfearn was virtually brought up in hospitality and restaurants – at one time, his father owned the long-standing rock-n-roll bar in Dewey Beach – he said he knows a lot about the business and has created his own business to support the industry and deliver restaurant quality foods for home preparation.

As a result, another big aspect of his business is an offshoot he calls the “Restaurant Emergency Service,” a business available at all hours with provisions such as ice or a case of filet mignon when ordering falls short on a busy weekend.

Though he’s not a primary food distributor for any restaurants, Redfearn said most establishments in New Castle County know about the emergency service, and he does big business supplying ice when in-house ice machines can’t keep up.

“Sometimes I have to call for an emergency delivery,” said Curt Bucz, owner of Aqua Sol restaurant in Bear. “It could be 7 at night, and I would have ice by 7:30. I keep using them because they are reliable. I know I can count on them when I need them.”

For more information on any of their services, go to www.meatandseafood.com or call 302-656-BUYY (2899), toll-free 866-ENTREES (368-7377).