Cuisine Solutions Inc. / FZN

About Cuisine Solutions Inc.

85 S. Bragg St., Suite 600, Alexandria, Va. 22312
www.cuisinesolutions.com | 703-270-2900 | Founded: 1972

Industry: Manufacturing | Category: Top 100 Companies

The company's sous vide method of food preparation has been one of the hottest trends among chefs (including local restaurateurs Michel Richard of Citronelle and Eric Ziebold of CityZen), which has contributed to Cuisine Solutions' banner year. Roughly translated from French as "under vacuum," sous vide involves cooking dishes such as osso buco, chicken with herbes de Provence and Chilean sea bass in airtight plastic bags. The packets are then flash frozen in a nitrogen freezer. Customers reheat them by dropping them into simmering water.
The company has begun aggressively marketing its products to retail food stores including Costco Wholesale Corp. and Wegmans Food Markets Inc.
In February of last year, Cuisine Solutions began trading on the American Stock Exchange.
A few days before Christmas, the stock hit $11.22 a share; the company had begun the year at a share price of $3.90. That's quite a change from 1998, when the company was delisted from the Nasdaq because its share price was too low.
For fiscal 2005, which ended June 25, the company reported a profit of $1.7 million, compared with a loss of $1 million in fiscal 2004.
In the last three months of 2005, the company's fiscal second quarter, revenue increased 50 percent over the comparable quarter a year earlier. A big reason was the war in Iraq. Sales to the military rose 254 percent in that quarter, the company said.
Last year, Cuisine Solutions switched its accounting firm from Grant Thorton LLP to BDO Seidman LLP.

2007 Financial Data

Total employees: 263 | Local employees: 195