“I think there is a crying need for our product.” With these words, Bill Pinkerson, the owner of Royal Palate Foods, encapsulates his company’s vision. Royal Palate, certified kosher by the OK, is the only vendor providing gourmet kosher packaged meals anywhere in the country — and taking orders exclusively over the Internet.

Royal Palate’s market: hotels; caterers; and kosher-conscious vacationers and business travelers who until now have had to settle for airline food, which is not known for its gourmet standards. Royal Palate began by servicing hotels for their kosher banquets. Then chefs started to request room-service meals for individuals. Today a consumer anywhere in the country (and, indeed, around the world) can order these microwavable gourmet meals, packed in “TV dinner” form.

Corporations now can provide topnotch kosher food for their guests. “Consider the Silicon Valley companies doing business with Israelis,” says Bill, “and the hardware manufacturers in rural Minnesota who have Orthodox distributors visiting their plant. We have many corporate clients in these categories.”

Why would a corporation extend itself for a kosher client? Says Bill: “Our service allows the traveler to spend all his time on the company’s business rather than spending eighty percent on business and twenty percent trying to figure out what to eat.”

The saved time is significant for vacationers as well, and even for harried housewives. “If you are rushed at home,” says Bill, “you can serve a terrific Royal Palate meal without investing time. And for people on vacation, our product opens up Hilton Head Island, Aruba, Nantucket, and thousands of other getaway spots, so they can enjoy themselves rather than scrounging together tuna sandwiches.”

Bill Pinkerson does not like to stand still. He has reinvented himself often, in search of the next challenge.

Bill’s first business love was not food. This Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate had previously cut a wide swath through corporate America. He spent productive years at Procter & Gamble, working in manufacturing, plant construction and startup, and advertising.

Later Bill moved from Procter & Gamble’s Cincinnati headquarters to California. There, bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, he founded a successful homeopathy company. He also began taking a greater interest in his religion. Bill had been raised a Reform Jew, but was now drawn to Orthodoxy, and is today a proud ba’al teshuvah. Bill eventually sold the homeopathy company and made yet another career change, consulting for Honda and Mazda. But his newfound religious routine began to conflict with his work.

Bill had previously invested in Beverly Hills Caterers, an upscale kosher caterer. The company was founded in 1985, and for the first six years of its existence catered sophisticated kosher events in the most exclusive hotels on the West Coast. He now took over the company.

A stumbling block to the company’s business model eventually emerged. “When the hotels saw that running a kosher affair was profitable, they decided to do it themselves,” he recalls. While the hotels wanted him to continue providing the food, they no longer wanted an outsider running their events.

In 1991, the company turned from catering to functioning as the outside commissary for kosher affairs. Now reconstructed as a vendor, the renamed Royal Palate Foods received the approval of the United States Department of Agriculture. The necessity to get U.S.D.A. approval paid off when hotels all over the U.S. got word of this kosher commissary with the upscale food. Royal Palate’s client base expanded across the country.

Hotels also began to order individual meals for their kosher clientele. The increasing demand led Bill and his chefs to create a gourmet menu. Today Royal Palate ships anywhere in the U.S., promising arrival within two days. (Orders sent in after noon Pacific time will arrive within three days.)

While Bill didn’t start in the food industry, he credits his past experience with preparing him for Royal Palate. “At Procter & Gamble, I learned that it is okay to believe you have a terrific product. I learned about quality control and cost control.

Homeopathy taught me how to bring a relatively obscure concept to a wider audience.

“I helped the auto makers secure floor space for their models. And so my collective experience taught me about manufacturing, planning, process control, new product introduction . . . all skills vital to the success of Royal Palate.”

Ordering from Royal Palate is done through its website, at www.koshermeal.com. By limiting ordering for individual consumers to the Internet, the company is able to supply meals at a very reasonable cost. (Hotels and caterers can order by phone.) For example, Boneless Beef Rib Eye Steak, with potatoes and green beans almondine, is a very palatable $16.50. And the Broiled Atlantic Salmon Steak, with parsley potatoes and honeyed carrots and raisins, checks it at a measly $10.95. Of course, shipping is extra.

Bill is pleased with the supervision provided by the OK Labs. He says, “The OK is absolutely straight with us. Either the item we want to use meets the OK’s standards, or it doesn’t; we don’t find equivocation. We may not always get the heter (lenient view) that we want, but we always know where we stand.”

Bill notes that the importance of this approach is critical in his industry. “We deal with hotels, suppliers, consultants, and vendors. The last thing they want is a surprise. The OK does not surprise us.”

Royal Palate’s elite kashrus standards include: chassidishe shechitah meat only, chalav Yisrael dairy products, bishul Yisrael cooked foods, and pas Yisrael breads. One can request a particular chassidishe shechitah. As at all OK-certified meat establishments, a mashgiach is always on the premises. He checks each product entering or leaving the commissary.

Royal Palate’s success is bound up with its insistence on top quality food. The executive chef, Rabbi Dovid Farber, acquired his culinary expertise by apprenticing with great chefs. And Royal Palate regularly sends its food to the famed Four Seasons hotel, where seasoned chefs do a blind test to make sure it tastes no different than the non-kosher food they make in their own kitchen. Says Bill Pinkerson, “The risk for a hotel in engaging a kosher caterer is that the food may not meet its standards. My sauce should taste like their sauce. And it does.”

The quality control at Royal Palate borders on the fanatic. The production process is monitored with great precision to assure that food arrives at its destination absolutely fresh. The consumer simply defrosts the food and microwaves it. The packages include directions for kosher microwaving.

You can see the entire Royal Palate menu on its website. There are breakfast selections, lunch and dinner entrees, snacks such as cocktail franks in barbecue sauce, and entire Shabbos meals. If you are traveling beyond the United States, Royal Palate still delivers. The company has shipped to Canada, South Korea, the Bahamas, and Australia, to name a few foreign destinations. What’s next for the fifty-six-years-young Bill Pinkerson? Jewish travelers hope that he has finally found his calling and settled in for the long haul at Royal Palate Foods.

Rebecca Kahn, a freelance writer, lives in New York.