(EDITOR'S NOTE: The following was submitted by Franci Richardson.)

After decades of cooking at home and professionally, Matthew and Sarah Kline have created a gourmet, all-natural answer for food lovers and time-crunched parents facing the nightly question of “What’s for dinner?” Their answer is Blackbird Savory Pies of Acton.

Using Matthew’s own authentic, gourmet recipes and an unwavering generational commitment to quality, Blackbird Savory Pies are that rare bird in the supermarket – a healthy, frozen entrée full of taste.

“Our pies taste like they were freshly prepared in the kitchen, not like frozen food,’’ said Matthew, an Acton resident.

Blackbird Savory Pies currently come in five delicious all-natural flavors: Carolina-Style BBQ Pork Pie, Indian Ratatouille Pie (gluten-free/vegetarian) Italian-Style Chicken Pasta Pie, New England-Style Chicken Pie, and Venezuelan-Style Chicken Pie (gluten -free). More varieties are being created by the Klines and will be appearing in supermarket freezers the near future.

“We’re going beyond the typical macaroni and cheese or traditional chicken pot pie,’’ said Matthew.

The Klines carefully select the best spices, meats, and vegetables for their pies and then create the entrée by preparing the food separately in stages in order to preserve the integrity, texture and flavor of the ingredients.

“We use component manufacturing,’’ said Sarah, a Cambridge resident. “The meat, the filling and sauce are all cooked separately. Not everything is just thrown into a pot.’’

More pie varies are being created by the Klines and will be appearing in supermarket and speciality store freezers in the future. Blackbird Savory Pies are now available in markets from the city out to Metro West and up North, including The Meat House in Brookline, Concord Provisions, Brookline Fine Wine and Gourmet, many of the Donelan’s Supermarkets, the West Concord Supermarket, Cucurbit Farm in Acton, and Pemberton Farms in Cambridge and Butcher Boy Market in North Andover. Savory Pies soon will also be in four Roche Bros. locations.

For the Klines, Blackbird symbolizes who they are: from a family of self-made people who had a love and interest in food from all over the world. Their mother was a librarian who founded and built an educational publishing company. Their father was an engineer who started his own electronics company. Yet both parents shared a love of food and made sure to enjoy it with their family.

Their mom whipped up gourmet meals at their Concord home. There were nightly trips into Boston to eat at the restaurants in Chinatown and the North End. And family vacations were often spent exploring different regions, visiting restaurants, and chatting with those chefs about what made their food taste so good.

“This is a natural outgrowth of who we are and where we came from,” said Matthew, who has been the chef for gourmet dinner parties at his home for decades. “We lived and breathed food in our family. At every meal we talked about the next meal, the ingredients we wanted to buy, the fresher the better.’’

Sarah has an MBA from Simmons School of Management and extensive experience in marketing, sales, and operations in both high-tech and the food industry, and has worked at the Boston Public Market Association and Whole Foods Market. She has served on various boards of local food companies. 

Matthew is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the founder of Kline and Company, a continuous quality improvement multimedia training business. He has cooked professionally at Chris Schlesinger’s East Coast Grill and other restaurants.