PORTLAND – Somewhere amid the sweet pea salad with blue cheese and spicy beef wraps at the grocery deli counter, Natalya Toker found her lunch.

Toker said she prefers eating homemade food. But like many Americans, when she does choose to eat out, she is heading more often to the grocery store.

“I want to choose something healthier,” the 21-year old said at a Portland Fred Meyer store.

Grocery stores say they’ve seen the popularity of their prepared foods grow as consumers try to save time, money and sometimes calories. And the economic downturn has helped boost the trend as folks trade down from restaurants to dinner at home. So grocers are boosting the selections in response to people’s growing appetite for prepared foods.

“When they are trying to return to more meals at home, they don’t want to start from scratch like we would a generation or two ago,” said Tim Hammonds, president and CEO at the Food Marketing Institute, an industry trade group. “That’s why the prepared foods are so popular.”

They come in ready-to-eat form – including rotisserie chicken, mashed potatoes or sandwiches. Or there are ready-to-heat styles such as stuffed salmon, lasagna or meatloaf that just need to hit the stove or the microwave.

“It is definitely a growing market,” said Angela Rihacek, executive product development chef for Metropolitan Market, based in Seattle.

“We’re seeing more people come in for home-meal replacement,” she said Friday. “I think people are moving away from restaurants.”

“It is a growth area,” said Brad Halverson, Metropolitan marketing vice president. “We have heard from customers that they are time-pressed, they have places to go, they want us to close that gap and they want to eat well. They want options.”

“The trend has been toward comfort food, and meal deals,” said Cheryl-Ann Jones, director of food service at Bellingham-based Haggen, parent of Top Food and Drug.

“We’ve always done a good job with comfort foods,” she said. “It just seems to be more so recently. I think it’s a trend of people relying on us to cook for them.”

Haggen is testing a meal combination in Bellingham, offering a protein and two sides – say, a meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and string beans – and may introduce the concept in Olympia.

Last week, Supervalu Inc. introduced a line of more than 150 items that aim to rival restaurant-quality food such as pork carnitas enchilada casserole and pineapple upside-down cake.

Cincinnati-based Kroger Co., which owns the Fred Meyer chain, has long offered prepared foods at its stores. It recently expanded its options to include items such as lobster bisque, baked ziti and dinner packages that feed a family of four for $10.

Melinda Merrill, director of public affairs at Fred Meyer, said Friday that her company’s stores have seen “strong growth in our prepared foods, or home-replacement meals.” The grocer recently added Asian prepared foods in delis, and has lately been successful with items including fettuccine and macaroni and cheese.

“We also have had success with bento combinations, and we’ll be rolling out fuller meals soon,” Merrill said.

Prepared food, she said, “is definitely one of the strongest growth categories in the service deli area.”

Whole Foods Market Inc. said its best-sellers in some stores include macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes. The company has recently added a “family-size savings” program that allows shoppers to get a discount when they buy two or more pounds of some prepared foods.

“They can basically pick up dinner in one stop,” said Whole Foods spokeswoman Libba Letton.

About 28 percent of shoppers do not know what they are having just two hours before the meal, according to the Food Marketing Institute, making the meal a great opportunity for grocers.

“I would think almost everybody is going to have their stores outfitted with a full-blown foods offering because they have to, or folks will go down the street,” said Jack Horst, a grocery specialist and principal at retail consulting firm Kurt Salmon Associates.

He said it’s part of the trend of grocery stores expanding their offerings, trying to draw shoppers in with Web sites, recipes, cooking classes and other options beyond the traditional supermarket fare.

Hammonds said it’s a change that isn’t likely to end when the economy improves. “We are seeing the economic downturn speed up a transition that is tune with their lifestyles,” he said.

News Tribune staff writer C.R. Roberts contributed to this report.