Dream Dinners 

A dream dinner may bring to mind a free steak for some people. Dream Dinners is also a quickly rising food franchise business.

It involves locations where people can go to cook according to menus, then take the food home to serve throughout the month. It's one of those ideas that has people slapping their foreheads while exclaiming “why didn't I think of that”?

People are very busy today. Work and school and a variety of other activities for family members mean it's harder than ever to eat well . Even the terrific pre-made food available today in stores isn't quite the same as home cooking. But when the typical day involves so much, who has time to cook, much less time to plan a menu or learn how to make the items on it? This franchise lives in that space.

It works something like this. People visit the location and then choose up to all 14 items on a provided menu. Food is then purchased by serving. Then the consumers cook the meals, at the store. There are both private and public supervised cooking sessions. This is a lot like a chef at a restaurant coming out to direct the diners in preparing the food.

It sounds a lot more expensive that it really is. The more people buy the more they save, so all 14 meals are about $3.50 per serving not counting sides and other items like salads. A total of about $5 per serving isn't a bad price to pay for a good meal. For food, menu planning, and hands-on meal preparation training and supervision, that's a steal.

Remember, these are franchises. There has been some tension. The food and menus are fine, but the franchise owners may have a problem. Forbes Magazine profiled Dream Dinners in March 2008. The story made the corporation look pretty bad. It expanded very quickly, attracting entrepreneurs with its unique concept. But many of the franchisees lost their shirts after only a short time, which meant the business plan may be flawed. There may have been some misrepresentations made as to potential profits.

That's something for the company to handle. For patrons, it's fun to handle the cooking chores while working off of a wonderful menu.