A dream dinner may bring to mind a free steak for some people. Dream Dinners is also a quickly rising food franchise business. It’s all about people cooking under supervision according to planned menus. Yes, you’re probably saying “why didn’t I come up with that one”?

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 . Sure there are many quality frozen and ready made foods, but somehow it’s never the same as a good home cooked meal. 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.

This is how it functions. Patrons go in and select some or all of 14 meals from a menu. They then pay for the number of servings desired. Now while still at the store, they cook. There are both private and public supervised creative 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. Although salads and side dishes are separate, the main course is only about $3.50 per serving for all 14 meals. This can bring the cost per serving for a complete meal up to around the $5 mark, but for a busy working family it’s not bad. For food, menu planning, and hands-on meal preparation training and supervision, that’s a steal.

These locations are franchises people own. 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. Franchisees flocked to this brand new idea. But it seems the business plan wasn’t strong, as many of these people found themselves unable to continue the business after a short time and a lot of investment. The article detailed what was described as misrepresentations of the profit possible, and thus the overall valuation of franchises.

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.

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