To some folks a dream dinner might be any decent food they can get for free. Dream Dinners is also a clever food franchise that’s growing fast. It involves prepared menus and locations where people go to receive instruction in cooking them. A lot of people ask, why didn’t I think of that?

Americans are busier than ever before. Home cooked meals are becoming extinct . 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 comes to the rescue.

It works something like this. Patrons go in and select some or all of 14 meals from a menu. Food is then purchased by serving. Now while still at the store, they cook. Most creative cooking experts supervise in either private or public cooking sessions. This is a lot like a chef at a restaurant coming out to direct the diners in preparing the food.

It’s not as costly as it sounds. 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. The cost per serving with the sides is about $5. That’s a great deal for the food plus the cooking instruction.

Remember, these are franchises. It has its problems. The food and menus are fine, but the franchise owners may have a problem. Forbes Magazine profiled Dream Dinners in March 2008. The company didn’t look very good in the article. The new concept quickly gained popularity and attracted would be business owners. 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.