Where did these places come from?

I assume this trend is occurring everywhere, but in the last four months my area has seen an explosion of "Dinner Solutions" joints.  The gimmick for these places is that you pick 12 dinners from a menu (which changes monthly), go to their location, and move through 12 stations in which they have set up everything you need to make the dinner.  You combine the ingredients there, then take the meals home, stick 'em in your freezer, and have a freezer full of ready-to-cook meals all set for the next two weeks.

As someone who *never* cooks, this idea has had a lot of appeal, and I finally went to one shortly before Christmas.  At first, I was a little leary of the results.  There was more work required than I expected to get the food from the freezer to the table, and the recipes weren't quite as customizable as I'd been lead to believe.  (They advertise that you can tweak the recipes if there are certain seasonings or ingredients that you don't like, but half the meals had pre-made elements like sauces that you had no control over, and for a few they had the whole meal pre-made and just handed to you when you got there.

My gripes not withstanding, I've made two meals now, and I am *such* a believer.  They've been *delicious*.  Like restaurant meals... interesting and flavorful and *SO* much better than the crappy food I make myself. :)

And the best part is that the servings are perfect.  I paid $109.00 for the "Half-Portion" option.  It got me 12 meals that serve 2-3 people.  Since I'm single, this is just right for me.  I cook one meal, have half of it the first night and save the rest for later in the week.  No mammoth portions left over or ingredients left to rot because I only used one scoop of something.  $109.00 for 24 dinners =  $4.55 per dinner...  not bad at all. :)    When you consider time saved and the fun of having different menus available to you every month, this is my favorite consumer fad ever.  :)