I gave my son-in-law a "earthworm habitat" one year for his birthday. They were living lakeside and love to fish so thought he'd have continuous bait. It worked really well. I got a huge plastic pot from a local nursery - a pot that a tree would come in. I then dug a hole and sunk the pot into the ground. Filled it with dirt, compost, bagged soil, a little bit of everything I could find. Added some oatmeal and a splash of water to keep it slightly moist. Then bought a bunch of bait earthworms and threw them in and topped it with a garbage can lid to keep them from escaping. They lived and he had a continuous supply of bait the entire summer. He would feed them with some oatmeal, veggie scraps, etc. occasionally and made sure it didn't totally dry out.I'm thinking about doing night crawlers as well. They are more a dirt based worm, and I'd have to research a bit more before I knew exactly how to care for them. The cool thing about the red worms is that they compost. You feed them kitchen scraps, veggies and fruit and all that stuff. You still get the casings from them, and they're high in protein for the chickens. You're right about the meal worms, even my husband refuses to touch them if I start a batch.
They moved from that house the end of the summer so not sure how the worms did over the winter. I'm sure there's a "real" way to raise them, I was just going on what I observed and it worked for the time he needed them.