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A comment on The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets. Parent comment

Re:The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets by kgwgk on Sunday January 26, 2020 @02:39PM (#22154208)
> If you have a grocery store and you sell $100 of fruit, maybe $1 is profit. It makes sense to say you have a 1% return on investment.

Return on investment is something else. A grocery store will have sales well above the invested capital. The profit margin may be low-single-digit while ROI is double-digit.

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Re:The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets by brownbat on Sunday January 26, 2020 @03:37PM (#22154608)
Good catch, most sources and the link I included hold ROI as equivalent to ROA, and distinguish it from profit margin.

I was trying to shift to a lay voice in that bit and in the process totally misused one of the terms of art under discussion, was a bad oversight on my part.

I think my general explanation stands as to why we might want to shift between ROA/ROI and profit margin when comparing different industries though.

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