Confused. Filling a jar with beans and water, and dumping/refilling every so often is "a huge amount of labour"? Compared to what? Sitting and watching TV?

This is a tiny, tiny effort compared to almost anything - running, riding a bike, vacuuming the carpet. Heck its about the same as ordering takeout delivered and going to the door to get it.

> There is too much waste, inefficiency, and cost associated with current restaurants for them to fulfill that purpose.

Why would 'communal kitchens' be more efficient?

There are markets in Maharasthra where sprouts are sold on an everyday basis. Some Chinese stores have it too. Regarding making these at home: Granted there is a lot of wait time with these processes, but a lot of it is inactive - soak, rinse, wait, repeat.

But, it is a fair point that you should have these healthy foods available to you easily without having to worry about preparing it yourself.

Waste? I eat pretty much everything my wife cooks and she's getting better by the year.

Home cooking is amazing.

I didn't even say a thing about plastic utensils...

> This is just a huge amount of labour, and it proves that home cooking is fundamentally inefficient

It doesn't seem all that more laborious than, say, keeping a sourdough starter? (Or at one of the other ends of the food prep process, a compost bucket).