>roughly an order of magnitude cheaper to cook at home

Why should this be the case in principle though? Do economies of scale not apply to food preparation?

They do and companies already take advantage of them. But even a fast food restaurant has a ton of additional overhead that you won't have by cooking at home (or some you won't include in your price of your homecooked meal): rent, salaries, utilities, taxes, shrinkage, maintenance, etc. So even if they can get the ingredients cheaper they can't compete with you on some of these factors and must also include others like utilities in the cost of the finished product where you will generally ignore them when thinking about how much it costs to cook dinner.

In a lot of cases it's simple price fixing. If you want to be shocked, compare the prices of frozen potato products (like bagged hash browns and french fries) to the price of potatoes. There's like a 200% premium for simply cutting and flash freezing them. The machines have got to pay for themselves in an hour.

Does it make economic sense? Yes, when you know that there is a frozen potato cartel: https://www.potatopro.com/news/2024/alleged-potato-cartel-ac...

If you want to make your own frozen potato product like this you also need to parboil them. Otherwise the results are acceptable but underwhelming.

Once you factor in rent, then cooking at home is maybe not cheaper. Rent and mortgages is the black hole sucking all money from the restaurants. Not ingredients or wages.

On the other hand, how high is the marginal rent of a kitchen at home? It's usually included whether you use it or not - and some parts like the fridge would take up space even if you exclusively ate out.

If you compare the cost of renting a room in a house, and renting an apartment it is a little easier to figure out. Usually room rentals will charge extra for kitchen access or just ban it outright.

Yes, but then you have to account for tax, pay, shipping, wastage, theft, and (most importantly) rent on both kitchen and storefront.

The homeowner does not charge themselves rent for their own kitchen, nor for their time.

It's not the case in many other places in the world. The ratio of cost for cooking vs. eating out is uniquely high in the US.

It's not an iron law, it's downstream of a hundred things, like property prices due to restrictive zoning, baumal's cost disease driving up wages, onerous regulation on food service, and a populace that seems to have collectively given up on seeking the best value for dollar.

Generally speaking the problem is rent. Restaurants are paying massive amounts of money to banks, property taxes, and real estate investors.

I can make about 2000 calories for about $2-5 using staples like rice, beans, flour, salt, yeast, pepper, etc... Generally, spices are pretty cheap. Especially if you go to the bulk section instead of buying the little jars.

The thing I see stopping most people in poverty is lack of access to a kitchen. No oven, no stove, no pantry, etc... A hot plate and a microwave if they are lucky. Also the usual health issues that come from deep poverty like executive dysfunction, depression, and other chronic illnesses.

> stopping most people in poverty is lack of access to a kitchen. No oven, no stove, no pantry, etc... A hot plate and a microwave if they are lucky.

How poor are we talking here? The most nominally poor people I know live in depressed post-industrial towns in Slovakia and I don’t think I ever saw a kitchen without a stove and an oven.

I'm thinking more along the lines with high rent/high cost of living locations like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Austin. Where the only affordable places are rooms in single family housing. Places where affordable housing is illegal or severely restricted.

> I have found it is roughly an order of magnitude cheaper to cook at home, even once you factor in the "lost" time.

I remember years ago, when I worked at Subway, so often I'd be ringing up the customer, tell them their total, and they'd be like "It'd be cheaper to make it at home!"

I never for the life of me understood how this was some giant revelation for some people. Of course it's cheaper to eat at home. The value proposition for eating out, even at fast food, was always convenience, not cost.

Of course, the counter-argument is always something about how a load of bread is $X, all the veggies are $Y, etc, and it adds up to like 3x the cost of the Subway sandwich. But everyone making that counter just completely ignores the fact that all those ingredients will make at least 5 sandwiches.

I love making my own sub rolls for sandwiches. They last a week on the counter so I can make them on the weekend and store them in the fridge then toast them in the oven. Subway used to be cheap but they jacked those prices up to the moon lately. Their prices have doubled in the last 10 years. Their produce is always soggy and wilted anyways.

Economists keep saying we are under 3.5% inflation which makes no sense. Prices in stores are doubling in 10 years which is more like a 7-8% inflation rate. Maybe it's local to me?

Nah, Subway has absolutely cranked their prices.

When I worked there in 2012, a footlong Roast Beef was $7.50. Now, just the six inch is $7.99, and the footlong is $14. Not quite a doubling, but still pretty nuts. That's about 4.6% per year, higher than the 3.5%.