[Idea Forge] Restaurant Menu Items as Affordable as Homemade Meals
Many families can save money by dining out if they pay less than $23 per meal.
I loved going to Boston Market as a kid to smell the roasting chickens and pick from the wide array of sides on display. Mac & cheese and cinnamon apples were two of my favorites for years until my family stopped going and we ate more processed meals instead: macaroni from the box, hot dogs, Hamburger Helper, fish sticks, Toaster Strudel after school, and many frozen meals. My grandfather worked for Stouffer’s, so it made sense that we were into ready-to-microwave meals.
The microwave was by far our most used kitchen appliance even though in hindsight, nothing really good came from it.
Many bland meals later, I don’t use a microwave anymore. I miss the Toaster Strudel more than I miss the microwave. When I graduated from using a microwave, I transitioned to boiling pasta with sausage, then topping it off with tomato sauce while I lived in California. That was my go-to meal and I loved it. But fast forward to now and I’m craving the full range of flavors the world has to offer.
Imagine being able to get tasty meals from a restaurant multiple times a week without taking a hit to your food budget. Top that off with the possibility of saving money by eating out, plus ordering online so that your food is ready by the time you arrive at the restaurant on your way home from work.
The more common it becomes, the less time and distance you’ll need to travel to get to a modern restaurant that serves clean options. Microwaves and frozen meals may have saved time for my family, but they did not save our health. Good restaurants specialize in making food from fresh local ingredients, so we might as well take advantage of that skillset to avoid preservatives and time-consuming meal preparation.
Restaurants have efficiency of scale and specialization. They have cooking, baking, slicing, and serving tools and equipment that are faster at handling large amounts of ingredients than the ones we have at home. Kitchen cooks prepare the same things with repetition, so they have the muscle memory to help them move quickly. Plus, they can cook huge batches of food for customers at once. Spending an hour on a meal for two is a lot more laborious than spending an hour on a meal for thirty.
When I worked at a pizza restaurant in Chapel Hill, I pressed hundreds of doughs and made dozens of pizzas in a shift. We were essentially a build-your-own pizza factory. We collectively made hundreds of pizzas per night, but it was never enough. Imagine a world where restaurants were enjoyable work environments. Making pizzas at home with friends is actually pretty fun, so the concept isn’t that far out.
With a large volume of customers, a restaurant can afford to pay its employees more. That means higher job satisfaction, less turnover, and no more workplace drama. Online bulk orders are served over the counter, so fewer waiters are needed per dollar of revenue earned. Rental costs per dollar of revenue are lower because the restaurant doesn’t need tables for its takeout customers. If the menu offers alt-organic options, employees and customers have the added bonus of being able to eat wholesome food that gives them more energy during the shift.
Task switching between meal types at a restaurant causes avoidable losses to productivity. If a kitchen cook prepares thirty identical tacos rather than three at a time before switching to the next meal, their time spent per taco is lower, and the amount of effort needed per taco is lower.
So how can it be done? Good question. The concept requires a few criteria for success:
The restaurant must serve bulk meals to-go in takeout containers that will fit in the average homeowner’s fridge at prices that meet the viability threshold described in calculations down below. The bulk price per family-style meal or meal plan item should be lower than the price of a single meal.
The restaurant must have online ordering that allows customers to get restaurant-quality entrees and sides without waiting at the restaurant. A customer should be able to show up and grab their bulk meals within a minute of arrival.
The restaurant must market to consumers who understand the benefits of real, pure food that isn’t adulterated by preservatives present in many frozen meals and ready-to-cook dinner packages. Quality per dollar must be higher than what a busy professional can accomplish at home on a weekday night.
As a bonus, the takeout containers can be durable, washable, and reusable so that customers can return them to the restaurant after use to get their deposit back, giving customers a reason to come back soon.
The threshold for viability can be calculated by comparing the costs of homemade meals to the price of a restaurant order. Home meal prep involves…
Grocery shopping time
Transportation cost for groceries
Time & energy for cooking and cleaning dishes
Ingredient cost
Less the value of the joy and exercise from cooking (lower on busy nights)
Using the example of a couple sharing a household, each earning $24 per hour in their jobs, and eating at home every night, the average cost of a homemade meal can be calculated using the meal prep list above. Keep in mind that this particular calculation offers a viability threshold for restaurants along the couple’s commute home from work or for one that includes delivery fees in the meal price.
[(1.5 hr at grocery store * $24/hr) + (12 mi grocery round-trip * ($0.10/mi for depr. + $0.02/mi for maint. + $0.10/mi for fuel)) + (1 hr/meal for cooking & clean-up * $24/hr * 7 meals) + ($60/person/wk * 2 people) – ($0 for the joy of cooking on a busy night)] / 7 meals/wk / 2 people = $23.33/person/meal
For a couple earning a wage of $24 per hour each, a restaurant meal under $23 saves money for the couple compared to a homemade meal as long as they’re able to use the saved time to do something productive. Without incorporating the opportunity cost of time spent cooking and shopping, the figure comes out to $8.76 per meal. Voila, look at that, I’m putting my MBA skills to good use.
Don’t take this as encouragement never to cook. For many families, it’s still worth using the kitchen to cook a few times a week to get to know their food.
But when you’re busy with life, wouldn’t it be nice to let someone else cook for you?
Photo by Outcast India on Unsplash.