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> cooking has economies of scale and specialization, so it’s cheaper to cook for many families at once But eating out also causes negative externalities becaus
by smallnamespace 9y ago
> cooking has economies of scale and specialization, so it’s cheaper to cook for many families at once
But eating out also causes negative externalities because the incentives between restaurant and food consumer aren't properly aligned.
Restaurants have every incentive to offer cheap, unhealthy, but more addictive foods because the resulting health issues are externalized towards the buyer and to the rest of society.
It's this incentive structure that gives rise to Supersized sodas, unlimited breadsticks at Olive Garden, etc.
One way to look at it is that the industrialization of food production (including cooking) is better at moving atoms around and making whatever people choose to eat cheaper, but worse at managing the bits of information that help people make wise decisions on what they actually should be eating.
It's also harder to verify that you got what you paid for -- my family used to go to the market every weekend to stock up, and you become intimately familiar with what's in season, what is fresh, and what tastes good, but it's easy for a restaurant to buy cut-rate produce and then dress it up with seasoning and technique.
- Godel_unicode 9y agoOne interesting side effect of large chains cooking cheap, addictive, shitty food is that they have cornered that market. At least near me, all of the small restaurants make excellent food. They appear to know that they can't compete on price so they compete on quality.
- xg15 9y agoBut if they go for high price/high quality, we've come full circle and cooking at home is cheaper again.
- etruong42 9y agoIt has already been quoted before so I'll quote it again: > cooking has economies of scale and specialization, so it’s cheaper to cook for many families at once I'll try to add a little more value to the conversation - there are a lot of hidden costs in cooking at home. A kitchen could take up valuable real estate that is significantly underutilized compared to a commercial kitchen. A personal kitchen also has maintenance costs on top of cooking and cleaning each meal. I do acknowledge a lot of value - you get to cook exactly what you want, how you want, when you want. For many, cooking itself is valuable (and not a loss of time) because it is enjoyable.
- eecc 9y agoGreece. There, people regularly eat out with friends and family. Prices are reasonable, food is same traditional dish you’d make at home. It’s nothing perverse or cunning, just a group kitchen
- atmosx 9y agoI think the main reason is culture not pricing per se. Greeks spend where they live, Italians spend muco more on vacations, but not as much where they live.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago> Restaurants have every incentive to offer cheap, unhealthy, but more addictive foods because the resulting health issues are externalized towards the buyer Another excellent example of why I've stopped listening to arguments of the form "X needs to be regulated because it produces such-and-such externality". "Externalities" aren't just things you as an observer don't like. A negative effect on the buyer can never be an externality.
- eropple 9y agoSo you've stopped listening to arguments about things that exist because some people misuse a word?
- thaumasiotes 9y agoYes, when better than 99% of arguments taking a certain form are nonsense, it makes no sense to pay attention unless you have some additional reason to believe the person talking isn't an idiot.