4 ms·

I wonder how many people it takes to make hiring a cook cheaper than having a kitchen.

• CydeWeys 7y ago
  You do still have a kitchen in this situation, you're just hiring a cook to come use it. It's not that uncommon in the US to hire a cook to come cook meals at a college co-op house or fraternity/sorority. My dad's co-op at MIT did this in the 60s. The cost of a cook spread out across several dozen people is very low, and you end up saving lots of time spent individually cooking while getting quality food at much less than restaurant prices. There's also the issue that, absent having a cook that cooks for everyone, you'd need much more combined kitchen space (whether that be a single giant kitchen or one per apartment) so that everyone could cook individually, and that in itself takes up more space and is more expensive.
  • chrisseaton 7y ago
    Right I also had this into my 20s, but why don’t we do it beyond that?
    • CydeWeys 7y ago
      In dense cities there's simply no need. There's restaurants, convenience stores, food trucks, and bodegas everywhere. And the restaurants will run the gamut from multi-$100 many course meals right down to $5 will get you a meal fast food. Many of these restaurants are on the first floors of apartment buildings anyway, so it doesn't even look that different from a shared kitchen/dining space anyway (it's just not exclusive to the residents of the building). And in not-dense cities, people tend not to live in buildings with enough units in them to even support this. That's why the university thing is kind of an edge case; it's people living in dense housing situations in not-dense places.