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I used to eat out almost every meal as well. It wasn't because I didn't know how to cook, and I even like cooking. The economics (monetary and time) just didn't

• throwawaypa123 7y ago
  I bought food to cook for 2 days at a time. Requires 3 visits to grocery store per week. Given your shopping list is small doesn't take that much.
  • yibg 7y ago
    Yes but then you loose the bulk discounts. Getting 2 days (for one person) worth of veggies, meat etc isn't much cheaper than eating out. Plus the time spent doing the grocery shopping 3 times a week, with the time to cook the individual portion, then cleaning up for me just wasn't worth it. Individual preference obviously, but just didn't make sense for me most of the time.
    • jeromegv 7y ago
      You can definitely argue on the time aspect, it is definitely much longer, but if you actually start adding tax and tip and really look at transactions, there's no way that eating out is anywhere close than food cost.
• Jtsummers 7y ago
  Cooking for myself became easier when I started using rice/quinoa/beans + meat with vegetables. The first part is a single pot, and can usually be made in large enough quantity to last most of the week (via reheating or reuse, like old rice into fried rice). The second part can also be done in a single pot. And I have found that vegetables last far enough into the week that usually one trip covers me. To handle running out, make stews and other freezable things for the end of the week (or to mix things up earlier in the week) and store in single-serving portions.
  • yibg 7y ago
    I had periods of doing something similar too. Make a pot of stew / curry / jambalaya with rice, eat with some salad. Advantage of stew / curry is they can be frozen and later thawed and reheated. Over time though it got really monotonous for me. I like good food, and importantly variety. Feels like there is some opportunity here. A way to scale home cooking for a bunch of individuals. Like if a few people in close proximity, say in the same apartment complex, rotated responsibilities for cooking. You can get bulk savings, time savings and variety.
    • ianai 7y ago
      The real thing would be to have a freezer. Cook enough for now and freeze a cache for later. Do this quick enough and you’ll be able to stock up multiple recipes in the freezer with omit needing to cook once a week (for me, preferably). My trouble is my apartment won’t allow a freezer.
      • yibg 7y ago
        Not everything is freezer friendly though. Many seafood tastes pretty bad after being frozen and reheated. Ditto for anything that is supposed to be crispy / crunchy etc or any texture that’s not soft.
        • ianai 7y ago
          Somethings like fried foods heat up ok to great in the oven instead of microwave.
• Xcelerate 7y ago
  I love cooking and have recently become obsessed with it, but doing it well is extremely time consuming. The best equipment is all meant to be washed by hand (knives, aluminum baking sheets, cast iron and stainless steel skillets, etc.) and cleaning all this easily takes over an hour per meal, never mind the time to actually cook the meal (which, depending on what I’m cooking takes 1-4 hours of active prep time). Also, finding high quality ingredients requires planning and trips to farmers markets. I could save a bunch of time and money by buying from the local grocery store and using cheap dishwasher safe products, but I’ll be dissatisfied with the end result, so I might as well eat out somewhere inexpensive then.
  • dillonmckay 7y ago
    What do you think the ‘somewhere inexpensive’ restaurant uses for ingredients and equipment?
    • smilekzs 7y ago
      A restaurant benefits from the economy of scale --- preparing food for a lot of people amortizes the effort spent on upkeep and $ on equipment. Also there's a team, vs. just yourself when you cook yourself, and specialization increases efficiency too. As for ingredients, well, YMMV; personally I frequent quite a few 'somewhere inexpensive' restaurants that minimally process quality ingredients.
      • byproxy 7y ago
        Yeah, besides chain restaurants (which probably use a bunch of prepackaged, microwaved stuff), most places stock their kitchen with pretty fresh ingredients. Probably from a big restaurant retailer like Sysco or Restaurant Depot, but I doubt it's worse than what you can get at a grocery store.
    • engates 7y ago
      The main problem with restaurants is the shitty vegetable oils they use. It's horrible for you. Unless they're a REALLY high end restaurant, they're using junk industrial seed oils for all of their cooking. That stuff is what causes obesity and heart disease. At home you can cook with butter, olive oil, etc. But I guarantee, most restaurants do not cook with high quality fats.
• terry_y_comb 7y ago
  Agree. Cooking works out much better when in relationships. I am surprised BlueApron isn't doing well as they taught me how to cook, what to get, in a relatively simple instructions.
  • NateEag 7y ago
    That may be part of why they aren't doing well. Once you know how to cook, you don't really need the training wheels any more, and the cost of their overhead is just that: extra cost. I have a hard time imagining them beating grocery stores / delivery long-term. Maybe if they get enough customers to get economies of scale so large they can offer meals cheaper than grocery stores, despite their extra overhead (meal planning, recipe development, and software maintenance come to mind immediately).
    • cbm-vic-20 7y ago
      I could tell this "mail order meal kit" industry was doomed when local groceries tried to hop on to the trend (selling the boxes in their stores, with very little overhead: no need to ship an insulated box across the country), and it didn't take off.
      • vlado 7y ago
        Well, if you're already at the grocery store, you probably have a shopping list and a pre-filled box isn't what you're there for.