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I feel like the price of restaurant dining scales linearly to the number of people you're feeding, while cooking at home scales more logarithmically. [1] If yo

I feel like the price of restaurant dining scales linearly to the number of people you're feeding, while cooking at home scales more logarithmically. [1] If you're feeding one person, I don't know that it's that much cheaper to get stuff from the grocery store compared to just eating Taco Bell every day. If you're feeding 5-6 people, it's absolutely cheaper; I can make two large pizzas at home to feed 6 people for like $8. Also, where are you finding $3 Happy Meals in the US? [1] Probably not literally true, but more or less how I think about it.

School-Cotton 3y ago
If you can make feed N people for X, the only reason you can't feed one person for X/N is if you're buying too much of things and throwing them away because they go bad. This can be mitigated by freezing things, accepting eating leftovers repeatedly, making smaller quantities, etc., although indeed it's more difficult.
- tombert 3y ago
  Yeah but if you have stuff that isn’t freezable, even if you’re ok with eating leftovers, you end up having to buy smaller quantities of stuff else you risk stuff going bad before you eat it. Smaller quantities tend to be more expensive. For example, I don’t buy milk anymore since I do not remember the last time I have finished a carton. I keep some powdered stuff around because I sometimes use it for cooking, but I don’t buy liquid milk anymore. If I did need liquid milk, I would probably end up buying the smallest quantity of milk available to minimize waste, but they would probably be a much higher per-ounce cost. That’s what I mean about it scaling logarithmically. If you can buy a higher quantity the prices get much cheaper.
  - selimthegrim 3y ago
    You can always buy evaporated milk
    - mhb 3y ago
      Or freeze it. https://www.usdairy.com/news-articles/can-you-freeze-milk https://www.usdairy.com/news-articles/can-you-freeze-milk
    - tombert 3y ago
      I do that occasionally as well. In addition to the dry stuff, that more or less covers any milk need I might have. My point was that there’s some items that would either lead to waste, or they gotta buy such a small quantity of it that the rate is bad.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

School-Cotton 3y ago

If you can make feed N people for X, the only reason you can't feed one person for X/N is if you're buying too much of things and throwing them away because they go bad. This can be mitigated by freezing things, accepting eating leftovers repeatedly, making smaller quantities, etc., although indeed it's more difficult.

tombert 3y ago
Yeah but if you have stuff that isn’t freezable, even if you’re ok with eating leftovers, you end up having to buy smaller quantities of stuff else you risk stuff going bad before you eat it. Smaller quantities tend to be more expensive. For example, I don’t buy milk anymore since I do not remember the last time I have finished a carton. I keep some powdered stuff around because I sometimes use it for cooking, but I don’t buy liquid milk anymore. If I did need liquid milk, I would probably end up buying the smallest quantity of milk available to minimize waste, but they would probably be a much higher per-ounce cost. That’s what I mean about it scaling logarithmically. If you can buy a higher quantity the prices get much cheaper.
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  You can always buy evaporated milk
  - mhb 3y ago
    Or freeze it. https://www.usdairy.com/news-articles/can-you-freeze-milk https://www.usdairy.com/news-articles/can-you-freeze-milk
  - tombert 3y ago
    I do that occasionally as well. In addition to the dry stuff, that more or less covers any milk need I might have. My point was that there’s some items that would either lead to waste, or they gotta buy such a small quantity of it that the rate is bad.
deleted 3y ago
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