The more I write, I suspect that the person behind the post will eventually become more familiar. Todays post is a great example that opens a huge part of my past. Before I went into finance, I spent 11 years of my life working 16 hours a day, 6 days a week in kitchens as a chef. Having a behind the scenes look at the cost structure of a restaurant gives you great insight into why things cost as much as they do. Today, I’ll break that down and we’ll look at how much you can save with small changes in your eating habits.
What Are You Paying For?
When you go to the store to buy ingredients for dinner, the cost involved is for the raw material and maybe a tiny bit in the electricity to power your stove and maybe some water. When you go to a restaurant, you have many more variables to consider. They have to pay for rent, the staff, gas, electricity, table cloths, so on and so forth. To put this into numbers, most restaurants work on a 30:30:30 system. That means that the price of the meal you paid for is broken up as follows:
- 30% for labor
- 30% for overhead
- 30% for food
Essentially you take the cost of the raw materials and multiply it by 3 or 4 if you want to push the envelope. This leaves 10% for profit. Not a big number. Think about that the next time you go out for dinner. If your bill was $100, the restaurant profited $10. That’s assuming that there weren’t any mistakes, that the staff were on time and didn’t slack off, and that they actually did a good number of customers.
If a restaurant is slow, you can simply order less ingredients and send your staff home early. You can’t adjust the fixed costs. But I digress. I believe there’s some saving to be done.
Meet Ms. Foodie
Ms. Foodie loves to eat out. She loves to take pictures of her meals and post them on Twitter. She eats out once a day and on average spends $20 on each meal, including tax and tip. This works out to $140/week or $7280/year. Let’s see what it would look like if skipped eating out for just two of those meals each week.
The Results
Two days of dining out typically cost Ms. Foodie $40. Since we know the cost of the materials are multiplied by 3, let’s just divide her dining out budget by 3. So, that’s basically $13, which leaves $27/week she can put into savings. $27/week comes to $108/month or $1404/year. Let’s imagine she invests that money and get an average return of 8%.
- 10 years – $14,040 contributed, $20,904 market value, $6,864 earned
- 20 years – $28,080 contributed, $66,708 market value, $38,628 earned
- 30 years – $42,120 contributed, $167,069 market value, $124,949 earned
- 40 years – $56,160 contributed, $386,974 market value, $330,814 earned
This is an interesting one for me, because I keep telling myself how awesome it would be to eat out everyday. If I was super rich, I can’t see myself having a problem paying a premium on not having to clean and not having to go and buy the ingredients. But for those of us who can use a bit of extra savings at the end of the day, I suspect this is one of the easier transitions to make of the ones I have posted.
I just did a little budget on the food I eat while out as a district tech support and have been able to save $200 a month in eat out food. I still eat out a few times a week, but I have budgeted myself $20 a week for it and when I hit that, I am done. I have to eat the peanut butter sandwich or the Ham sandwich that I make at home. Let’s see:
$1.79 for a loaf of bread and $6.99 for a pound of ham. That’s $8.78 for 10 days of sandwiches or $4.39 2 weeks versus the $70 per week. Of course you can add to that the fact that I will eat bologna which I can get every week for some outrageous price and I can eat for even less.
Another tip is to grab fist fulls of those ketchup packets at McDonalds rather than paying for a bottle at the store.
They don’t have packets out anymore at the US McDonalds. They use press spout bottles. I go to Dunkin Donuts for a coffee and a bagel every week and grab so much Splenda that I don’t need sweetener.
but if you wait for dollar day sale at NO FRILLS it is only $1 for 1L… 🙂
A loaf of bread can last you 10 days?
Wouldn’t the last of the bread become stale at the 10th day?
Oh yes it can. Just wrap it up properly and it lasts 2 full weeks.
Check the expiry dates. Some bread lasts longer than others and, if you must, you can stick it in the fridge (or freezer) to make it last even longer.
From being a chef in the kitchen for 11 years, you walked away and became a financial advisor, that’s quite a big change!
I agree. it may be off topic but perhaps I’ll share my whole story with everyone in a future article.
Interesting note. I just did the math and if you had all the habits of all my “Beyond The Latte Effect” posts and cut down and I suggested, you’d have saved $971,657. That’s almost $1 million!
The savings of nearly $1 million is accured over how many years? 20? 30 years?
I believe many people may not have the discipline and foresight, and may not want to take the bitter pill over many years in order to reap the sweet rewards 20-30 years down the road.
That’s 40 years. You’re correct. In fact NO ONE wants to do it. Why on earth would people plan for retirement when they could buy that extra beer or go out for that dinner? This sort of thinking is how most people land themselves in financial hardships. More money doesn’t help either. Most pro athletes go broke after 5 years of leaving their sport. It’s my job as an advisor to persuade people of planning for what’s truly and ultimately important to them.
Well written article! I agree your points and thanks for sharing.