> It seems the average Big Mac meal is $6 these days. It provides approximately 1,000 calories, and the average person needs approximately 2,000 per day, so we'll assume you'll need to order two. That puts the food costs at $12 per person
Yeah, i assumed so. Eating Big Macs is... let's say suboptimal. If you eat only that, you'll probably have all sorts of health issues. When counting actual food, fresh and with vegetables and all that, it's slightly more expensive than Big Macs. Around here, cheapest option for a decent actual meal is ~8-10/eur/person.
> The average cost to install a kitchen is around $60,000
Seriously? In France fancy kitchens are at 10k, "starter" ( recommended if you're going to let or for first buy) are at 2k, everything included. I guess if you start from $60k, you need to cook quite a bit more to make it financially viable.
And that's if you have close to no dietary or allergic restrictions.
$60,000 is an over-estimation; that is what a high end kitchen with nice materials and custom cabinets would cost. The typical cost is $13k to $37k with the median being $25k nationally[0], depending on the size of the kitchen and local labor costs.
> Around here, cheapest option for a decent actual meal is ~8-10/eur/person.
Same here, but always coupled with a value of entertainment at that price point. You cannot directly compare the entertainment experience to your home kitchen, as already mentioned. You, at least, would have to include some of the cost of your living room, TV, Netflix account, etc. or whatever analogs of entertainment you have in your home. At which point 10 eur is going to look pretty cheap.
> "starter" ( recommended if you're going to let or for first buy) are at 2k, everything included.
Whoa. I'm not sure you could even put up one wall of a kitchen for $2k in North America. Maybe if you're buying a stove and cooking under the stars you could get in for that amount. That's not what anyone I know would call a kitchen. Definitely not what is being referred to as a kitchen in this thread.
What exactly are you including in the cost of your kitchen? A cheap stove and refrigerator are about $500 each. Cabinets for the small but fully functional kitchen in my small bay area apartment could be had for as little as $1000 based on a quick look at Home Depot. Countertops can vary widely, but lets throw in another $2000. That could be enough for granite if you don't have too much counter space.
For quick and dirty estimates, it's reasonable to double your cost of materials to get a total job cost. Framing is going to be less than $1000 in lumber (probably a lot less) for an apartment kitchen and that's at today's historically rather high lumber prices. Electrical is going to be maybe $500 at most. I'm a lot less versed in plumbing so I can't estimate that off the top of my head, but lets say that it somehow comes out to as much as the framing and electrical combined. Adding all that up and doubling it brings us to $6000 in construction costs.
All in that's ~$10,000.
$2000 isn't realistic if you're counting all materials from the ground up, but $60,000 is a comical number. That might be the average cost of your typical McMansion kitchen with high end appliances, but it's not representative of what it's going to cost to build a kitchen in a small to medium sized rental apartment.
> $2000 isn't realistic if you're counting all materials from the ground up
Kitchens certainly don't magically spring up from the ground after the spring rain. You naturally would have to count every last input cost for any kind of meaningful comparison. The restaurants certainly are when pricing their food.
> Adding all that up and doubling it brings us to $6000 in construction costs.
For, say, a 150 sq.ft. kitchen (the average sized kitchen)? Which means if we theoretically placed 10 of those rooms side by side, totalling 1,500 sq.ft., you could build what is essentially an entire house for $60,000? I realize that doesn't include all the fixtures, but it still seems quite low. Labour must be pretty cheap where you're from.
I don't know what to tell you except I have experience actually doing this. A full house needs a roof and foundation, which I neglected in my original estimate. I don't have time to work out an estimate on an entire roof and divide it to assign partial cost to the kitchen, but I doubt the roof and foundation together are going to add any more than anther $6000 for the kitchen alone. The overarching point is that we're still a long way from $60,000 for a kitchen.
Seems to be a lot of that going on around this topic. If you don't count every last penny, you're not being fair to what it costs to cook at home. I get it, if you only count the receipts of your rice and bean purchases, it will be pennies a day. That's not your cost, though.
> The overarching point is that we're still a long way from $60,000 for a kitchen.
I did mention that labour might be cheap where you are from. Prices can swing wildly from place to place. Labour is, by far, the largest cost in the construction, so it wouldn't be too surprising to see the cost of the final product swing widely alongside that.
The good news is that I'm not sure the exact amount matters much at the end of the day as if labour is cheaper, restaurants will also be able to produce food cheaper. No matter how you slice it, you're just not going to be able to compete with the economies of scale of a restaurant.
But ultimately it doesn't matter as people don't cook at home for rational economic reasons, they cook at home because it is an enjoyable activity. You definitely don't have to sell me on that. I love cooking. I would never trade my kitchen for an extra dollar in my pocket.
Yeah, i assumed so. Eating Big Macs is... let's say suboptimal. If you eat only that, you'll probably have all sorts of health issues. When counting actual food, fresh and with vegetables and all that, it's slightly more expensive than Big Macs. Around here, cheapest option for a decent actual meal is ~8-10/eur/person.
> The average cost to install a kitchen is around $60,000
Seriously? In France fancy kitchens are at 10k, "starter" ( recommended if you're going to let or for first buy) are at 2k, everything included. I guess if you start from $60k, you need to cook quite a bit more to make it financially viable.
And that's if you have close to no dietary or allergic restrictions.