Cooking at Home Isn’t as Cheap As You Think

Money. You love it, you hate it, you want it, you need it.

Home Cooking Frustration Time Wast and Money Waste

16 May 2019

Money. You love it, you hate it, you want it, you need it.

And you do just about anything to save it. Well, you try to do everything you can to save it, but you’d be surprised how often you spend more to save more. We spend more time, resources, energy, and ironically, money — all in a mad game to satisfy our mortgage demands, wallet satiety, and sense of security. It’s a sad, disappointing, and frustrating cycle.

When it comes to scrupulous spending, the first thing many people tend to throw out the window is eating out and food delivery services. You’ve likely heard the claims that eating out is an unwise use of money, but have you ever done the math and figured out if that’s true? We want to shed some light on the true cost of cooking at home so you can see for yourself what you’re saving and spending.

How Much Is Your Time Worth?

Planning, shopping, prepping, cooking, eating, cleaning, repeating. That’s a lot to do. And it takes a lot of time. Let’s just ballpark some numbers — feel free to adjust these for yourself to make it more accurate to your unique circumstances:

 

  • Planning - Let’s say you’re quick and plan out your meals and the necessary ingredients in 15 minutes.
  • Shopping - You drive to the nearest grocery store which is likely 5-15 minutes away. We’ll say 10. Next, you shop in the grocery store for everything on your list and check out. Let’s say that takes you 30 minutes. Then, the 10-minute drive home.
  • Prepping - You prep all the necessary ingredients: wash, cut, chop, etc. in 15-20 minutes.
  • Cooking - The time it takes to bake, cook, grill, and fry varies, so let’s just put an even 30-minute placeholder.
  • Cleaning - You either fill up your dishwasher and unload it later (10 minutes) or hand-wash everything (30 minutes).

 

So, by the end, you’ve spent at least two hours on your dinner. You’ve likely planned and shopped for multiple meals, so the time spent on a single dinner gets diluted a bit — but the time spent is still astonishing.

But how much is your time worth? A few years ago, freelancers made an average $21 an hour. In their situation, they might look at the calculations above and think “the time to prepare this meal is at least $42, so I’d be saving money if I went out to eat for anything less than that.” Now, we don’t have infinite bandwidth to keep working to make this comparison completely accurate but think for yourself how much your time is worth and how much of it you’re spending on dinner.

Is the Quality the Same?

Money aside, how do you feel about enjoying quality food? But before we talk about food, let’s look at another similar situation.

If you need to build a small fence and lack the necessary know-how, the project could take you many days and precious weekends to complete. That’s not including the time spent researching techniques and buying materials, either. After possibly hundreds of hours of work, you might have a decent fence — it might not be one you’re posting about on Instagram, but it gets the job done.

The alternative is you hire a fence-building company to come and build the fence for you. It costs more money than you’d like, but you hand the entire project off to them. The business builds a high-quality fence for you in a weekend and gives you a money-back guarantee that lasts a few years.

Which do you choose? There’s no wrong or right answer, but we just wanted to prep your mind to think about a similar situation in the kitchen.

You can spend many hours to prepare a meal that’s wholesome and tasty (and seems to be less expensive) or you can spend money to have a delicious, nutritious meal prepared by a high-trained chef who cooks for a living. Before you decide, let’s talk real quickly about SareFood.

SareFood Gives You Quality Food (And Your Quality Time)

SareFood provides the St. Louis community with a new, radical meal-delivery service. Rather than delivering ready-to-cook meals or ingredients from hundreds of miles away, we connect you with chefs in the community to bring fresh, tasty meals right to your door. You get to enjoy affordable, high-quality regional cuisine from the comfort of your home without doing any of the planning, shopping, prepping, or cooking.

Yes, the cost of our meals may be slightly more expensive than the combined items on your shopping list, but it’s well worth it for your invaluable time and the unmatched quality of our dishes. We admit our expansive menu may take a few minutes to glance through, but then you click, click, and check out — and that’s it. Your food is delivered right to your door. All you have to do is heat it up.

Plus, our generously-portioned meals are prepared by highly trained chefs who eat, sleep, and breathe authentic cuisine. You’ll get to experience the true taste of everything from Thai to Lebanese to Soul Food — needless to say, you won’t be disappointed. Give us a try now and rediscover the value of your time while enjoying unparalleled quality food.

Click on the below url or copy paste the url to choose a chef and then order from their menu. https://www.sarefood.com/chef?mct=E&location=St.+Louis%2C+MO%2C+USA&lat=38.62700249999999&lon=-90.1994042