What is the freaking deal man?? It’s bread and cheese! Simply grilled on a stove. Two of the cheapest commodities out there. Oh I get it. You’re trying to be a 3 star restaurant. And you can’t be that without prices to match. $6.99 wtf. And I’m still hungry. And the roof of my mouth is lacerated as all shit. A day later and it’s still tender. Fuck that artisan CHEESE SANDWICH! I’ll make my own for now on. PS your featured artist of the month sucks hairy sasquatch balls.

11 replies on “Over Priced Grilled Cheese”

  1. Please do make your own. No one needs more clueless assholes as customers who are angry that their meal at a 3 star restaurant cost them the same price as a McDonald’s value meal. Let’s cost out that sandwich that you make:

    * Bread, 50 cents
    * Cheese, 75 cents
    * Butter, 10 cents
    * Total food costs: $1.35

    * Time to prepare, 5 minutes
    * Time to cook, 10 minutes
    * Time to clean, 5 minutes
    * Time to shop, 30 minutes
    * Total labor: 50 minutes
    * Total labor cost: 5/6 of $9.75 per hour = $8.10

    *Total cost, labor and food: $9.45 (over a dollar MORE EXPENSIVE than the one you’re bitching about when you include the real costs)

    Of course, this assumes no utility cost involved in cooking or cleaning and no fuel cost in shopping. It also doesn’t take into account that now you have a whole loaf of bread, a couple pounds of cheese, a pound of butter, a pan, etc, that you have to avoid wasting. It also assumes that your opportunity cost for labor is only minimum wage. Most people earn about double this, making the true cost of you making your own grilled cheese sandwich a lot more expensive.

    On top of that, if you were in a 3 star restaurant you were costing them money with your $8 sandwich. Most people are buying more sophisticated fare and paying accordingly. They don’t make money on the $8 sandwich. They have so that assholes like you don’t prevent a party of 3 or 4 from coming in because of their lame friend or family member. You, having boring tastes or being a cheapskate, decided to go to a 3 star restaurant and order a grilled cheese sandwich, something you could have gotten at any diner for a couple bucks cheaper or made with shitty Kraft singles, Wonder Bread, and margarine, at home while ranting about evil corporate America keeping you down.

  2. @extramsg Restaurants don’t go shopping. They prepare multiple meals at once. They cook multiple meals at the same time. They clean up as they go and after they close. 50 minutes for a grilled cheese sandwich? Stop.

  3. Hurl,

    Restaurants don’t shop? That fuckin funny. So food magically appears? Cash and carry must be a myth then also.

    Msg is pretty spot on if you consider none of those ingredients are on hand. Hurl can deduct the 5 minute of cleaning since prob his butler does this.

  4. Are you talking about that fancy-pants deli that replaced Subway in Sellwood? I assume so based on your reference to the super crappy artist of the month. I’ve never actually been in there since it became a deli, but I’ve seen that horrible art while sitting in my car in Sellwood traffic.

  5. It’s the cost TO HIM to make the sandwich, not to the restaurant. (“Let’s cost out that sandwich that **you** make.”) The restaurant benefits from economies of scale and passes along those savings to its customers so that they can actually save money compared to doing themselves once ALL costs are accounted for. However, people when they say, “I could do this at home for cheaper,” rarely count in the opportunity cost for their labor. (And certainly don’t account for the overhead and labor of the restaurant.) This is why people often have nannies and babysitters and work instead even though it’s “free” to stay at home and watch their kids.

    I probably wasn’t entirely clear, but the reason the restaurant loses money is because it has to earn a certain amount of money per person that it seats in order to pay all of its overhead. Seating a person who spends a small amount of money is wasting a seat that could have been filled by someone who will spend the amount of money the restaurant needs to succeed.

    I wasn’t trying to get too deep in the weeds of the restaurant side of things, just showing that even HIS cost is more than the price he paid. The restaurant, though, has only a certain number of customers it serves in a day and at a 3-star restaurant their overhead is high enough that if they only sold $8 sandwiches, they’d go out of business. They need to make $50 per person or so on average. They’re betting by having an $8 sandwich that they’ll be able to pull in some people along with that person who will spend more or that they’ll get more people during their slow hours. It may also make up for other dishes that they don’t make much money on. Every restaurant has to do a balancing act on their menu, charging a higher percentage on some dishes so that they can keep prices lower on other dishes. So maybe they have a steak sandwich they charge $10 for and costs them $4.50 to make, so they have a grilled cheese that they charge $8 for and costs them $1.50 to make. When you average them out, it’s $18 for $6 in food, or a 33% food cost. That’s still a little high for a restaurant to be able to make money when you count in labor and overhead, but it’s a lot better than the 45% of the steak sandwich.

  6. If you can’t make your own goddamned grilled cheese you deserve no more than 35 cents worth of cheese. That’s it. You’re such an entitled little child. FUCK!!! MSG you deserve to go out of business, giving these fuckers 75 cents worth.

  8. I agree. Cheese and bread for anything more than $5 is a joke. Yes, fancy cheese is pricey but it’s best to eat alone not melted between bread. O’ and it doesn’t take 5 min to prep. That’s ridiculous. Cut enough fucking cheese and bread to last the whole day. When you do the math it’s probably about 30 seconds to make a grilled cheese sandwich. Put it on the grill… by now you should know how long it takes each side, but set a timer so it doesn’t burn, just in case. Then go do something else. Fucking Portland Sandwich Makers. Do you just stare at the cheese melting? You know you could do something else like…. cut more cheese, for example. Plus, adding soup to the meal doesn’t justify another $6. Grilled cheese and soup should be $7 to $8 max. I’m sorry but you’re not going to live in the nice house in the nice neighborhood as a fucking Grilled Cheese and Soup Chef. Know your worth. If you like the simple sandwich solution, buy a studio in Gresham and say thank you to the next chump that wants to eat your overpriced sandwich.

  10. Step one: Read the menu and look at the prices.

    Step two: Don’t order expensive shit you could make at home.

    Step three: Repeat steps one and two and go the fuck home.

    That being said, I bet some eateries put together a mean grilled cheese, so if you want to explore your options, be prepared to shell out some dough. Who knows? Maybe they’re spreading gold-flaked Cheez-Whiz jizz all up on your sammie. Gold prices are up these days, my friend.

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