After work I went to the place I usually go to pick up breakfast, usually avoiding eating till about noon (some type of intermittent fasting which mostly happened on it’s own). I try to eat a bit healthier (and try to get my proteins in) and so I usually get a Chia pudding with peanut butter to-go, in a cup, but on this occasion they decided to give it to me in-house, in a bowl. Now mind you, I have nothing against bowls but I find cups a lot more practical, you can really dig in and mix things up because of the depth, and you get a cup when it’s to-go.
Now, I usually don’t like it when they mess my order up but on this occasion it didn’t seem to bother me. And so as I sat there eating my Chia bowl (it’s a bowl now, because they done messed up the cup!) I thought to myself:
“This is the driver of revenue for this place”. Most of their orders are either Chia or Acai cups.
And then I thought, “how come I’m buying it from here when I could mix this all at home?”. I mean, it’s just Chia seeds mixed with cashew milk, agave syrup, cinnamon, forest fruits and some other fruits like bananas/oranges/kiwi. They just mix it up and sell it to you for a mark-up, you pay premium for something simple. But that’s not quite the full story is it?
For me to make this at home, I have to buy all of the aforementioned ingredients in “bulk”. In other words, they come in consumer packets of more quantity than needed for one cup in one meal. Not only will I have more than I want at the time (one cup), but also the packages are mixed in different quantities in a single cup. This means that a kilo of bananas might make 10 cups but a kilo of Chia seeds will make only make 5.
You could argue that I could eat the bananas afterwards, but we’re not talking about that right now.
Furthermore, I would have to budget for the ingredients, pay more for a collective of ingredients (quantities further than needed for one cup), go out there and procure them from various shops and markets (unless I can find them all in one, but I doubt it) and then I have to plan around how I will store and use them after my one cup. And this is all fine, it’s okay if I were to eat a couple a day or eat every day – but I’m not sure that I do.
So the “added value” that I have is that I have none of the problems involved in the procuring, budgeting and making of the cup that I can just call in over the phone and have it wait for me ready when I get there. Served with a smile.
The secret of the markets is this – as long as it suits someone to pay for something instead of to do it himself, for whatever reason (whether that be because the person is lazy, has no knowledge, has no capital, has no time) – then he will pay for it to get done. It really is as simple as that. Economies of scale dictate that fixed costs get divided by the number of parts that we manufacture and thus the more we make in a given batch then the lesser the unit cost each part incurs.
–Blooregard Q. Kazoo
The same logic follows the reason not to do it. If I make multiple cups a day then the costs of budgeting, procuring and managing the ingredients, has less of a burden on me for the given one cup that I make at that particular time. I pay because it’s convenient. The minute that stops being true (whether through higher prices of the store or through me consuming multiple cups) I will make it myself, in-house (and in a fucking bowl if I have to).
And why shouldn’t they make money, they offer me convenience – and a smile. That’s good customer service I forgot to mention.
And this is food by the way. When you look at history, some purchasing choices just make zero fucking sense. Business gets perpetually easier when you realize all the dumb shit people pay money for. I mean, should I go any further than pet rocks and cat hammocks?
So next time you think you’re over paying for something, think about all the things that go into you having that experience – no strings attached. Because that’s what you’re really paying for.
No strings attached.