Why Are Restaurants So Expensive? You're Paying for the Room, Not the Food
Restaurants are expensive because the bill covers the experience — rent, staff, service. Skip the dining room and healthy food gets cheap, fast.
Why are restaurants so expensive? Because on top of paying for the food, you're paying for the experience.
The room, the lighting, the server who refills your water, the location with good parking — all of it is lovely, and all of it is on your bill.
The experience premium
A traditional restaurant carries an expensive retail location, a front-of-house staff, and open hours where the kitchen has to be ready to cook anything on the menu at any moment. None of that is food, but every dollar of it has to come out of what you pay for the food. That's the experience premium, and it's most of the reason a plate that costs a few dollars to cook shows up on the check at several times that.
What if you just want the food?
But what if you don't want the experience? What if you just want delicious, healthy food?
That's the entire premise of Full Time Food. We eliminated the costs that aren't food: no expensive retail location, no front-of-house staff — in the kitchen, it's just the two of us. Nothing about it is fancy. The food is the product.
The schedule that makes it cheap
One more thing we gave up: we can't cook you anything off the menu whenever you're hungry. There are no "full opening hours" here. Instead, you get your order in by Friday night, and we deliver everything to your door by Sunday evening. That trade — a weekly rhythm instead of on-demand everything — is what lets two people serve way better food at way lower prices.
The best way to do lunch
If your week needs delicious healthy food more than it needs another dining room, let us cook for you. Order by Friday night at fulltimefood.com, and Sunday evening a week of meals lands on your doorstep.