A friend in the business says that's usually the second restaurant business someone opens.
Do you have any insight into why so many people buy lunch instead of bringing it? I've had a desk job for about 20 years now and I think I've bought lunch maybe 10 times when for some reason I wasn't able to make my lunch that day. It seems to me that buying lunch is more expensive and a person will probably eat more calories. I can't imagine it is a time issue, I probably spend less than 5 minutes putting a lunch together every day. That is far less than the time required to go somewhere for lunch. I assume it also isn't an issue of wanting to get away from the desk - most office places I've seen have lots of places a person can go and eat.
Price: Within reason, who cares? I don't have a wife or kids or any obligations really. What good is a six figure salary if I have to micromanage what I'm spending on food?
Calories: Diets don't work, so who cares? If the meal is too big to finish then I'll take half home for dinner, like I did today.
Time: IDK if you eat a cold turkey sandwich for lunch every single day or what, but it would probably take me 30-60 minutes to make the things I often eat for lunch, if I even had the ingredients. I don't have the benefit of hours of kitchen prep before the restaurant opens.
Getting away: This is a big part of it actually. Not just leaving my desk, but leaving the office entirely. Walking around the downtown, remembering what it's like to be a human being in the sunlight.
I realize these answers may not match your lifestyle but I'm just trying to give the insight you asked for, from a person who does this.
This mentality always blows me away and I am genuinely curious.
Has it not occurred to you that if you spend less, you can work less? (i.e. part time or retire sooner)
I cut things like this out of my spending, now I work a couple of years then travel a couple of years, first time I drove to South America, now I'm driving around Africa.
I find the type of travel you describe stressful. I also don't like the insecurity of part-time work. Maybe I'll feel differently later, but at age 31 that lifestyle is just not for me.
The choices were:
* 1 work day allocated to making/eating 20 personally made meals a month
* 2 work days allocated to eating 20 professionally meals a month.
Factoring in time, variety, and the fact that professional meals taste better than mine - yes, I absolutely eat out most days. I'll pinch pennies on bigger items like car insurance or rent, but food was simply a good cost-benefit trade off.
YMMV; cost-benefit is subjective.
And, uhh, most fixed-salary programmers don't have great options for spending an extra hour a week and winding up with more cash.
In my opinion, eating out is definitely a luxury. If/when I get serious about saving more money, cooking my own meals is absolutely the first thing to do.
I am committed to ~160 work hours / month. Of that, I spend 10 work hours buying lunch - versus spending 2 work hours and 5 personal hours making my own lunch. Spending 8 work hours to buy 5 personal hours is worthwhile for me.
The notion of "retirement" is a quaint one.
A typical week of lunches for me is one meal out with coworkers (~$15), three meals at the work cafeteria ($6-8, we'll assume $8), and one day WFH that we won't count. Average cost of $9.75 per meal, and no time invested. If I was taking my lunch, I'd probably be looking at $2-3 worth of food per day, and at least 15 min of prep time per day; more if you count extra time needed for grocery shopping and so on. I'm not pulling in a fat SV 6 figure salary, but even so my hourly rate is upwards of $40 per hour, so the meal prep time alone is equal to what I'm spending on lunch.
Personally, I'd rather have the time than the money. YMMV.
I figure I've been able to save an extra $25,000 since I started consistency bringing my lunch ten or so years ago.
Also, self-made lunch isn't free. It's cheaper, but it's not 100% cheaper. The difference isn't between $10 and $0, but between $10 and, say, $4. A lot cheaper, but it lowers the 'saved' amount (at the cost of adding in shopping + preparing labour)
That's enough for two people to fly from Los Angeles to Paris, stay a week in a 4-star hotel, and fly back. Or to buy the highest spec Macbook Pro, every year, with change. In a year and a half, it's enough to buy a used BMW convertible.
Yes, buying lunch is a "luxury", but a small, daily one. Don't make me bring Orwell on food into this..
I do like the idea of going travelling, but you're not going to do it by cutting out lunch (unless it's something pricier like a proper sit-down lunch with waiters and drinks). Effectively you're moving your hedonism around so you can take it all in one go, rather than day-to-day.
I pay ~$50 for 5/14 meals a week. I'm happy with that. I also spend a grand total of 120/month on transportation costs (includes costs of car, maintenance, gas, and insurance).
People have different priorities.
Umm, eating less than your caloric need makes you lose weight. Eating more makes you gain weight.
If you're implying that calorie restriction isn't an effective way of losing and controlling body fat then I'd like a source for this wild and absurd claim which counters absolutely mountains of evidence.
It does make a difference in the quality of the food you get if it is home-made vs restaurant/snack bar/cafeteria, even in Germany where the meals are not ridiculously large as in the US.
It's not a time issue, it's an organization and mental energy issue.
At $15/day, 200 days per year, it costs around $3k/yr, which really isn't that much when you consider tech salaries and the benefits it brings. The only downside is I have to be hyper conscious about eating healthy since meals out are optimized for taste, not health (i.e. lots of butter and salt and other stuff that makes it taste really good but not particularly good for me to eat).
I'm one of a handful of people at my office who never brings lunch and for me it's all about getting away from my desk leaving the office building, getting a walk in and looking for something interesting to eat. I'll often walk to one of the places where food trucks tend to congregate and see if there's something good there. Sometimes I'll take the chance to try out that new restaurant I know I'll never get to otherwise. Yes, it costs a fair bit, but eating a brought lunch in the lunch room would destroy the entire joy of lunch for me.